How to Choose the Right 3D Agency for Your Business

10 Criteria to Evaluate 3D Agencies

Choosing the right 3D agency can be a challenge. While many companies are just warming up to the idea of leaving classic product photography behind, others are already far advanced in digitalization and are working on complex 3D applications. Product portfolios vary greatly from company to company, leading to different needs. This guide will help you find the right 3D rendering agency, categorize and compare candidates.

Understanding 3D Agency Specializations in Formats

Not every 3D agency is a classic 360-degree provider when it comes to output formats. Classic product images for online shops or company websites are, next to 3D product animations, the most requested formats. However, the future also lies in interactive applications, such as 360-degree product images, Augmented, or Virtual Reality. Therefore, you should get an overview of all possibilities and define for your products which services you will need long-term and whether the respective 3D agency can provide these formats.

Quality and Standards

Achieving good results requires various skills. It is essential to have specialized designers who know how to handle products from specific industries. Fabrics, food, or special surfaces can be very difficult to model, and experience is an advantage. Therefore, urgently define the desired level of detail for the results you want. Products can be represented very simply to complex in the workflow, and you should define your own standards.

Pricing Structure of 3D Agencies

Prices are often the elephant in the room. The price of digital content production is influenced by several factors (more info here). A significant part of this is scalability. The quantity of products or similarities in terms of surface or shape can drastically reduce prices. Therefore, you should ask yourself if the respective 3D agency has included all relevant factors and if optimized processes are in place that allow leveraging synergy effects between products, thus lowering prices.

Agency Compatibility

If we're all honest, this point should come first. Nobody likes working with unsympathetic people. Interpersonal chemistry is an important factor that must be mutual. A call or a brief remote meeting with your 3D agency can help assess if the chemistry is right.

Company Size and Structure of 3D Agencies

We all know that size isn't everything. Automation can also support small teams and optimize them. But besides practical problems like vacation coverage or availability, the size of 3D agencies can be an important factor in assessing the degree of specialization or outsourcing of certain tasks. While small teams or studios often have a reputation for working on projects with great passion, some tasks simply require a larger team infrastructure to ensure reliability and good results.

Automation in the 3D Agency

In 3D production, various tasks inevitably work together. 3D designers, project managers, creatives, or account managers are just a few stations on the way to a digitized product. This often leads to friction and loss of information during work. Repetitive work demonstrably leads to errors more frequently, which can be avoided through automation. Digitizing large product portfolios is hardly efficiently possible without a good process landscape. Automation lowers prices and increases quality. So, when evaluating, simply ask if the agency works with appropriate tools, internal solutions, or software that adapts to your wishes or systems.

Infrastructure and Data Protection

Data protection isn't the most popular topic. However, many companies require ISO-certified suppliers. Therefore, it's best to contact your data protection officer to find out what requirements your company must meet. When digitizing products, sensitive CAD product data is often sent for rendering to server farms in other countries that are not subject to any data protection. You should definitely secure yourself before starting to work with a supplier. You should also clarify whether the potential 3D agencies have concluded data protection and confidentiality agreements with any third-party suppliers.

Location of the 3D Agency

Do you want to be able to visit your suppliers to discuss projects? Is the company headquarters relevant for reliably delivering and storing product samples there? Since Covid, on-site visits to suppliers have significantly decreased, which has quite positive effects on the world. Nevertheless, with larger projects, better dynamics often develop with good coffee and a Franzbrötchen on-site.

Conceptual Performance

Product visualization can have a very dry character. The production of uniformly lit product cutouts for your online shop often requires less creativity than the development of exciting campaign motifs for a product launch. The image world to be produced places demands on the creative power of an agency. So, ask your supplier for references, a creative directory, or an advance of ideas to better evaluate services.

Licenses - Who Owns What

Agencies and photographers often only deliver final formats, which is why photographers, for example, are reluctant to release RAW source files afterwards. 3D project files often remain with the agency and are not part of the delivery. If you absolutely need the original files for the future, you should secure this with your supplier to receive them. It is also best to clarify whether the agency has purchased rights and licenses for all used assets from third-party suppliers.

Template to Compare 3D Agencies

Feel free to download our template to quickly get a template and evaluate various 3D agencies. We cover the points mentioned above and provide you with a neutral template to compare different suppliers of your choice.

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jan viohl