3D rendering for beauty, skincare and fragrance
Beauty and fragrance rendering is a glass, liquid and finish problem. Cosmetics CGI covers frosted and clear bottles, droppers, jars, compacts and cartons — with the caustics, subsurface scatter and foil stamping that this category is judged on, at the macro distance it is always shot from.
Why beauty is the hardest product category to render
Almost everything in beauty is transparent, translucent or reflective, and often all three in one object. Clear glass throws caustics — the bright focused light that a bottle casts through itself onto the surface below — and a render without them looks subtly dead in a way most people cannot name. Frosted glass needs real roughness-driven transmission, not an opacity slider. Serums and oils scatter light through their own volume. Creams are subsurface scatter. Foil and hot-stamped type are anisotropic metal at a scale where a millimetre of misjudged roughness shows. And it is all photographed at macro distance, which removes every place a shortcut could hide.
What we deliver for beauty brands
- Clear, frosted and coloured glass with true caustics and transmission
- Droppers, pumps, airless bottles, jars, compacts and palettes
- Serum, oil, cream and gel — rendered as volumes, not surfaces
- Foil stamping, embossing, soft-touch and metallised finishes
- Full shade and variant ranges from one build
- Secondary packaging, cartons and gift sets
- Splash, pour and texture-swatch simulation
- Macro detail crops for PDP and editorial
Shade ranges and variants
A foundation line with forty shades is forty photographs of a nearly identical bottle, and the colour has to be accurate in every one. As a render it is one build and forty colour values, with lighting identical across the set by construction rather than by a colourist's effort. The same applies to lipstick ranges, palettes and any product whose SKU count is driven by colour.
Launch imagery before the fill
Beauty launches are scheduled around production, and production is usually the last thing to be ready. Rendering from the packaging CAD means the campaign, the PDP and the retailer submission can all be finished while the first batch is still being filled — which is normally the difference between launching on the date and launching after it.
Questions
Can you render frosted and clear glass convincingly?
Yes, and it is most of what this category asks for. Both are rendered as physical transmission with real roughness and dispersion rather than as transparency effects, which is what produces the caustics underneath the bottle that make glass read as glass.
What about the product inside — serum, cream, oil?
Rendered as volumes with subsurface scattering and absorption, so a serum genuinely looks like liquid seen through glass rather than a coloured fill. Creams and balms are shaded for the way light penetrates and comes back out.
Can you do a full shade range?
Yes, and it is where this pays for itself fastest. One bottle is built and lit; each shade is a colour value against the identical setup, so the whole range is consistent by construction.
Do you render foil stamping and embossing?
Yes. Foil is treated as anisotropic metal and embossing as real displaced geometry rather than a bump map, because at the macro distances beauty is shot from a bump map shows immediately.
We only have the packaging CAD, not the filled product. Is that enough?
Yes. That is the normal starting point for a launch, and it is the reason to render rather than shoot — the imagery can be finished months before a filled unit exists.