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One asset, every configuration
A configurator is not a gallery of renders. It is one scene that can answer any question the customer asks of it, which changes what you build and the order you build it in.
The instinct on a configurator brief is to start rendering. Every top, every base, every finish, catalogued. It works right up until the range changes, and then it is all firewood.
Build the room first
The thing that makes a hundred configurations feel like one product is not the models. It is that they are all lit identically, framed identically, and graded identically. Get the rig right and a new top drops into it looking like it was always there. Get it wrong and every addition is a small negotiation with the ones already shipped.
So the lighting and the camera are locked before a single product model is final. They are the part that everything else has to agree with.
Parts, not pictures
After that it stops being a render job. Tops, edges, bases and finishes become separate assets with the same pivot, the same scale, the same material slots. The configurator assembles them at request time rather than picking from a folder of pre-baked images.
- A new finish is a material, not a re-render of the catalogue.
- A discontinued base is a deletion, not a re-shoot.
- What the customer builds on screen is the render, not an approximation of it.
The payoff is that the range can keep moving after delivery. That is usually worth more to the client than any individual frame in it.