After spending a lot of time creating the perfect product in your 3D modeling software, Shapeways renders are a great way to show off your hard work and entice shoppers. Below you'll find tips to make sure your renders come out looking just as you imagined in each material you’ve made available for sale.
Who gets renders?
Renders will be generated for all products that are for sale, regardless of if they are public or private. Shapeways will generate a render in every material that is enabled for sale to shoppers, unless there is already a photo which you have tagged in that specific material.
Managing Your Images
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Go to the "images" tab of your product edit page and tag any existing photos with the material that they're showing.
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If you have more than one image for a material, pick which one should be the default when a customer is looking at that material.
If you haven't uploaded an image yet, or don't have one, you can create a render in each material that you’re offering it for sale.
Creating Renders
On the "images" tab of your product, below the images scroll down to the Material Render Pose and set an orientation for your render. After you save this pose, we’ll generate your renders in all the materials you have for sale. It can take up to 10 minutes for the renders to appear on your model.
Best Practices for Posing Your Render
1. Renders default to using the Y-axis as the ‘up axis.’ You can adjust the way the position we use to generate renders on your product edit page. We utilize turntable rotation mode, so the ‘up axis’ is fixed and your model rotates around it as you click and drag.
New Models: To avoid having to change the pose when you upload a new design, you can orient your model around the Y-axis in your 3D modeling software.
Existing Models: Your existing models will automatically inherit their render position when you use the "Update" option to update your model file in "My 3D Models." If you’ve changed the orientation of your model in your 3D modeling software, you may have to adjust the position accordingly.
2. When designing the model, the mesh’s "natural up" (i.e. resting on its base) should be aligned to the relative X, Y, and Z axis. Aligning "up" to positive Y is best option, since that's the default up axis. Aligning to X or Z allows you to change the axis easily by clicking the "X" or "Z" buttons. If your model is not aligned to any axis, you’ll need to manually rotate the model to its natural up, and may require several iterations to get it right.
3. Long thin triangles make for lower quality renders on reflective materials (like precious metals) because these materials rely heavily on the normals of polygons for rendering. If the polygons are not well-formed, or have widely varying adjacent normals, the surface polygons are much more noticeable. Rendering of materials like Versatile plastic and Fine Detail Plastic are less dependent on normal calculations. It is best to avoid thin triangles if possible. 
4. For some materials, sharp edges tend to be obscured in the render. They can blend into the rest of the model and make it hard to see their edges. Changing the orientation with render posing should help as a different angle of light could help showcase the edge.
Here’s an example where the left edge of the "lantern" is indistinguishable (left image). After orienting the ring to face the right, the edge is easier to see.
5. When we generate your previews, we are using the Cycles renderer using a real world-style Image Based Lighting (IBL) lighting system with physically based shaders to represent the materials. This means the preview of your model will resemble its real world look.
Hopefully these tips will help you generate beautiful renders to make your products shine.