XO3D Studio · Industry

Furniture & Interiors CGI.

XO3D creates CGI for furniture, joinery and fitted product, where the same piece has to work as a clean cut-out on a product page and as a room someone wants to live in.

Discuss a range or a launch

Selected clients

Sony work via ImageNova. Ferrari and Burberry work via KCD.

Overview

The piece has to survive the room you put it in.

Furniture and interior product make a demand that most product categories do not. The same piece has to hold up twice: isolated on white where a buyer inspects the joint, the stitch and the edge profile, and then placed in a styled room where the job is to make someone want it. Photography treats those as two shoots. The finishes drift, the proportions read differently, and the range stops looking like a range.

XO3D builds the piece once, accurately, from joinery drawings or CAD, then produces both from that single source. Modular joinery for Allwood Joinery, photoreal interior work with fire, smoke and water simulation for Plumis, and fitted kitchen product for Glen Dimplex. The same approach serves specified and architectural product, where imagery is frequently needed long before anything is manufactured. Related reading: product modelling and 3D product rendering. Our 3D product visualisation studio page shows the same one-model approach across colourways and 360 views. To plan the room itself, explore lifestyle product imagery. Where the piece needs to move, choose the right furniture film.

Allwood Joinery Modulite modular units rendered in a kitchen setting by XO3D — Allwood Joinery Modulite, modular units rendered in situ. The same build produces the cut-out product images, the finish variants and the room.

What We Produce

For furniture, joinery and interior brands.

One build, every finish

A range is rarely one product. Take a hypothetical range, one product offered in eleven fabrics, four timbers and three handle options. Built once as an approved asset, each finish becomes a render rather than a reshoot, and the oak can read as the same oak on a product page, in a catalogue spread and in a campaign frame.

The silo and the room

Ecommerce needs a clean cut-out on white. Marketing needs the piece in a styled room that makes someone want it. Shot separately, those two often drift apart. Rendered from one approved build, the geometry and materials come from the same source, and each composition is still reviewed on its own.

Before it is manufactured

Modular systems, fitted units and specified product often need imagery before a prototype exists. Working from joinery drawings and CAD, the studio builds the piece as designed rather than as photographed, which is what makes pre-launch and specification imagery possible at all.

Roomsets and silos

One model, many images: the CGI roomset and the silo.

One approved product build can produce both silo images and CGI roomsets, with each composition still reviewed on its own. A silo isolates the piece, usually on white, so a buyer can inspect its shape, joints and finish. A CGI roomset is a directed interior scene that places the same piece in context, with the room, the light and the styling chosen to suit the buyer the range is for.

The build carries over; the decisions do not. Each roomset still needs its own composition, lighting and scale check, and each silo its own angle and crop. For the room itself, see lifestyle product images and the furniture rendering guide. For the stills service, see product rendering. Where the piece is a kitchen appliance rather than furniture, home appliance CGI covers it.

Our Process for Furniture and Interior Projects

How XO3D works with a range rather than a single product.

Stage 01
Drawings and CAD onboarding
Joinery drawings, CAD, cutting lists, material schedules and hardware specifications, reviewed before modelling starts. Fitted and modular product carries dimensional constraints a reference photograph never shows, and those constraints decide how the asset is built.
Stage 02
Material and finish system
Timber, veneer, laminate, powder coat, upholstery and stone are built as a finish library rather than as one-off surfaces. This is the stage that decides whether variant twelve looks like it belongs to the same range as variant one, and it is where most furniture CGI quietly fails.
Stage 03
Scene and room direction
Where the piece sits, what light falls on it, what surrounds it, and at what scale. A named Creative Director makes those calls before production, because a technically perfect render of a sofa in the wrong room sells nothing.
Stage 04
Silo and scene delivery
White-background product imagery, styled in-room scenes, detail crops and any interactive furniture viewer or AR output, all delivered from the one approved build and to the specification each channel actually requires.

What you send, what you approve.

Each stage starts from something you supply and ends with something you approve. What sits inside the project is agreed in the scope.

Stage	You supply	You approve	Agreed in the scope
Drawings and dimensional references	Joinery drawings, CAD, cutting lists or elevations, and which revision they are.	The model, checked against those references.	Remodelling where drawings are incomplete or out of date.
Material schedule and finish references	The material schedule, plus approved samples or photographs where they exist.	Each finish, viewed under the intended light.	How many finishes and variants are built.
Room direction and scale	The room type, mood references and the buyer the range is for.	Room layout, camera and scale before final rendering.	How many rooms are built and styled.
Silo, room and channel outputs	The channels and formats each image is for.	Final images for each channel.	Image counts, formats and any viewer or AR output.

