3D Products: Bottles, Tubes & Containers

1Before you start

Every product is made of 5 parts: 3 plastic parts shoppers colour, and 2 label parts shoppers put artwork on. You deliver one GLB and one PNG image per part.

1. Source modelsource OBJ, in mm
2. Clean up in Blender5 parts, names
3. Materials & labelsgrey + clear labels
4. UVs & exportGLB named by SKU
5. Part imagesone PNG per mesh

Names must match everywhere: the mesh name in the GLB and the part image file name (Body1.png). Spaces are part of the name: Outer Closure1, not OuterClosure1.

2Prerequisites and required settings

Software

Settings to use every time

3Part A: Build the 3D object (GLB)

The screenshots in this section show a 1 L reference bottle. Open your reference GLB next to your own work and match it.

1. Import the source model and check its size. File → Import → Wavefront (.obj). Press N, open the Item tab and compare Dimensions with the real product. Keep an untouched copy of the original OBJ.

   

2. Reduce the model to the 5 parts. Join pieces that are one moulded part in real life into one mesh. Delete (don't hide) anything that is not in the parts table: liners, seal discs, closure rings, dip tubes, cameras and lights.
3. Name every part. Each part has an object name and a mesh name. The mesh name is the object name plus 1. The three plastic parts sit under one parent empty; the two labels sit at the top level.

   

4. Assign Designarea to the plastic parts (Body1, Outer Closure1, Inner Closure1): Principled BSDF, Base Color #E5E5E5, Metallic 0, Roughness 0.5. Nothing may be connected to Base Color; the designer applies colours and finishes on top of this grey.

   

5. Build the body label (Body Label1). A clean, evenly spaced cylinder that sits 0.05 mm outside the body over the area a real label covers. Don't shrink-wrap it to the body, or its edges come out jagged. Shade it smooth.

   

6. Build the cap label (Outer Closure Label1). A flat disc on the top of the outer closure, just above its surface. If the lid has embossed text around the edge, keep the disc inside that text ring.

   

7. Set up the label materials. Give Body Label1 the material BodyLabel and Outer Closure Label1 the material OuterClosureLabel. In each, connect an Image Texture node to the Principled BSDF: Color → Base Color and Alpha → Alpha. Load a fully transparent PNG named like the material:
   • BodyLabel: 2048 px wide, height matching the label's shape (1525 px on the reference bottle)
   • OuterClosureLabel: 2048 × 2048 px
   The labels stay invisible until the shopper adds artwork, so the body colour shows through.

   

   Then, in Material Properties → Settings, turn on (1) Backface Culling and set (2) Render Method to Blended.

   

8. Unwrap the UVs. One map per mesh, named UVMap, no overlaps.
   • Body Label1: one band across the full 0–1 square, seam at the back, front of the bottle centred.
   • Outer Closure Label1: flat top-down projection filling the square.
   • Plastic parts: cylindrical unwrap for straight shapes, conical for tapered ones. Avoid Smart UV Project on round parts; it gives uneven cell sizes.
   Check each label by temporarily loading Blender's Color Grid image (Image → New → Generated Type: Color Grid) into its Image Texture node. Cells must look square on the bottle and letters must read the right way round. Put the transparent image back afterwards.

   

9. Match the reference size. Scale the whole model uniformly so it matches the reference GLB for its family. The 1 L reference bottle measures about 3.9 × 4.0 × 11.3 units overall. Bottles and containers use this reference size, not the 6.333 × 4.890 × 8.711 box used for flat print products, so don't shrink a bottle to fit that box.
10. Export the GLB named by SKU: File → Export → glTF 2.0.

    Export setting	Value
    Format	glTF Binary (.glb)
    Include	Visible objects; no cameras, no lights
    Transform	+Y Up
    Mesh	Apply Modifiers, UVs, Normals on
    Material	Export; images Automatic (packs the two label placeholders)
    Compression	Off

    

11. Check the export. Re-import the GLB into an empty Blender scene, or open it in a browser viewer (glTF Viewer or Babylon.js Sandbox). Confirm the 5 mesh names, that the plastic parts are plain grey (not a checker pattern) and that the labels are invisible.

    

4Part B: Create the part images (PNG)

Shoppers see these images when choosing which part to colour. Render one image per mesh, showing the part on its own in plain white plastic. Shoppers pick finishes separately, so the image must show no finish.

1. Isolate the part. In a copy of your .blend, hide every mesh except the one you are rendering and give it a white plastic material (Base Color white, Roughness about 0.4).
2. Set up the render. Render Properties: engine Cycles, Max Samples 256, Denoise on, Film → Transparent on. Output Properties: resolution 3072 × 3072, File Format PNG, Color RGBA, Color Depth 8.

   

   

3. Frame and render. Aim the camera at a slight three-quarter angle so the part's shape reads, with a small margin all round. Render (F12) and save as <mesh name>.png.
4. Fit the 1 MB limit. If a file is over 1 MB, scale it down (keeping it square) until it fits. The reference images are 1900–3060 px square. Do not reduce them to 256 colours.

5Guidelines, limitations and recommendations

Recommendations

• Start each new SKU from the reference GLB of the same family and keep its names and structure.
• Finish one product end to end, including the checklist, before starting a batch.
• Keep a master .blend for every SKU so you can re-scale, re-unwrap or re-render later.
• Re-open every exported GLB to check it. Re-saving a .blend after importing a GLB can attach a stray image to Designarea.

6What to avoid

These are the mistakes that most often break a 3D Designer Tool product. Each one looks harmless in Blender but shows up in the designer.

Model and parts

Materials

Export and part images

7Final checklist

8Troubleshooting

9Documentation and tools

• Blender Manual: glTF 2.0 — export settings and supported materials
• Blender Manual: UV unwrapping — seams and unwrap methods
• Blender Manual: Film → Transparent — transparent part renders
• glTF Viewer — check a GLB in the browser