Those damn renders

[merman]

I was staring at the official images of the new Gringotts sets and there was something off. Then it struck me: the backside of the plates do not show the inside of the studs. 

from the underside they all look like big tiles  

renders can be so accurate, so wht this huge error?

Edited September 1, 2023 by merman

[Black Falcon]

Honestly, who cares? I mean you see the main details of the bricks. If the tubes would be also missing, then I would agree.

[merman]

Renders have to be accurate otherwise they are misleading

[1963maniac]

I don't understand exactly which parts are in question, but there are inverted tiles now. In other words there are tiles with studs on top and smooth surface on the bottom.

Edited September 1, 2023 by 1963maniac

[Murdoch17]

1 hour ago, merman said:

Renders have to be accurate otherwise they are misleading

I think everyone who has ever touched a Lego brick knows what the underside looks like and most wouldn't even notice this error. Renders aren't perfect, it's true, but this is like looking for things to complain about...

Edited September 1, 2023 by Murdoch17

[Peppermint_M]

6 minutes ago, Murdoch17 said:

but this is like looking for things to complain about...

Welcome to Adult LEGO fandom 

OP. I don't really think anyone will be seriously misled by a few missing antistuds on a render. Certainly, this would not stand up in court in any form of class action (the true indicator of misled consumers). 

Now, a whole extra feature or character missing would be misleading, or a picture that included the vault GWP without making it clear that it's a whole extra set. 

[Mylenium]

On 9/1/2023 at 6:02 PM, 1963maniac said:

I don't understand exactly which parts are in question, but there are inverted tiles now. In other words there are tiles with studs on top and smooth surface on the bottom.

They look completely different, though, so this is a non-argument, I'm afraid.

On 9/1/2023 at 5:29 PM, merman said:

Renders have to be accurate otherwise they are misleading

Within reason - certainly -  and unlike @Murdoch17 claims, renders can be perfectly perfect. It's just that LEGO always seems to hire the most incompetent graphics artists. And to make matters worse, they have made it a habit of adding deceptive touch-ups from recoloring elements to messing with structural items that don't look nice. At the end of the day none of it likely reaches the level of standing up in court, though, frustrating as it may be. There's no rule in any customer laws I know where it says that it has to be 100% exact, even here in the EU with its pretty strict regulations. It only has to be representative of the final product and has to have the necessary info and disclaimers. In the end, it's a grey area and companies will use what they can get away with, which is the point. As a graphics guy myself I sure have done things along those lines in the past just because clients requested their product to look more favorably.

Mylenium

Edited September 3, 2023 by Mylenium

[Aanchir]

I honestly appreciate some of these imperfections, if only because a lot of folks these days assume ALL official LEGO product photos (aside from the lifestyle photos shown in real-world scenes) are renders, and this makes it easier to more accurately assess which ones are renders and which are not!

But obviously, that has nothing to do with what's in the best interest of LEGO or of LEGO fans/buyers in general. You're right that ideally, product renders like this would look as close to the real product as possible, and that these are one of the areas where they haven't quite reached that point yet.

I wouldn't consider it a problem or false advertising, though, unless there were a set where these inaccuracies actually made a huge difference in how buyers expect the assembled set to look. For example, some brick-built characters like Keko and his cousin from the first Jim Spaceborn comic book use the underside texture of a plate to represent important details (in this case, their eyes and nose). But in other cases, the little divots underneath each stud are unlikely to add to or detract from the appearance of a model any more than the anti-studs themselves.

[MAB]

One of my favourites is the dodgy shoulder joint in this set.

 

[Aanchir]

10 hours ago, MAB said:

One of my favourites is the dodgy shoulder joint in this set.

oh yeah, I definitely do feel genuinely disappointed/frustrated in cases where parts are misaligned to the point of not actually attaching where they should be. That said, in this case, the arm IS correctly attached on the box art, making me think that maybe the problem was noticed and corrected before release, but then LEGO accidentally released an older version of the main image to their site instead of the updated/corrected version.

That same sort of thing can happen with actual photos, in cases where a new photoshoot has to be scheduled to correct for assembly errors in the previous photoshoot, or for last-minute design changes. There have also been cases where a set was photographed with extra bricks or radar dish pieces (besides those included with the set) to support the minifigs or other parts of the build with a dynamic pose or angle, which are then digitally edited out — but then LEGO accidentally uploaded an earlier version of the photo to their website with those "supports" still showing.

The main difference with renders like the Gorilla Legend Beast one you shared is that they carry the added risk of assembly errors that AREN'T possible with physical bricks, like ones where parts are totally detached from any connection point, or where multiple parts are intersecting and occupying the same 3D space.