Creating a giftbox from "cards"

Support Modeling
#1

Hi folks, I have to create a (still image) gift box that looks like it’s made of tiled “cards”. I also need to create (I suppose) a rigged bow material that I can shape as need into a “knotted” bow. The overall design concept is bounced from an idea sparked by this iPod ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6AGHYYZq98&search=ipod%20ads

Fortunately I don’t have to animate this! :eek: Unfortunately I haven’t worked with blender in a long while and I’m really rusty, so I’m at a loss as to how to go about this. :frowning: I’d like for it to look as realistic as possible, although it’s not a mandate. If anyone can suggest some good tutorials to review on modeling, rigging and lighting, I’d really appreciate it.

I’d like to ad a bit of “dimension” to each tile, more like to subtle warps you’d see when dealing a deck of playing cards, so each tile is a bit curved and tilted relative to the others, with some slight uneven spacing between them. Playing cards is more like the “look” I’d like to have. I have to map different product images to each “card”

Overall I don’t think this is overly complicated, except for possibly the bow. I figured once I get one “side” together, I can group it and copy it and remap the images and build the other sides.

Hopefully I can get a decent proof of concept on this before my boss snubs it for some other idea, I’d like get blender involved in my imaging production pipeline where I work (a small ad agency).

Thanks for any help with this.

#2

Sounds like you have the right idea on the card aspect of the project.

For the bow, I’m thinking this would be a good opportunity to test the Array modifier. I messed with it a little, and it gives very nice results (although tieing a knot would probably still be a challenge).

Use a plane for the base mesh, and with an empty use Object Offset to extend & twist the ‘ribbon’ into a bow. With Merge set and a SubSurf modifier, you get a nice strip . . . but be aware that extreme move/rotate/scale operations will cause a seperation of the array objects.

A few quick pieces of ribbon:

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/2633/ribbonsit4.png

#3

Wow, that’s looking pretty decent! Thanks for the tip! I gotta hunt down some tutorials and get up to speed on this stuff, as I haven’t touch blender in a long time. Never enough time in a day.:rolleyes:

I’m trying to convince my bosses to let me spend more time with blender and pawn some of my work on other people.:wink: That would be so grand if I can pull that off, getting paid to f#@k with blender all day!

Anyway, I’m gonna see if I can start putting something together. If anyone knows of some good tuts that would benefit this project, pass 'em along. Thanks again.