The model is built to the drawings or CAD you supply. That is not an independent measurement of the physical product, and the images are marketing visuals, not a manufacturing reference. Review source and delivery standards.

A finish review checklist.

Reference revision: which sample, swatch or photograph each finish is matched to, and whether it is the current one.
Colour under the intended light: the finish judged in the room light it will be seen in, not only on a neutral backdrop.
Surface texture: grain, weave, sheen and edge detail at the size the image will be used.
Approval owner: the one person who signs off each finish, so variants are not approved twice or not at all.

Related Work

Joinery proof, and adjacent interior work.

Case Study · Joinery and Modular Interior Product

Allwood Joinery, Modulite

Modulite is a modular interior system, and the project is the clearest furniture and joinery proof on this page. XO3D made a launch film that shows how the system assembles: panels align and lock, blocks float apart to explain the modular idea, and a closing door reveals the finished room. The same build was then rendered in situ, in kitchen and living spaces, so the product and the room it belongs in are shown together.

The still here is one of those room scenes. Allwood received a hero film, feature cuts, interior stills and assembly sequences for the launch. The case study shows the films, the room scenes and greycard passes from the production. It is the right reference for a range that has to be explained as a system first and then sold in a room.

Explore the Modulite project

Interior context and fire-safety product

Plumis Automist

Not a furniture project. Plumis makes a fire suppression system, and XO3D showed it in photoreal interiors with fire, smoke and water simulation. It is relevant here because the room had to hold up to close viewing, not sit behind the product as a backdrop.

Glen Dimplex Richmond range cooker rendered in Kingfisher Teal

Kitchen appliance and finish range

Glen Dimplex, Stoves UK

Not a furniture project. Stoves range cookers rendered across colourways for Glen Dimplex: one product in several finishes, each needing to read consistently. It shows the finish-range problem that furniture ranges share.

FAQ

Furniture and interiors questions.

What makes wood and upholstery look photorealistic in furniture CGI?

When it comes to the wood or upholstery, to make a still look photorealistic, you really need to focus on those materials. Materials mean everything. Like how intricate the wood looks with all of its different knots, and with the upholstery you need to get the correct bump, the correct feel of how the texture is going to look, as well as trying to invoke the feeling that this is real and that you can touch it.
Thomas Howcroft, Founder & Creative Director, XO3D.

Can you work from joinery drawings rather than CAD?

Yes. Joinery drawings, cutting lists, elevations and a material schedule are a workable starting point, and for fitted and modular product they are often what exists. CAD is more efficient where it exists because it reduces interpretation, but it is not a requirement. We review what you have before quoting and tell you honestly where the gaps are.

How do you handle a range with many finishes and fabrics?

The finish system is built once as a material library, against physical references and specification data, then applied to the approved model. That is what keeps a colourway consistent across a product page, a catalogue spread and a campaign image. It scales across the variants of a range within a launch. It is not the same thing as producing an entire catalogue to a fixed template, which is a different service and priced differently.

Can you produce both cut-out product images and styled room scenes?

Yes, and producing them from the same build is the main reason to use CGI here rather than photography. A shoot gives you the room, then a separate session gives you the silo, and the two rarely match. One approved asset can give you both, plus the finish variants in the brief, with each image still reviewed for its own composition and light.

Do you do architectural visualisation?

No. Product is the category, including product placed inside an interior, and a room built to sell the piece standing in it. A building, a development or a scheme as the deliverable is a different discipline and belongs with an architectural specialist. We would rather say that here than three weeks into a conversation.

What about imagery for an entire catalogue of SKUs?

That goes to Render Roll, our fixed-scope catalogue rendering service, rather than through a studio engagement. Directing every frame of a routine range is poor value for the brand paying for it. Studio work is the launch, the hero pieces and the range imagery that has to carry a brand standard: https://renderroll.com/uk/?utm_source=xo3d.co.uk&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=furniture-interiors-scope-fit

Start the conversation

Have a range, a fitted system or a launch that has to look right in the room?

Send the product, the reference drawings or CAD you have, the finish schedule, the room direction, the outputs you need and your deadline. We'll tell you honestly whether this is studio work or catalogue work.