How to brief a 3D artist for furniture: the 5 things you need before kickoff

The average furniture 3D project that goes over budget isn't over budget because the artist was slow. It's over budget because the brief required 3–5 revision rounds that could have been avoided with 30 minutes of preparation before kickoff.

Why most briefs fail

Three failure modes appear in almost every badly-executed project:

1. No dimensions. "It looks about 80cm wide" is not a dimension. The artist will model it at 80cm, the brand will say it's wrong, and neither party will know why until sample comparison.
2. Vague material references. "Natural oak" covers fifty different wood species, grain directions, and finish levels. "Warm walnut" is not a material spec.
3. Pinterest board as brief. A board of beautiful interior photos tells the artist about aesthetics, not about your specific product. They'll model something that looks like those photos — which is not what you sell.

1. Exact dimensions

Send a technical drawing or, at minimum, a tape-measure photo with all dimensions labelled. You need:

• Overall width, depth, height
• Seat height
• Arm height (if applicable)
• Leg height and profile (round, square, tapered, splayed)
• Cushion depth and count
• Any inset, reveal, or gap measurements between components

If you have a CAD file (STEP, DWG, DXF) — send it. The artist can extract all dimensions from the model and the accuracy will be exact.

2. Material specification

For each surface, the artist needs to know:

Physical swatches are the gold standard. If you can mail a fabric sample, do it. If not, photograph the swatch under natural daylight at 45° — this shows the nap direction and surface texture better than any studio photo.

3. The right reference images

Two types of references serve different purposes:

• Product reference — photos of your actual piece, ideally from multiple angles. Phone photos are fine as long as they're in natural light (not flash). The goal is to show the actual product, not the desired aesthetic.
• Style reference — images showing the render mood you want: background color, lighting temperature, shadow density, camera angle. Keep these separate from product references so the artist knows which is which.

4. Output requirements

Before the artist starts, agree on what comes out at the end:

• File formats: STEP (for production), GLB (for web viewer), or both?
• Render deliverables: silo (white background), scene (in-room context), or both?
• Resolution: web (2048×2048) or print-ready (4096×4096+)?
• Colorways: if the piece comes in 4 fabrics, do all 4 need separate renders?
• Angles: front-facing silo only, or 3-quarter and detail shots as well?

The brief checklist

We went from an average of 4.2 revisions per model to 1.1 after we standardised the brief template. The artist's time stayed the same — our communication got better.