ZIPSACK - Building A 3D Dry Bag
I took on this project because I had an irrational fear of animating cloth simulations. My computer isn't too strong and I had never worked in 3D cloth before, so it was incredibly challenging. But, after 3 months, and 50+ cloth sim benchmarks, I finally landed on an asset worth publishing.
This is the one and only ZIPSACK, made for backpackers who value the convenience of accessing their materials from anywhere in the bag without having to dig through the whole mess. Its an incredibly lightweight, water resistant bag with a sleek, sexy look. When the product launched in January 2025, I knew I had to make something. So I reached out to the owner and we began the collaboration immediately.
While my methods are unconventional, and the process doesn't exactly follow what I was taught regarding a proper 3D pipeline, the end asset turned out great and the client loved it.
The product can be purchased here - https://zipsacks.co/
Droplet Generator on Blender Market - https://superhivemarket.com/products/droplet-generator--blender-3
Created by this genius - ibotpl.artstation.com
To start building this asset, I wanted photo accurate textures of the exact materials used. The 3 primary textures that I needed to create were the Indigo Nylon Ripstop, The Zipper Material, and the Yellow Nylon Strap.
I started off with a few macro photos taken with my phone through a Laowa 50mm ultra macro lens. Why didn't I use my actual camera? Laziness, I guess. I only needed one square.
Here's the nylon photo, thrown into photoshop and replicated into a seamless texture.
Nylon Roughness - sharp black and white for high contrast shine.
Nylon Bump - Same photo but black and white with 2 layers, one gaussian blur, one sharper with lower opacity.
Here's the first render test of the Nylon Ripstop material - generated from a photo taken on a phone.
Nylon material - Seamless test. Looks pretty good!
For the zipper material, I only needed a small sliver to make it seamless. As you can see, the material is a pretty consistent repeating pattern side to side.
Seamless Zipper Material.
Zipper Bump - Since the zipper material was covered with transparent and very smooth waterproof rubber, I didn't need much for a roughness map.
The nylon strap material. this was a bigger area so I just shot a photo with some evenly spread, bright lighting. I rendered its map through photoshop for alignment and lighting.
Nylon Strap made seamless - top to bottom.
I photographed the clip for a modeling reference.
Loop and Clip Final Model
Water droplets make everything so sexy.
In this photo you can see the sequence for how I assembled and tested the nature of the material. Saving each cloth benchmark as a new project file.
Nobody asked for these, but changing color is so easy in 3D that I couldn't help myself. My personal favorite is the last one (bottom right), which I call "Ocean Man." Featuring the founders best friend's face.
I applied the droplet generator purchased from the amazing
ibotpl. This plug-in was incredibly easy to use and worked fantastically. I highly encourage the purchase.
After the model was finished, I collaborated with the founder to create the animated ad, which will be released soon! I can't wait to show it off.