Build a Photorealistic Automated Renderer for 3D Kitchen Models

TITLE Build a Photorealistic Automated Renderer for 3D Kitchen Models (Blender / Cycles POC) THE JOB IN ONE LINE We give you a 3D kitchen model. You build a pipeline that turns it into a photorealistic image that is exactly, precisely our model — nothing added, nothing invented, nothing reshaped. ABOUT US We are a premium modular kitchen and wardrobe manufacturer. Our design team produces hundreds of client-specific kitchen layouts a month, and every single render is currently made by hand — camera setup, lighting, materials, post-production, hours per view. We want that automated. This job is the proof of concept for that pipeline. THE CORE REQUIREMENT (read this twice) Geometric precision is the single non-negotiable requirement. The render must show the kitchen we actually modelled. Correct module widths. Correct cabinet count. Correct counter height. Correct handle position and handle shape. Correct shutter profile. Correct appliance placement. We have evaluated the AI/diffusion route (Fenestra, mnml.ai, Visoid, ControlNet pipelines). The images are beautiful and the geometry drifts. A generative model reinterprets what it is shown — it will give us handles we do not sell and shutter edges we do not manufacture. Our clients are looking at a render of a kitchen we are going to build for them. It has to be the real thing. So this is a physically-based rendering job, not a generative AI job. If you want to propose an AI enhancement or denoise pass on top of a true render, we will listen. If you want to propose generating the render with diffusion, please don't apply. WHAT "PHOTOREALISTIC" MEANS HERE Precision alone is not enough — a technically accurate render that looks like CG is a fail. We need it to look like a photograph of a finished kitchen. Specifically: - Natural lighting. HDRI environment plus realistic window light, with under-cabinet and pendant practicals where the design has them. Believable time of day. No flat studio lighting. - Real materials. Physically correct PBR. Our sintered stone surfaces are the hard part — the veining has to sit at the right physical scale, must not visibly tile or repeat, and needs correct roughness and reflectance for polished vs matte finishes. Shutters in laminate, acrylic and veneer. Brushed and matte metal hardware. Glass. Appliance steel. - Correct camera. Architectural convention: vertical lines stay vertical, roughly 24-35mm equivalent, eye-level height, composed like an interiors photographer would compose it. - The details that sell it. Soft contact shadows, subtle ambient occlusion in the reveals, believable reflection falloff, clean exposure, no blown highlights, no plastic sheen. We will send you reference renders from our current manual process. That is the quality bar you are matching or beating. SCOPE OF THIS POC In scope: - Ingest our supplied kitchen model (GLB / FBX / OBJ) - Automated scene setup: environment, lighting rig, camera placement - Material assignment from our finish palette onto the correct surfaces - Render 3 views of the supplied model at 4K - A repeatable script we can run again on a different model without rebuilding the scene by hand Explicitly out of scope for now: - REST API, MCP server, web interface, batch queue - Animation or walkthroughs - Any client-facing UI We will build the API layer on top afterwards, either with you or in-house. Do not price that in. ASSETS WE WILL PROVIDE ON KICKOFF - Kitchen models in GLB/FBX, including cabinets, shutters, handles, counters and appliances - Our material and finish palette CAD file, exported as a low-resolution image for fast iteration and a high-resolution image for final-quality material work - Real-time viewport captures from our configurator, showing the design intent and camera angles we typically use - Production reference renders from our 3D team — the quality target - A finish-code to surface mapping sheet so materials land on the right geometry Assets are shared under NDA at shortlist stage. WHAT WE NEED TO SEE AT THE END 1. Three 4K renders of our supplied model, from three angles 2. The .blend (or equivalent) scene file 3. A runnable script that reproduces those renders from the source model 4. A short written note: your approach, render time per image, GPU cost per image, and what would break if we threw a different kitchen at it We will judge it by putting your render next to our manual reference render and next to the source model. Fidelity first, beauty second, speed third. SKILLS WE ARE LOOKING FOR Required: - Blender and Cycles at a professional level, driven headlessly through the Python API (bpy) - Architectural or interior visualisation background — you have lit and rendered real interiors - PBR material authoring: roughness, metallic, normal and displacement maps, UV scaling, tiling control - Interior lighting: HDRI setup, portal lights, practicals, exposure and colour management - Python, and comfort automating a render pipeline rather than clicking through a GUI Nice to have: - V-Ray, Corona, Octane or Cycles-X optimisation experience - Furniture, kitchen or product visualisation specifically - Experience rendering engineered stone, quartz, porcelain slab or similar veined surfaces - Cloud GPU rendering (RunPod, AWS, render farm setups) ENGAGEMENT Fixed price for this POC. Budget: [INSERT]. Target delivery: 10-14 days. If it lands, there is substantial follow-on work — automating our full view set, wiring it into our product over an API, and an ongoing retainer. TO APPLY Send us the single best interior render you have personally produced, and tell us what was modelled versus what was faked in it. Generic portfolio links without that explanation will be skipped. Begin your proposal with the word SINTERED so we know you read this. --------------------------------------------------- SCREENING QUESTIONS (paste these into Upwork's screening questions field, not the description) --------------------------------------------------- 1. Link one interior render you personally produced. Tell us what was actual modelled geometry and what was cheated with textures or post-production. 2. We will hand you a GLB with clean geometry but poor or missing materials. Walk us through how you get from that file to a photoreal render — your lighting setup and your material workflow. 3. How would you render a veined sintered stone or porcelain slab countertop so the veining reads at correct physical scale and does not visibly repeat across a 3-metre run? 4. Have you automated Blender through bpy in a headless environment? Describe what you built. 5. What render time and GPU cost per 4K interior image should we expect on your proposed setup? 6. Your availability over the next two weeks, and your timezone.