Vizcom.ai
by Bob Munson
Vizcom.ai is a powerful and easy-to-use online tool that can transform your car sketch into an impressive rendering—in seconds. With its AI-powered features, you can unleash your creativity and bring car designs to life. I personally found Vizcom.ai to be easy to use and a tremendous time-saver. While I don’t sketch directly into Vizcom, it quickly provides a stunning rendering foundation that I can refine further in Photoshop. You’ll get the best results with a specifically prepared sketch keeping the strengths and weaknesses of Vizcom in mind. Vizcom can produce some funky design results, but it can also provide usable design details and dramatic illustrations for a very professional result.
How it works
Step 1: Sign up for a free account
To use Vizcom.ai, you’ll need to sign up for a free or paid account on their website. A professional account is currently $49 per editor/month which includes multi-image generation, 4K export and full design privacy. You can also sign in with your Google or Facebook account. Once you sign up, you’ll have access to a dashboard where you can create new projects, manage your files and collaborate with others.
Step 2: Import or sketch your car design
To start rendering your car sketch, you need to import your existing drawing directly into the website. You can use the built-in sketch tools and layers to draw your car design on a blank canvas or on top of a reference image. You can also use your iPad and Apple Pencil to sketch more naturally and intuitively.
Step 3: Choose a rendering style and adjust the settings
Once you have your car sketch ready, you can choose a rendering style from the library of presets. You can select from different styles such as: Vizcom General which produces stunning photorealism, Volume Render which creates a three-dimensional look, Pastel Render for a soft color palette and my favorite, Technicolor 6 with its futuristic style in vivid and dramatic warm colors. You can add a reference image to mimic its rendering style as well. In the prompt, describe the view, color and background you’re looking to create.
Step 4: Render your car in seconds
After you choose a rendering style and select what percentage of original drawing influence you like, you can click on the render generate button and watch your car sketch transform into a stunning concept rendering in seconds. You can see the live rendering process and make changes as you go. You can also use the 3D paint tool to add details and effects to your rendering.
Step 5: Export and share your car rendering
When you’re happy with your car rendering, you can export it as a high-resolution 4K image (professional account only) and save it to your device or cloud storage. You can also share your car rendering with others via email, social media or a link. You can also invite others to join your project and collaborate on your car design.
Examples from Bob Munson—Corvette (Original sketch and resulting raw rendering from Vizcom)
Examples from Bob Munson—Corvette (After refinement in Photoshop)
Examples from Bob Munson—Cadillac
Examples from Bob Munson—Corvette
Workflow Example from Bob Munson
Here is a sketch I finished this morning and the development that led to it. I placed the upper from the 1st rendering and the lower from the 2nd one on a perspective sketch I found to get the 3rd rendition. I took the upper from the 3rd one and lower from the 2nd one in Photoshop to get the 4th one from which I generated the final one in Vizcom. I hope I’m not too confusing. The point I’m making is that you can combine multiple solutions from Vizcom in Photoshop and put those ideas back into Vizcom to further develop and refine them.
Finished Example from Bob Munson
I turned the brown sketch into this red Corvette with a combination of Vizcom and CS4 Photoshop. I use a mouse to draw and have worn the veneer off of the table top with all my sketching over the years.
Another Finished Example from Bob Munson
How to Render Your Drawing in Seconds
How to Use Render from Reference
Post Script
An interesting feature with Vizcom allows a variable amount of AI influence on your design. I processed a few old GM drawings through Vizcom without doing any prior preparation and got some surprising results. They aren’t usable in themselves, but are thought starters for design exploration.—Gary
Experiments using sketches not optimized for Vizcom and resulting raw renderings.
Bob, glad to see you’re still at it. Vizcom is an amazing tool. I discovered it about a month ago, and like Gary, input some old GM sketches from 40 yrs ago. This has the potential to allow everyone the ability to become a ‘designer’. The democratization of design has begun. As a tool it has great potential. We’ll have to wait and see how it’s utilized.
The next question will be who will decide what design proposals will go forward? Now that everyone and anyone can produce shiny renderings, where will the decision making take place? I can just see the marketing team deciding to create their own proposals.
But I am confident that good taste will prevail. I guess we’ll see now that the genie is out of the bottle so to speak.
While many of the designers are upset about AI, I keep reminding them that the AI renders are a great starting point for inspiration, as most of them are too busy to ever be produced… I believe it was Motor Trend back in the 70’s that commented that the biggest issue they had with Japanese car designers was they had to place adornment on every panel… well AI seems to be doing that in spades with accents and scoops… So it is up to the human designers to clean the designs up and make them viable… The other aspect is the renders have a very real life look to them.
I remember hearing Japanese car designers explaining because most cars in Japan were seen in big cities, and the cities were so dense, that people rarely saw an entire vehicle. Therefore they added lots of “adornments” to add interest to whatever part of the vehicle one happened to see.
The Japanese were merely quick studies. According to Bernie Smith, Harley Earl wanted “entertainment” everywhere.—Gary
Very cool
http://www.arceye.com
Kent Lund
Looks like every other Super Flat Car on the market today – a crossbreed of a Cadillac, a skateboard and a Camaro: hard to get in and out of and impossible to see out of. I’ll take a traditional show car from the Era of Genuine Show Cars over any of today’s (…)
As for Japanese car designers, remember when Buick used to say, “When Better Automobiles Are Built, Buick Will Build Them”? That credo fits perfectly for today’s Japanese atrocities, with a single modification: “When Uglier Automobiles Are Built, Japan Will Build Them.”
When I was in Buick Studio, the saying morphed into “When better cars are built, Buick will still be building Buicks.”—Gary
So much for Art Center and CCS…
The Vizcom Rendering technology is fantastic, but let’s face it, the creative work of Bob Munson is SPECTACULAR! He could draw on a paper bag with a purple crayon would be great. Thank you Bob for all that you have done and continue to do.
Ed Welburn
Gary – Cute comment. I had many Buicks back in the day and loved them all, but they had one thing in common: rattly tail pipes. The other night while waiting in a parking lot, a late-model car drove by with a familiar sound: a rattly tail pipe. Sure enough it was a Buick. Your observation is more accurate than you probably imagined.
Motorized cinderblocks and steam-powered shoehorns will never substitute for automobiles.
This new Ai technology for car design is absolutely fascinating. Bob has shown how it can be controlled along with Photoshop to create a realistic design. Several other Ai design programs often create bizarre designs that can’t be controlled… I’ve tried. 98% of the sketches done in a studio never make it to production. It will be fun to take some of these old sketches, make them photo-realistic and bring them back to life. I wonder when we will see our first completely Ai designed car.
Gary,
Thanks for the interesting article. Also love your freehand pencil sketches.