Project
Euker · package-insert animation (for Cogneus-Design)
Services
Modeling, rigging, animation, lighting, rendering, compositing
Field
Print/pharma · explainer film
About the project
The Euker printing company developed a machine that prints, folds and cuts extremely large package inserts — producing two inserts at once in a single bundle. The animated film was meant to explain this production process clearly. The job was produced for Cogneus-Design; there were no specific requirements regarding length, camera or look.
The finished animation — folding, cutting and unfolding of the package insert (approx. 40 seconds).
The challenge — the folding process
Polygons cannot simply be creased. The large sheet of paper had to fold into itself many times without the individual polygons overlapping — otherwise the result would have been a flat surface rather than a bundle. Approaches via morphing, deformers or hand animation all failed. The solution was a bone rig: every fold was subdivided, and each subdivision received a bone connection. Developing this technique alone took two full days.
Early experiments with folding and cutting.
Cut, stacks and packaging
The production process involved cutting through the paper stack from the side — solved with a copy of the stack and a bend deformer, creating the illusion of a scissor cut. Two stacks then unfold like a fan to show that in the end two package inserts are contained in the bundle. The box into which the insert drops was also animated using bone connections.
Stills from the film: folding states and packaging.
Camera, lighting & compositing
The deliverable was a single continuous camera move without cuts; juddering was avoided using camera constraints with an animated offset. The lighting was kept deliberately simple — three light sources plus an HDRI for natural reflections, along with ambient occlusion for the core shadows. Alpha channels and camera data were supplied so the client could add further variations and animated text in compositing.
