How to Design Paper Boxes
If you are a business trying to market a new product to the public, or a private individual trying to sell a new product to a company, one thing you need to keep in mind is the importance of packaging. The appearance of the box containing your product or prototype will often do as much to sell that product as the nature or quality of the product itself. One good way to design this box is to use a 3D modeling program combined with Photoshop CS3 Extended. In this article, Hexagon will be used for the modeling of the box, but the principles used would apply to most 3D modeling programs.
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Instructions
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Determine the dimensions of the box you want to create.
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Use colored markers to sketch out on paper you ideas for the box. You will want it to be colorful, but except for any images you include, it is best to stick to only two main colors, using perhaps a third color to outline letters and shapes. As for any images you want to use, that will depend on the nature of the product. If you are trying to sell a piece of exercise equipment, for example, you will probably want to take professional-looking photos of someone using the equipment. On the other hand, if your product is a game board for children, you will want to include images from the game itself on the outside of the box.
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Once you have your images, save them to a folder on your hard drive. Now decide what text or information you want on the outside of the box, such as the name, product description and any warnings, such as "for children five and older."
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Open Hexagon. Select the "Primitives" tab and click on the "Cube." Now draw the cube in the view.
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Go to the "Properties" panel on the right and enter the exact "X,Y,Z" scale numbers you want for the box. These numbers control the size of the box in 3 dimensions
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Now, with the box selected in the view, click on the "Materials/Shading Domain" tab on the left. At the bottom, click on the "New Domain" tab. Select the domain that is created and rename it "box." In the "Materials" section above, click on the drop-down menu and select a size for the texture map.
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Click on the "UVmapping/Paint" tab at the top. Select the Uvmapping icon that looks like a head. In the window that opens, select the scenes (edges) along which you want the box to divide on the texture map. Then click "Unfold" in the panel on the lower right. Go to "File" and save your box model as a "Wavefront OBJ."
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Open Photoshop. Select "File" and then "Open." Browse to the Wavefront OBJ and open it in Photoshop. The texture for the model will appear in the "Layers" panel. You can directly paint on the 3D model of your box in the scene, or you can click on the texture layer to open a flat version to paint on it. You can also paste into it your images and type in your text.
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When you are done, go to "Layers" in the menu and select "3D Layers" and click "Replace Textures." Your 3D box texture is now created and can be applied to the real world box.
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