TRG Develops Custom Tools and Plugins to Efficiently Produce Realistic Renderings of MasterBrand's Cabinet Lines

"There are a select few partners who I consider truly dedicated and an extension of our business and you guys are one of them." Brian Taylor Sr. Digital Marketing Manager

The Client

MasterBrand is one of the largest cabinet manufacturers in North America. The company employs over 14,000 craftsmen and 1,000 designers to produce several different cabinet brands. This range of options allow MasterBrand to provide customers with a variety of quality cabinet options at fair prices, allowing people to find the right cabinets for their homes.

The Results

Around 31,000 CGI images (and counting).

The Challenge

As a company with several different brands and product lines within those brands, MasterBrand wanted to create a user experience that allows the customer to view every door in every available combination. MasterBrand was looking for a CGI partner that could create foundation assets for every Door Style, Wood Species, Finish, and Glaze. These could then be combined together to produce a file for every possible cabinet door variation. Most importantly, the final CGI images still needed to hold up and look as good as decades of existing photography.

With our CGI services, we knew that we were fully capable of creating realistic images for MasterBrand. However, nobody was able to understand the sheer magnitude of the project until we started working together. What first seemed like a normal CGI project creating high-quality images unveiled itself to be a challenge that involved the creation of tens of thousands of different assets that needed to be reviewed and approved at different times—potentially years apart from each other—but the final images still needed to look and feel consistent, like a family of images. Instead of buckling under pressure, we turned to a solution that required meticulous planning and an investment in creating a whole new work process.

How TRG Helped

At the beginning of the project, we had numerous Excel workbooks and spreadsheets that were organized by different elements. These sheets were used to keep track of everything we needed to make and what MasterBrand wanted us to complete next. However, this process was inefficient. Not only did this require us to spend time creating photorealistic images, we had artists spending countless hours managing and updating information in multiple spreadsheets. This made it difficult for everyone to stay on track with the same information.

We needed to rethink this process, even if it meant locking one of our employees away for months until he came up with a solution. So that's what we did. Our CGI Supervisor David Miller took the time to create a database that would streamline the image creation process and manage all the information for the project. 

In order for this database to work, David had to make sure that the infrastructure of the CGI project was in place to include every possible aspect of a door's design, including the brand of the door, the type of wood, the finish, and more. Each one of these elements would have their own specific digital file so that they could be combined into one final cabinet door based on what MasterBrand sells.

One aspect of the project is the review and color accuracy of every finish, which needs to be created, proofed, and approved. Initially MasterBrand would send digital targets for us to match. They eventually became so comfortable with our process that they would send us wood masters - the actual cabinet doors themselves - and we'd match our CGI rendered doors as close as we could, proof them internally, and send the files back for review and approval. Once the different assets were created and approved, we'd be able to create final deliverables by combining the approved finishes together with approved door styles, render the final product images, and send them out for final approval.