Creating Your 3D Virtual Store Display

While shopping on websites like eBay.in, Indiatimes.com, and Rediff.com provide a platform to take your business online, you may want to do a little bit extra to make your product stand out from the crowd. Print ads are one-dimensional and fairly expensive, while TV ads, where you can showcase your product more effectively, can be completely out of reach. But can you showcase your product in a comprehensive manner and still avoid the high costs associated with advertising?

On the internet, you can show off your product in various angles and levels of detail, but having too many images to browse through might prove tiresome for prospective buyers. Some shopping websites display their goods in the form of a video or via Flash files, where the product is seen rotating automatically (360-degrees). This is usually done with the help of animated GIF files, where a product is shot from multiple angles and then animated using a GIF animation utility. At the browser end, the viewer cannot control the speed or stop and view a particular angle for a better view. But what if you could? If using your mouse, you could rotate the product in any direction or even zoom into a particular portion to get a better look, it would add more value to your product and allow the viewer to get a better idea about the product, and therefore make an informed buying decision.

This can be done in a few simple steps. All you need is a digital camera to shoot the product from different angles, good lighting for product illumination, a tripod for a steady shot, consistent distance and angle, a photo editing software to cut out the product from the background, and a utility to stitch the multiple images into a single interactive animated video. We will show you how it is done in a few basic steps. This tutorial shows how you can get started and later on you can move into advanced modes for a professional touch.

Product shots from different angles
Step 1: For this, you will need to set up a table with an appropriate white or black background depending on the product. Set up the tripod at a distance to fill the product in the entire frame. The product to be shot needs to be kept still and well balanced because it has to be rotated. To rotate the product, you can make a rotating turntable using two wooden discs with a nail in the center. Make sure the top disc can rotate smoothly. Alternatively, you can make one using a motorized disc or your own contraption.

Step 2: Click a test shot of the product and verify that the settings are good enough with an adequate exposure-level. Once this is done, you will need to start taking the final product shots. Accordingly, set the lighting, angles, camera exposures, etc to make sure you get the best result.

Step 3: Place the product with its front facing the camera. Click a photo. Rotate the product left or right by around 10 or 15 degrees. Then click another photo. Repeatedly take shots by rotating the Note: The smaller the angles, the smoother the final 3D object Flash video will be. Also keep in mind that greater resolutions and a larger number of shots will also tend to increase the size of the final 3D object flash video. You might need to experiment a few times.