IC3D Suite: Real Time 3D Packaging Design and Visualization

Creative Edge Software has launched a major upgrade to IC3D Suite, the world’s first Real-Time 3D packaging design and visualization software. Created for brand owners, packaging pre-press and packaging printing companies, IC3D Suite simplifies and speeds up the creation and visualization of packaging products of all kinds—including bottles, flexible packages, cartons, bags, plastic containers, cans and more. Used throughout the ideation and creation process, IC3D Suite allows users to instantaneously visualize the impact of certain design decisions, create pack shots, POS and retail shelving product comparisons. IC3D Suite allows any 2D graphic artist to create 3D models and apply artwork on them in order to visualize what the real final package will look like.

IC3D Suite features a significant amount of pre-built models, complimented by a series of editable model templates. Templates allow users to adjust the size and tweak the appearance of different types of bags, bottles, cartons and more. Version 3 of IC3D Suite now introduces the 3D Shape Modeller. Based on 3D extraction, it is a powerful addition to the IC3D arsenal of creative tools allowing users to quickly and easily create advanced, asymmetrical 3D models using 2D shapes. With the Shape Modeller packaging engineers and designers can now create any type of packaging such as molded containers and more complex models like perfume bottles and trigger sprays in a matter of minutes.

Applying a shrink-wrap foil on single or multiple items was already a powerful feature in IC3D Suite. This functionality is now more powerful with the new undistort function, allowing the user to pre-distort the artwork with production precision, ensuring that once the shrink is applied it appears completely undistorted as the engineer and designer intends.

IC3D Suite interacts with Illustrator to apply and edit artwork. This makes it easy to immediately visualize edits made in Illustrator. With IC3D Suite version 3, you can now place PDF artwork directly on the 3D model without having to go through an external application. You can position the artwork and hide specific PDF layers to create the desired result. For production companies receiving or storing a lot of the artwork in PDF, this represents a significant gain in productivity as they can do everything from model creation to artwork placement in the same application.

IC3D is available as a complete Suite for all packaging types, or in a dedicated Carton Edition for any type of folding carton product ranging from a simple box to an advanced point-of-sale unit.

With this release, Creative Edge Software also introduces a free viewer application. While many regard 3D PDF as the file format of choice to exchange 3D visualizations, it has quite a few drawbacks: limited lighting reflections, no support for transparent objects and more. These limitations can severely impact some of the more advanced visualization and lighting features from IC3D Suite. In order to overcome these limitations, Creative Edge releases this free viewer application for Mac and Windows which allows stakeholders in the packaging creation process to exchange native IC3D files and open them on any computer. Download the Free Viewer Here to see it in action.

Source: Creative Edge Software.