Strawberry Haze 3D Soda Beverage Campaign
This project presents a commercial 3D advertising campaign for Strawberry Haze, a concept strawberry-infused sparkling fruit soda.
This project presents a commercial 3D advertising campaign for Strawberry Haze, a concept strawberry-infused sparkling fruit soda. The creative direction centers around an ethereal, refreshing, and appetizing aesthetic designed to communicate natural purity and thirst-quenching appeal. To immediately convey the product's natural fruit base to the audience, fresh strawberries and vibrant green foliage surround the central can. Dynamic water ripples, splashing crowns, and crystal-clear ice cubes were strategically integrated into the scene to accentuate freshness, movement, and a ice-cold sensation.
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Client
Work type
Early Prototypes & Course Correction
The initial phase of the project began with a different flavor concept featuring lemons, limes, and simulated falling ice. Developed rapidly on the day the project brief was released, this early draft suffered from technical limitations, including misaligned UV maps, overly simplistic composition, and underdeveloped textures.
Recognizing that the citrus concept did not meet the desired visual standard, the lemon models and chaotic ice falls were discarded. Pivoting toward a strawberry concept allowed for a complete reset, focusing on a cleaner aesthetic, refined geometry, and more controlled material execution.
Organic Modeling & Foliage Creation
Constructing the organic elements required a blend of parametric tools and smart asset design. The main body of the strawberry was modeled manually, after which Cloner and Random effectors were used to scatter individual seeds realistically across its surface. The stem was created through extrusion combined with Step and Random filters to achieve natural structural variety, with cloned seeds adjusted so only their tips protruded through the fruit's skin.
For the strawberry leaves, an optimized workflow was chosen over heavy geometry modeling. High-resolution 2D photographs were projected onto flat planes, using custom alpha maps in the opacity channel to cleanly eliminate background edges and ensure lightweight, realistic foliage.
Dynamic Water & Splash Simulations
Simulating fluid mechanics without dedicated fluid software demanded creative problem-solving within Cinema 4D. To create the concentric water ripples across the floor plane, a Cloth simulation was applied over a flat mesh interacting with a collider object, fine-tuning gravity values to capture natural wave deformation.
The central water splash crown surrounding the base of the can was sculpted using a base tube object combined with a Displacer, Volume Builder, and Volume Mesher. A reflective, mirror-like material shader was assigned to the water surface, amplifying specular highlights and capturing intricate scene reflections to mimic real liquid behavior.
Procedural Ice & Texture Realism
The ice cubes forming the central display pedestal were modeled from base primitives transformed via Displacer and FFD (Free-Form Deformation) modifiers to break uniform edges and create organic, irregular blocks. Standard program materials lacked real-world fidelity, prompting the development of custom shader setups.
By layering high-resolution external images of real internal cracks and fractures directly into the material channels, the ice cubes achieved a realistic internal depth, capturing light and refractions far beyond standard procedural noise maps.
Can Topology & Packaging Design
The beverage can itself was sculpted using precise morph techniques and manual point-by-point UV unwrapping to guarantee zero geometric distortion across the curved metal surface. The brand label was designed in Adobe Photoshop, utilizing the unwrapped UV grid overlay as an exact positioning guide.
Multiple layout tests were run to align typography and graphic elements perfectly across the front view. The final visual identity features a vibrant coral red body, subtle graphic strawberry motifs, and bold serif branding to position the beverage as a premium sparkling fruit drink.
Lighting, Color Palette & Visual Focal Point
The scene's lighting setup relies on a strong backlight designed to pass through the transparent ice cubes and water reflections. This lighting choice draws the viewer's eye directly to the center, making the translucent pedestal the primary visual hero.
The color palette pairs intense strawberry red and warm coral can tones with a soft, pastel-pink background. The vivid green from the strawberry leaves introduces a sharp chromatic contrast, forcing the coral beverage packaging to stand out crisply against the surrounding backdrop.
Final Execution & Brand Positioning
Through an iterative process of trial, error, and technical refinement, the project transformed from an early technical draft into a polished commercial visualization. Every shader, lighting angle, and fluid curve was crafted to create a cohesive digital asset.
The resulting campaign demonstrates how 3D product rendering can blend technical precision with commercial storytelling, yielding an appetizing and high-impact visual piece suited for digital marketing and print displays.
