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Hover: CAD → frame01Strategy · 12 Sep 2026Rendering vs photography for fine jewellery: an honest comparison
Where a photograph still wins, where a render wins by a mile, and the hybrid most houses end up with.
- Photograph the piece that exists and is one of a kind. Render everything that does not exist yet, comes in variants, or has to move.
- Photography cost rises in a straight line with pieces and variants. Rendering pays a setup once, then a fraction per frame.
- Most houses end up with both: renders on the product pages, photography for the campaign, calibrated to one reference.
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Hover: CAD → frame02Workflow · 18 Sep 2026How to prepare a jewellery CAD file for rendering
The native file, real-world scale, a stone schedule, named layers and the six other things that make a render fast.
- Send the native 3DM, or a STEP. Meshes lose the curvature and weld the stones into the metal.
- Millimetres, real scale, stones as separate objects, layers named. Those four checks save the most time.
- Add a stone schedule, a finish note and one photograph of your alloy, and say where the image will live.
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Hover: CAD → frame03Craft · 23 Sep 2026Why diamonds look fake in renders, and how a studio fixes it
Refraction, dispersion and total internal reflection explained, then the five tells of a fake stone and the fix for each.
- A diamond is three numbers: a refractive index of 2.42, dispersion of 0.044, and a cut that sends light back out through the crown.
- Five tells give a fake stone away: grey glass, a white blob in the table, no fire, identical stones, and wrong facets.
- Contrast makes a diamond sparkle. Several small hard lights and black cards do more than one big soft box.
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