MerchandAise · Retail Merchandise

A Whole Retail Range, Before Anything Was Printed

A retail merchandise render set for MerchandAise, built to carry one monogram from a blank tee all the way to the jackets, caps, bags and shop floor it has to live on.

Client: MerchandAise
Role: 3D Modeling, Scene Assembly,
Lighting, Animation & Rendering
Tools: Marvelous Designer · Cinema 4D · Redshift
After Effects · Photoshop
Year: 2024

Aetheris retail store set, a pale fixture wall of rails and shelves carrying monogram knit dresses, a brown zip hoodie, a sage polo, plaid shirts, monogram totes and caps, with a mannequin in a green track jacket at the centre, photoreal CGI render

How do you show a full merch range before any of it is printed?

MerchandAise needed the retail subpage to make the same promise as the rest of the platform: pick a garment, put a brand on it, and see the whole range before a single unit is produced. Retail merch is a harder sell than teamwear. Nobody reads a crest from across a pitch here. They pick the thing up, and the decision happens at arm's length.

So I built a label to prove it on. Aetheris is invented, Aim Higher, an Æ monogram in forest green, mocha and cream. Everything on the page carries it: a monogram-jacquard tee, a colour-blocked track jacket, a piqué polo, a six-panel cap, totes, a backpack and a travel cup.

My side of it was the 3D end: modeling, scene assembly, lighting, animation and rendering.

01 · Styleframes

The styleframes the subpage needed

Every still built in one pass: the branding step itself, the label cast and then repeated across finishes, the monogram badge shot close enough to count the stitches, the cap, the tee in two colourways, the track jacket and the sixteen-up library behind it, and the full merchandise bundle. Drag the first frame to strip the monogram back off the tee.

Sage green tee woven with an all-over Aetheris monogram jacquard, tonal ribbed collar, photoreal CGI render

Blank white base tee before any branding, plain crew neck and set-in sleeves on a black backdrop, photoreal CGI render

Macro of the Aetheris monogram badge, a cream and brown enamelled A-E ligature raised off green textured piqué, 3D render

Tan six-panel cap with the Aetheris monogram embroidered in cream on the front panel and a monogram-print brim, floating against dark green, 3D product render

The same monogram jacquard tee in a mocha brown colourway, the weave catching the light across the chest, photoreal CGI render

Aetheris track jacket in colour-blocked brown and cream, funnel collar and contrast panels, photoreal CGI render

Sixteen-up grid of the same track jacket, each one carrying a different colour-block split or print treatment, from polka dot and halftone to chevron and watercolour wash, 3D render

Aetheris merchandise bundle flat-lay, tan monogram cap, sage piqué polo with woven neck label, cork-wrapped travel cup, folded monogram tee and brown track jacket, 3D render

Somewhere for a range to live

A hoodie on a white sweep is a mockup. The same hoodie on a rail, beside the tote it sells with, under a shelf of the same monogram, is a brand. So I built the shop: a pale fixture wall of rails and floating shelves, stepped plinths, hangers, folded stacks and a mannequin caught mid-coffee.

One set carries the whole range. Relight it, redress the rails, move to another camera, and every piece lands somewhere that reads like a store you walked into rather than a product page you scrolled.

Mannequin in the green Aetheris track jacket over the sage monogram tee, holding a branded travel cup in leather gloves, a mocha monogram tee and a brown coat hung either side and a tan cap on the plinth, photoreal CGI render

Wider store view over the display table, the track jacket mannequin in pleated green trousers, a tan cap and monogram tote on the plinths, boucle throw on the rail and folded polos below, photoreal CGI render

02 · Behind the scenes

Each piece, modeled and shaded on its own

Every product was its own Cinema 4D build and simulation pass before it joined the shop floor: the tee, the track jacket, the cap, the label and its patch blanks, and the bundle flat-lay.

Cinema 4D viewport of the tee, untextured clay garment with the collar rib, sleeve gathers and hem stitching already simulated

Cinema 4D viewport of the track jacket from the main camera, clay garment with the funnel collar, zip placket and cuff rolls modeled before any shader

Cinema 4D viewport of the six-panel cap, clay model showing the panel seams, button and brim curve before the twill shader

Cinema 4D viewport of the merchandise bundle flat-lay, clay models of the cap, folded polo, travel cup, tee and track jacket

03 · Scene assembly

The shop, from every camera

The full set assembled in Cinema 4D, untextured, with the main camera and both marketing cameras laid out against the fixture wall, and the clay pass used to lock the lighting before any material went on.

Cinema 4D viewport of the full retail store scene from the main camera, clay fixture wall, rails, plinths, folded stacks and the mannequin

Cinema 4D viewport from the first marketing camera, clay mannequin holding the travel cup with hung tees, a tote and the cap on the plinth

Cinema 4D viewport from the second marketing camera, wider clay angle across the display table, hanging rail and shelved caps

Clay render of the retail store set, every material stripped back to white so the lighting and composition can be judged on their own

The print is the product

Merch is bought at arm's length. Whether a monogram is woven into the cloth or printed on top of it, whether a badge sits proud of the pile or sinks into it, whether a label reads cast resin or cheap plastic: that is the whole decision, and none of it survives a flat mockup. So the lookdev carried this one, not the modeling.

If you have a range that lives or dies on that kind of detail, and you want to see it before it exists, say hello!