Abstract:

Rendering an industrial design (ID) drawing visually depicts a three-dimensional object with realistic shading, materials, and shadows. It conveys the designer’s concept and aids in product development decisions. Industrial designers hone this skill over years, requiring an understanding of light, shadow, materials, and composition. Traditional manual or digital rendering techniques can take anywhere from 1 to 10 hours per image.

Vizcom, a new artificial intelligence (AI) powered creative application, revolutionizes concept rendering by transforming sketches into realistic renderings in seconds. This provokes some key questions: Does this make traditional rendering skills obsolete? Should rendering principles still be taught, and if so, to what extent? How does this impact ID curriculum?

To help answer these questions, an experiment was devised to assess AI’s effectiveness in ID rendering and its correlation with students’ rendering experience. Results showed that even students with minimal rendering training could quickly produce quality renderings using AI. While students with more rendering experience modestly improved the quality of renderings, the impact was not substantial. Overall, the student’s opinions varied on the extent to which prior rendering experience and education influences the use and outcomes of Vizcom, with some considering it an advantage for nuanced refinements and others emphasizing Vizcom's accessibility to users with diverse levels of expertise.

While foundational rendering knowledge remains important, AI tools like Vizcom reduce the need for extensive rendering skill development. Instead, students can focus on improving hand sketching skills and adapting drawing styles to AI interpretation. Certain traditional stylistic choices in a product design drawing (such as expressive, construction, and contour lines) produced poorer results. The more accurate the sketches were in form-likeness, perspective, and detail, the better the rendering results. Students emphasized the importance of efficient workflows and balancing Vizcom's strengths with other tools for optimal results. Post-rendering, proficiency in image editing software, such as Photoshop, becomes important for refining the final image. These findings suggest a major shift in industrial design workflows and educational learning outcomes.

Keywords:

Design, industrial design, artificial intelligence, vizcom, education, curriculum.