One scene. One JSON. Every render.

Challenge

Every combination needs its own picture.

The configurator lets a buyer pick a device from the ILUMA i line, turn it through 360°, change its colour and try ring sets, covers and side covers before buying. Behind every combination there is an image: three devices, 19 colourways and 48 accessories, all to be shown with the same camera, the same light and the file name the website expects.

Producing them by hand, one by one, would take weeks of work, and every new release would bring small differences from one render to the next.

Solution

Describe the product. The pipeline draws it.

We built a system that generates every render for the configurator from a single Blender scene and a JSON database. You state the device, the colourway, the accessories and the type of image; the system composes the scene, renders in batch and delivers the files already named and sorted into folders, ready to be published.

The product is not written in code: four JSON files describe it. The first links each kit to the objects, materials and collections of the scene. The second holds the colourways, with textures and shader parameters. The third defines the accessories — silicone, microfibre and fabric covers, Metallic, Neon, Iridescent and SELETTI side covers, ring sets — as changes of visibility and material. The fourth sets cameras, lights, resolutions and naming rules. A new colourway or accessory is a new entry in a JSON file, not a new scene.

The renders to produce are listed in batch files. A script running inside Blender applies each configuration and renders with Cycles, in the background, on the local machine or on other computers on the network set up as render nodes. For daily use there is IQOS Render Station, a desktop application: choose kit, colourway, camera and accessories, run a low-resolution preview to check framing and naming, then queue the batch and follow progress and logs job by job.

Why it matters

A production line, not a one-off.

The configurator changes every time a colour or an accessory is released. With the pipeline, an update is a new entry and a batch run, with identical light, camera and naming across thousands of images. The same approach fits any product sold in many variants that has to look consistent from one image to the next.