I made some product models in Blender this week for a compost company going through a rebrand (via the fantastic Bristol branding agency Future Kings).
As a part of the companies rebranding process, all their packaging is changing, so I was tasked with creating 3D compost bags that could be rendered out and turned into Photoshop documents with displacement maps for the new artwork.
The challenge was making something that looks good but not too perfect. The grey area between ‘perfect’ and ‘real’ is vast, and we were trying to create something that on the one hand looked great, but also had the folds and imperfections it needed to also feel authentic.
Getting the Shape Right
First up, I modelled the bag to the exact dimensions. Nothing fancy here, just making sure the proportions matched the real product.
Then I added loads of geometry with loop cuts. You need plenty of vertices for the cloth simulator to work with, otherwise you’ll get weird angular folds instead of natural ones. But too much geometry and your PC will melt.
Making It Behave Like Plastic
Sculpting would have taken forever and I’m not Michelangelo, so to get it looking real I used Blender’s cloth simulator – this gives your object some real world ‘cloth’ physics
The key to it was playing with these three settings:
- Inflate: This creates pressure inside the object, pushing it outward
- Shrinking: Using a negative value here gives the material elasticity, making it behave more like plastic packaging
- Pin groups: This was the game-changer
The Pin Group Trick
I selected specific vertices and created a pin group, which basically tells those points to stay put during the simulation – they are unaffected by the simulator. When the inflate kicks in, all the surrounding vertices push out around these fixed points, creating really pleasing, natural-looking folds.
It’s one of those things where you’re playing with settings for ages, and tweaking it until you get something that looks really pleasing.
Final Thoughts
The whole process was loads of trial and error, but that’s 3D work for you. The client was happy with the balance — realistic enough to feel authentic, but still clean enough to show off their shiny new branding.
I love working in Blender. If you’re interested in learning 3D, Blender is free and open-source and there is a tonne of resources out there. And it’s fun.
