What program should I purchase?

[sinmei]

Hi all,

I am looking for some software to design food package, as in bottle, pouch, box etc.
I found DOSCH and Esko on internet. Has anyone used these software before? Any alternative software I can use?
Thanks a lot!!!

[Red Kittie Kat]

I gave this it's own thread Sinmei.

[sinmei]

Oh, thank you! :)

[Drazan]

Depends on what you really want to do?

If you just want the basic forms to add in your own textures/labels and such then just about anything will work. Even photoshop CS4 has built in pop can and wine bottle that you can put on a texture in 3D.

If you are looking to actually model products from scratch, well you'll need a true 3d program or even AutoCad if it is going to go to a factory to make. For a modeler program there's several choices and several price ranges. From Blender, which is powerful and free, to 3DsMax which is probably overkill for just making product shots...but then again I use 3Ds Max for all my modeling.

That said this is a comparison chart of all 3D software (or at least the majority)
http://wiki.cgsociety.org/index.php/Comparison_of_3d_tools

And if you are just looking for objects to put your design on, then I would recommend
http://www.turbosquid.com it's like the stock art of the 3D world.

Jade

[sinmei]

Thanks Drazan! Your reply helps. :)
I actually need to do both create the package from scratch and design the label to put on. I am currently using Autodesk Inventor to design food package but I found trouble to use it to create soft pouch and film package. That's why I am looking for alternatives. Is there any tutorials or sources teaching how to create a pouch/film pacakage with soft texture?

[Drazan]

ah, unfortunately I know nothing about Autodesk Inventor.

However, here is the general rundown on what you need to do in order to create a fabric pouch.

You'll want to model in the wrinkles and bulges of the pouch.

Once you have a completed model you'll need to assign a couple specific textures to make it look like fabric.
There can be many layers of texturing depending on the program you are using and what it supports. I'll go over the most common.

1) The bump map, this is were you get the small surface imperfections, weaves of a fabric, orange peel on a painted object. The bump map is a grey scale image the areas of light to dark will indicate how much the rise of the bump it.

2) Displacement, this is kinda like the bump map by the areas of change are much more severe. Commonly used for terrain, plate lines in assemblies or even in your case if you wanted to do flock or fur on a product.

3) The texture itself, this is the detailed full color artwork that is the visible texture. (Tip here is that if you take the original artwork texture and map that with the bump map, you will get the highest degree of realism.)

4) The Transparency map. This is for those areas that you want to have translucent or see through entirely. Transparency maps work in a greyscale mode. The more black the more transparent. This is what you would use to create glass or plastic.

5) The reflective map. There's a few tricks to this. If you use a solid color with proper program settings, then you will get a mirror effect. If you combine that with the transparency layer then you get a shiny glass or plastic. If you want the plastic to show a real world setting (a must to make it look good) then you need to use an environment map.

6) The environment map is the reflection shader of a real world environment. There's two ways of doing this, one is using an HDRI shader, and the other is using a 2d image. HDRI is going to get better results.

There's other maps such as specular, subsurface, refraction, normals, and there's probably a few I missed.

How to apply textures is also two ways. The global texture placement and the UVMap placement. The global texture is applying a tiled texture to your item, it can work, but it doesn't allow you hardly any control of placement. Especially would be difficult in getting a logo on the front of your pouch. The other way is UV MAP. This takes the polys of your object and unwraps them to a 2d space. Then you can export that 2d space and use photoshop to make complex textures. Or in some programs you can import the 2d texture and have a UV area to match up the verticies and nodes to the proper areas on the 2d plane.

Most unwrap to a 2d space and paint on the 2d space. OR if you are lucky enough to have a 3d paint program then you can apply the unwrapped UV on the object and paint away.

You'll need to search out specific tutorials for the program you are using, but I have found this information generally universal in the 3d world.

Jade

[sinmei]

Woah, that's really informative, Drazan! Thanks a lot. I will switch to 3D Max and try it out. Really appreciate it! :)