Creating shrink-wrap/vacuum sealed packaging for Keyshot?

[DEJ_Design]

I've been racking my brain trying to figure out how to model vacuum sealed packaging on complex geometry. I've only seen one person manage to pull this off successfully using the alpha stamp in zbrush. Not only do I not have zbrush, even if I did I wouldn't even know where to start to create that look. I first thought this would be a great application for Keyshot's displacement feature, but you would need to somehow create a depth map from the model and then manually paint in tension lines. Also, the displacement would need to be very specific in order to map to the object's surface geometry correctly. I suppose there's other options including fabric simulation in polygonal modelers like blender or C4D....but I'd like to keep this in Fusion360 if I could. I've had some very limited success in the sculpting environment in F360 as shown below, but nothing I'm satisfied with...

Has anyone done this before in CAD? Has anyone done this before in any modeling software? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[DMerz III]

Blender3D has free sculpting tools which can utilize alpha maps from Poliigon etc.

Might be a decent alternative to ZBrush (Although, not as robust, but should definitely get you close to the result you want).
I think setting up a displacement here is going to be too cumbersome compared to sculpting.

I've been doing some sculpting with blender on chip bags and stuff, so I know it is capable. Plenty of tutorials online to help you get started.

[Eric Summers]

In SolidWorks there is a deform tool that allows you to use one body to deform another. It essentially pushes the tool body into the target body. Does F360 have something like that? I'm not sure it would get you exactly what you're looking for, but it could be a start.

[mattjgerard]

Cinema 4D has some tools and plugins to be able to get the blister pack or shrink wrap effect, I did it with some products a while back. Biggest issue was making sure the mesh was dense enough to get the fine folds and details when I started to deform it.

[INNEO_MWo]

A tool called Esko has this shrink / wrap feature for packages: https://www.esko.com/en/solutions

I saw the KeyShot export files enabling labels and advanced materials and a layer structure.

[DMerz III]

Out of curiosity, i tried to get a quick result using Blender and its cloth simulation.

Steps took;
1.) Plane as ground. Set as 'collision' in physics.
2.) Rounded Cube as the solid object beneat shrink to conform to. Set this as 'collision' in physics.
3.) Another plane with lots of subdivisions (167k faces), raised a little above cube for gravity to take down over cube.
4.) Give top plane 'cloth' physics (Use settings in screenshot below).
5.) Run the timeline to run simulation, I let mine run for 50 frames and it came to this result.
6.) Baked the sim, exported geometry as .fbx
7.) Brought in KS, added HDR, materials (metallic paint to show wrinkles), rendered.

This took me about 10 mins (aside from rendering time). I also am pretty familiar with Blender already.
Obviously, you can play with cloth settings to get different results in the 'wrinkling', but the concept works pretty well.

[DEJ_Design]

In SolidWorks there is a deform tool that allows you to use one body to deform another. It essentially pushes the tool body into the target body. Does F360 have something like that? I'm not sure it would get you exactly what you're looking for, but it could be a start.

F360 gives you the ability to deform a surface to a mesh, but not necessarily deform a body to another...unless that feature is hidden somewhere. That's actually what I tried first and got some less than desirable results. I've taken another go at F360. If the surface has adequate subdivisions AND you pre-deform the surface to get closer to the shape you wish to "shrink-wrap," you can get better results. Like mudbox or Zbrush, you can then freeze specific points of the surface and then manually add some tension lines in by deforming the surface by hand. It's a lot of work for an unrealistic result. I actually have SW, but I use MacOS natively, so I rarely boot into Windows unless I really need to use SW or another Windows-only program. Could be an option though...

Cinema 4D has some tools and plugins to be able to get the blister pack or shrink wrap effect, I did it with some products a while back. Biggest issue was making sure the mesh was dense enough to get the fine folds and details when I started to deform it.

I actually tried this in C4D. Got some interesting results and there is definitely some potential here. The main issues I ran into were having the cloth mesh intersect the geometry instead of conform to it. This might be a subD issue...not sure. Another issue is getting the cloth to look like vacuum film, not just cloth resting on a surface. I might be able to simulate that effect by cranking the gravity up to 500. I'm still getting used to C4D's interface, but there's a ton of simulation potential here.

A tool called Esko has this shrink / wrap feature for packages: https://www.esko.com/en/solutions

I saw the KeyShot export files enabling labels and advanced materials and a layer structure.

Very interesting. Never heard of this tool before. Thanks for the heads up, I'll give it a look.

Out of curiosity, i tried to get a quick result using Blender and its cloth simulation.

Steps took;
1.) Plane as ground. Set as 'collision' in physics.
2.) Rounded Cube as the solid object beneat shrink to conform to. Set this as 'collision' in physics.
3.) Another plane with lots of subdivisions (167k faces), raised a little above cube for gravity to take down over cube.
4.) Give top plane 'cloth' physics (Use settings in screenshot below).
5.) Run the timeline to run simulation, I let mine run for 50 frames and it came to this result.
6.) Baked the sim, exported geometry as .fbx
7.) Brought in KS, added HDR, materials (metallic paint to show wrinkles), rendered.

This took me about 10 mins (aside from rendering time). I also am pretty familiar with Blender already.
Obviously, you can play with cloth settings to get different results in the 'wrinkling', but the concept works pretty well.

Thanks for the detailed feedback DMerz, this workflow seems very close to what I had to do in C4D for cloth simulation. Since Blender is free, there's no excuse for me not to give it a go if everything else fails. I bit the bullet and purchased Marvelous Designer 8 this weekend during the 50% off sale. The most realistic cloth/film simulations for industrial design seem to be coming from MD, so I'm anxious to give this a try.

Many thanks to everyone for your great feedback.

[DMerz III]

  no problem! I've thought about MD as well, I always want to give it a shot.

Blender also has an addon floating around called 'Modeling Cloth' which has some pretty cool features. I have been messing around with it lately as a modeling tool for soft-pouch packages. The cool thing about cloth simulators is the fact they don't 'create' new surface area (they do stretch surface area depending on your settings) but it is constrained. It must respect the base surface area, and that becomes very handy when you need to model something pliable but can't destroy the UV area for artwork placement.

[Esben Oxholm]

To get started in MD I found the tutorials from Travis Davis quite helpful: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCniZ7Qzbv17NvoCypCzB4Ow

Good luck!

[DEJ_Design]

To get started in MD I found the tutorials from Travis Davis quite helpful: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCniZ7Qzbv17NvoCypCzB4Ow

Good luck!

Thanks Esben! I always find your Keyshot tutorials incredibly helpful, so anything you'd recommend has got to be good.

[Esben Oxholm]

To get started in MD I found the tutorials from Travis Davis quite helpful: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCniZ7Qzbv17NvoCypCzB4Ow

Good luck!

Thanks Esben! I always find your Keyshot tutorials incredibly helpful, so anything you'd recommend has got to be good.

Thanks, man! Glad you think so!

[designgestalt]

This took me about 10 mins (aside from rendering time). I also am pretty familiar with Blender already.

It takes me about 10 mins to only get rid of that cube when blender opens up  ...

[DMerz III]

This took me about 10 mins (aside from rendering time). I also am pretty familiar with Blender already.

It takes me about 10 mins to only get rid of that cube when blender opens up  ...

LOL!  Blender definitely has an odd learning curve, after about 20 hours of sticking with it, it suddenly makes so much sense, but there's still that 20 hour period of struggles! BlenderGuru's Beginner Series has helped tremendously getting my team up to speed with how to use it.