3D models and e-commerce

Hopefully this topic isn't completely marked as spam, but it is quite an interesting conversation I think.

If done correctly I think 3D models of products would be a nice feature for potential customers to a website, particulary for items like mobile phones, jewellry and high end products.

The problems for the technology are great though in my opinion.

- Plugins! Hate you to think I'm taking a pop at your site but, I was unable to view any 3D models at all without first disabling my popup blocker software, then it asked me to install a plugin. I was instantly put off continuing any further, I believe many others would be too.

- Costs. I don't have any real idea but I imagine it would require extra cost per product for a eCommerce manager to put on 3D images of their products. It will definately require extra time at the very least.

If a site with 3D models had the same product as a site without them would I purchase from the 3D model store? Really depends on trust and price levels provided by both.

How do you find it in terms of sales conversions?

3D is something my company, www.abstractworlds.com, still keeps very much on its radar. We started off in 1998 focused on the 3D field (3D games and applications for PCs and mobile Java), before moving our focus over to general business websites, sitebuilders and e-commerce.

My opinion is that 3D still has a future role to play, more on the website interface/user experience side. As for 3D model visual representations of products, I think 3D has lost that battle for most product visualisations, it is just too time consuming to create the models for most products, and with more users having broadband, it is easier and better to have a series of high res photos of the product from various angles, or even a video.

As a sideline, we are still 'dabbling in' (R&Ding) 3D technologies for future projects, some of which will benefit our sitebuilder clients in the future, but I cant say much more than that on an open forum.

I'm with Darren on the plug-in comment. I visited your site but was not prepared to install a plug-in to see your 3D models. If the 3D viewing technology is not based on either Flash, Java, or Javascript I'm not really interested. I haven't visited the carphonewarehouse site for a while but didn't they have 3D model Java viewers of their phones.

Nowadays to get a pretty useful interactive 3D view of a product, it is possible to place a product on a turntable, take some photos, and deliver a high res rotating view of the model without requiring any plugins, just using Javascript (not requiring much more Javascript experience than button rollover programming). You dont get the full axis of rotation, but what you gain on is full colour photorealism because they are actual photos of real products, not 3D model abstractions/simplifications of real products.

I think 3D graphics could be useful in enhancing product images - showing things that can't be shown using the average photo.

For example, I know these are 2D illustrations but I can imagine using 3D in a similar way and adding interactivity to the model and I think the results could be fairly awesome.

We have 3D modelling on our website by Web3D Studio. It runs on Java.

Personally, I think it is pretty awesome. Our main use for it is demonstrating how a Powerball comes apart showing each of the different components. This is useful as it helps customers to replace parts by themselves if necessary.

I am not sure how it would impact sales as I am yet to optimise its use in this regard.

The link is here if anyone wants a look.

www.powerball-gyros.com/3d/powerball.html

Oh you guys might really like this if you like 3D or product photography stuff

I own a website called www.quicktimevirtualreality.com and if you go to Galleries and then objects, you will see VR objects i have photographed.

At the moment I'm in the middle of photographing 120 televisions, and 56 mobile phones and loads of other stuff like Sat Navs, Cameras, hifis, laptops, DVD players, food containers, even Ice sculptures.

Here is a working example in flash http://www.pmandd.co.uk/distributors/ if you scroll down you can see a flash movie of a mobile, this is the kind of thing i mean.

www.StockVR.co.uk and www.StockVR.com to be a reseller of these products, so it will be like www.templatemonster.com allowing people to select a few movies they like, such as a mobile phone set, or a set of flat screen TVs. But then of course there will also be a system where you pay a subscription, and just download the movies you wish.

There will also be a solution for free, where you simply link to the pages that we set up. It will not only have just VR tours, it will also have loads of other info, like manuals, drivers, extra images, and the info text provided by the manufacturer.

There are still problems and issues about copyright and how we stop them being shared around, but its not too bad, as they are in flash, and will import a small image from our main website, just a tiny 1x1 pixel white image, but it will register as a stat, allowing us to track which sites are displaying the movies, and if they arnt registered URLs, then they will be chased. But this is still not finalised yet.

We have about 60% done so far and taken about 18 months so far and should be all live in about 6-12 months. And i think will be a very good way of showing your products. Only problem is, the little sods who make cameras, keep making new ones!!!


This isn't a secret what I'm doing, there are other forums where i have had huge indepth conversations about it. I do a lot of 3D modeling and animation my self which you can see here http://www.newworlddesigns.co.uk/3d/ But we decided the real photography was a better solution than 3D modeling, as clients cant complain about misleading images, as they will be the real thing.

Any opinions or comments whether positive or negative, will be gratefully accepted.