Render Weekly Awards 2026: Student Category Winners

Judged by Tim Zarki, Linda Bui, Liam Martin, Ryan Krause, and Tyler Anderson.

In the student category we were looking for work that reached. Ambition mattered, and we kept in mind that students are still developing their skill sets, so we wanted to reward the projects that pushed past where they had to go. But ambition alone wasn't enough. The work also had to feel professionally executed, whether through the strength of the idea or the quality of the visualization itself, with crisp images and considered art direction backing up a real point of view. These five stood out because they brought all of it together with a dynamic spread of images, varied art direction, and a story that evolved across the visuals instead of stopping at one hero shot.

Beosound Wave by Andrea Casagrande

This project hit a level of visual fidelity that's hard to overstate. The detailed internal architecture of the speaker, the art direction, the way it sits inside Bang & Olufsen's existing brand language. It all feels right. B&O is a brand that excels at balancing art, design, and engineering, and designing something that fits inside that world while also building its own narrative is genuinely difficult. Andrea pulled off both. One of the more ambitious and well-executed student ID projects we've seen. The compositions use a little bit of AI, but the foundation here is strong traditional 3D craft, and that's what carried it over the line in this category.

Mode by Finn Sommerhoff

Mode is a modular system rethinking mobile digital work for creatives. Finn showed a strong understanding of how to use lighting to bring out the design features of a keyboard, especially in the dished keycaps and metal elements. The visuals are impressive for student work, and we appreciated the ambition of designing a modular electronic system with a cohesive visual language. The consistency carries through both the design and the visuals, with clever use of cutaways and dynamic compositions to pull attention toward the engineering. At times the renders literally leap off the page and drag you in.

Hale by Hyunbin Seo

A really ambitious project for a student submission. The design itself encompasses an entire ecosystem of related devices, and the techniques used to create the imagery, including the modeling and rigging of the human figure, show a deep dive into 3D. Solid execution across the board and strong world-building around the product story.

Solace by Zak Boardman

A classically well-executed industrial design visualization project. The light diffusion and context renders make it feel believable, and the whole thing reads like work that would be at home inside a design studio.

Iris by Harry Colbert

Strong use of materials, subsurface scattering, translucency, and paint. A clear concept supported by visuals that make the use case land.

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The submissions across this category showed strong mastery of the product visualization toolset. In an increasingly competitive industry, we saw a forward-looking command of both tools and perspective. To everyone who entered and didn't win, we genuinely enjoyed looking at your work. This was a tough decision. We're stoked on what came in this season and looking forward to the next run.