Build the 3D Asset Library Before You Need the Booth

Most manufacturers start thinking about their 3D assets in the six weeks before a show. Someone books the booth, someone else panics about what goes in it, and a vendor gets a rushed call asking for a product video by end of October.

That call produces a deliverable. It rarely produces a library.

A library is something different. A library is 12 machines rendered, textured, and ready.

It means that when the show changes, or the machine stays home, or the buyer asks to see the model in their facility through their phone, you have it. The asset exists. You're not starting over.

That's the move I keep watching manufacturers miss. They build for the booth, get the booth, and then have nothing to compound on. The asset is a one-off. Six months later, they need a new video and they're starting from scratch.

The approach worth stealing builds the other way: machine by machine, ahead of the show, so that everything you deliver at the booth was already half-built six months ago.

The booth math, and why it breaks

Let me give you the context that makes this concrete.

Filamatic, a Baltimore-based manufacturer of liquid filling and packaging systems, makes equipment for pharmaceutical, cosmetic, personal care, specialty chemical, and cannabis industries. Their catalog runs deep: tabletop fillers like the AB5, multi-nozzle systems like the DAB8 and DAB32, full turnkey lines like the Fusion 2 and the Flexville, and the Pro Line, a complete filling-capping-labeling system from end to end.

A full Pack Expo setup for a company like Filamatic means loading 6 to 8 pieces of equipment onto a 30-foot trailer, shipping it across the country, building it out, tearing it down, and doing it again. Each machine can be the size of a small car. The cost is real. The logistics are worse.

And when the show ends, most of that hardware ships home without a single buyer having really examined it.

Dorjee Tenpa, who leads commercial and marketing for Filamatic, said it plainly: "We're so busy right now with different systems that we're not taking a large system this time to the show. So that kind of really depresses the commercial team. That's why the 3D videos are kind of a big deal to kind of substitute for that."

That's the honest version of the problem. The machine stays home. The buyer is at the show. Something has to close that gap.

Stills first, then everything else

When Filamatic came to us, they had a show deadline (Pack Expo Chicago) and a website launch in between. That sequence actually mattered for how we built the work.

The approach our team recommended: knock out stills first, because they feed the new website launching before the show. Then layer in 3D videos for the machines that most need them. Then build the interactive hotspot experiences for the 3 or 4 systems that will anchor the kiosks at the booth.

Steve Palaia, who runs the asset work on our side, laid out why the sequence pays off: "I always like doing that because then we have all the products in a library, and then after this, it's a lot easier. We work through a lot of like the issues with the files. And then usually when you want a video, you want it quick. So it's already. It helps the process because it's all. We've already been through and we know we've got it all."

That last sentence is the one to hold. "We've already been through it." That's the whole argument for front-loading the asset work. File problems, missing components, engineering CAD that's accurate for tolerances but not for presentation, you surface all of that when you do the stills. By the time someone wants a video fast, the heavy lifting is done.

Tenpa described the same logic from his side: "I want to kind of knock out all the stills and then come back to do the videos after. That's kind of the better way."

The file work is genuinely detailed. CAD step files from engineers capture the machine housing but often omit piston pumps, tubing, dials, and labels. Our artists hand-model what isn't in the file, cross-referencing photos and video links Tenpa provides. For the DAB series, that meant modeling piston pump assemblies of varying sizes, dial gauges, and control panels the engineers hadn't included in the export. It adds real time, which is exactly why you don't want to be doing it for the first time in September when Pack Expo opens in October.

What the kiosk actually does

The destination for all this work is a set of custom dual-screen kiosks, roughly 7 to 9 feet tall, one side a standard monitor and the other a touchscreen. Tenpa built the microsite internally, with navigation by industry, container type, and product line. The interactive 3D experiences, hotspots, animations, zoomed-in feature callouts, are the content sales reps pull up when a buyer stops to look.

"One's just going to be a standard monitor, the other side will be a touchscreen screen. And that's where we want to showcase some of your awesome videos," Tenpa said.

The vision for the videos is specific. An intro shot pans through the machine's key components, resolves to a wide view with hotspots floating over the system. A sales rep can skip the intro and jump straight to the hotspots. A reset button loops back to the beginning between conversations.

The hotspots solve a real content problem. A filler like the Flexville might process 18 to 20 different container formats, but a video loop shows one. "We may want to show three, four different pictures of containers within that hotspot," Tenpa said. "Showing, hey, this system can do this type of container."

That specificity matters to the buyer. They came to the show because they're looking at a machine for a specific line. They need to know it handles their container. A hotspot that shows them four formats, with photos, is more useful than any sales sheet.

The kiosk also gives the sales rep something to do with a buyer who isn't ready to talk. Tenpa is thinking about printed signs with QR codes placed directly on physical machines at the booth, so a buyer who can't get a rep's attention can self-serve into the AR experience. "Everyone's used to scanning these things now, whether at a restaurant, bar, whatever," he said. "So they can just scan that and then go to that particular solution."

Those AR experiences let a buyer place a full-scale model of the Fusion 2 or the Flexville in their own facility through their phone camera. They don't need an app. They don't need to be at the show. The asset follows them home.

What compounding looks like

Here's the thing about building a library: the value accumulates in ways that aren't obvious when you're in the middle of doing the work.

Filamatic's commercial team can log into the interactive platform and edit hotspot text without filing a request. They can adjust copy for a pharmaceutical buyer versus a cannabis buyer. They can see which callouts get attention.

The interactive asset becomes something the team maintains, not something that sits static until the next redesign cycle.

Tenpa understands what he's building toward. The booth at Pack Expo Chicago is the opening date, not the goal. The goal is a full product library, machine by machine, where every new asset feeds the website, the booth, the AR cards, the sales rep's tablet, and the buyer who scans a QR code on the way out.

Tenpa raised early how to capture contact information from someone who scans and walks away. That's the right question, and it tells you something: he's thinking about this as a system, not a project. The AR experience currently routes to Filamatic's product pages, which handle the lead form from there. The infrastructure to build on is already in place.

The thing most manufacturers skip

Buyers want to see something real. At a trade show, the physical machine is still the draw. Nobody argues that.

But bringing 8 machines to a show isn't always possible. The ones that stay home become invisible, not because they're less interesting, but because the buyer has no way to understand what they do.

Photorealistic 3D experiences are coverage for the machines that stayed home. A buyer who clicks through a hotspot experience and zooms into the filler mechanism has done more than look at a brochure. They have a picture in their head. They know what questions to ask.

Tenpa said it well when he described the choice manufacturers face: "We've seen some competitors take nothing and just show high end videos, which is easy, but I think you lose a lot of the attendee having a finger on the pulse. And then we see people on the extreme, such as ourselves and other people who just take a ton of equipment."

The goal is the middle. A few real machines in the center of the booth drawing attention, with kiosks running interactive 3D for everything else. That balance only works if the kiosk content is built.

Most manufacturers don't have that content when the show deadline arrives. They're starting from scratch in September. Filamatic started in January.

The stills go up on the website first. The videos come next. The interactives land at Pack Expo. Every asset compounds into the next one because the library exists. The library exists because they started building it before they needed the booth.

That's the sequence. Most companies invert it and wonder why they're always behind.