cardboard box
by mitchino
on
Sep 6, 2007 at 9:12:56 am
I have a project coming up where I will have to accurately model beer packaging, namely 12 and 24 bottle cardoard boxes. I'm wondering how best to tackle the job. What's the best way to model the boxes? - I'll be working from flat cutter guide artwork, indicating the net shape of the box and where it folds. Ideally I'd like to create a flat piece of card with thickness, and then fold it up to form the box.
Sounds like you have the right idea. Get a pic or drawing of the flattened box and build it with polys/snapping. You can then fold it by using the modeling axis to select the relevant edges, switching the axis to free mode, then selecting the polys and rotating into space -- pivoting around the edge.
I would model it without thickness and then extrude all polys with caps to add thickness later. That'll make the modeling job much quicker/easier.
Re: cardboard box by mitchino on Sep 7, 2007 at 8:57:00 am
Thanks Adam,
I can get actual cutter profiles of the box in Illustrator to import into C4D, which I guess I can add knife cuts to at the folds.
Extruding at the end sounds good, how do I create rounded folds at the corners if you know what I mean, i.e the box shouldn't have 100% sharp edges?
Also regarding texturing the box - some artwork has to run around corners and edges. Would it be best to apply one large texture to the flattened box, then generate UVs before folding it up and extruding? What's the best approach here?
Re: cardboard box by Adam Trachtenberg on Sep 11, 2007 at 2:31:34 pm
I would select the edges that should have a little rounding and use the bevel (fillet) tool on them. For the UVs, it would probably be easiest to apply flat mapping before you start folding and then, also before you start folding, select the texture tag and run the OM>Tags>Generate UVs command to convert the flat mapping to UVW mapping.
Re: cardboard box by Robert Barnwell on Nov 3, 2009 at 11:00:15 pm
Im a newb and Im trying out how to do this exactly. I cant seem to find any tutorials on how to do this. I have a flat image of the box in illustrator. I imported it into cinema 4d. But I cant seem to figure out how to get the bends correct. How I change the rotate axis so that it rotates on the line I want it to. Also, How would I set up the UV map?
