MerchandAise · Tennis Club Teamwear

Tennis Teamwear, From Blank Polo to Full Club Kit

A tennis subpage render set for MerchandAise, built to carry one club identity all the way from a blank base garment to the polos, knitwear, accessories and locker room it lives in.

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

Champions League Altenburg tennis locker room, two mannequins in a purple crew and green shorts and a blue polo kit, wood lockers hung with a green polo, cream cardigan and navy knits, club crest set into the floor, photoreal CGI render

How do you show a whole tennis club being kitted out from one blank garment?

MerchandAise needed the tennis subpage to make the same promise as the rest of the platform: choose a garment, put a club on it, and see the whole range before a single piece is manufactured. Tennis makes that harder than football. The pieces are quieter, and the details do all the talking.

So I built a club to prove it on. Champions League Altenburg is invented, purple, green and white, with a racket-and-ball crest. Everything on the page carries it: a tipped polo, crew-neck knits, a placket cardigan, shorts, a cap, a ball, a bottle and towels, all from the same identity.

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 club badge and the finishes it can be made in, the branded ball, the jacquard knitwear and the pattern library sitting behind it, a fabric study for the knit, and the full merchandise bundle. Drag the first frame to strip the club back off the polo.

Branded Champions League Altenburg tennis polo in royal blue with green and purple collar and cuff tipping and the club crest at the chest, photoreal CGI render

Blank white base tennis polo before any branding, three-button placket, photoreal CGI render

Champions League Altenburg club badge moulded in purple, green and white with a racket and ball, laid on a gridded cutting mat beside die-cut patch blanks, 3D render

The same tennis club badge repeated across material finishes, embroidered, felt, rubber, brushed metal and cork, scattered on a pale surface, 3D render

Tennis ball printed with the Champions League Altenburg crest, felt texture caught in a spotlight against dark green, 3D product render

Purple crew-neck tennis sweatshirt with a tonal jacquard pattern and green ribbed collar, cuffs and hem, photoreal CGI render

Sixteen-up grid of the same purple club sweatshirt, each one carrying a different tonal jacquard pattern, 3D render

Fabric lookdev study, green club knit draped over a sphere to read the jacquard weave and sheen, 3D render

Champions League Altenburg merchandise bundle flat-lay, green polo, purple sweatshirt, fleece towel, bottle, cap, racket, ball, navy trousers and green shorts, 3D render

Somewhere for a kit to live

A kit on a black backdrop is a product shot. A kit in a locker room is a club. So I built the room: wood-panelled bays, green benches, hangers, the crest set into the floor, and a shelf of pieces that look like they already belong to somebody.

One set carries the whole range. Relight it, redress the hangers, move to another camera, and every piece lands somewhere that reads like match day rather than a catalogue page.

Locker bay lineup, navy club sweatshirt, green tipped polo with a splatter-print racket and branded ball, and a purple sweatshirt with green trim, folded shorts and the Altenburg cap on the shelf, photoreal CGI render

Mannequin in the royal blue Champions League Altenburg polo holding a racket, green polo and cream placket cardigan hung either side, green benches 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 shading pass before it joined the room: the polo, the badge, the patch set, the ball, the knitwear and the merchandise bundle.

Cinema 4D viewport of the tennis polo from the main camera, untextured clay garment with the collar roll, placket stitching and buttons already modeled

Cinema 4D viewport of the tennis club badge, untextured with the raised lettering and racket motif, die-cut patch blanks laid out around it

Cinema 4D viewport of the scattered club badge patches, clay models laid out for the material study

Cinema 4D viewport of the tennis ball, clay model with the seam geometry before the felt shader

Cinema 4D viewport of the crew-neck club sweatshirt, simulated clay garment before the jacquard shader

Cinema 4D viewport of the merchandise bundle flat-lay, clay models of the polo, towel, bottle, cap, racket and shorts

03 · Scene assembly

The room, from every camera

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

Cinema 4D viewport of the full tennis locker-room scene from the main camera, clay mannequins, benches and hung garments

Cinema 4D viewport of the locker bays from the second marketing camera, clay sweatshirts, polo, racket and shelf props

Cinema 4D viewport of the polo hero shot from the first marketing camera, clay mannequin holding the racket against the locker wall

Clay render of the tennis locker-room scene, all materials stripped back to grey so the lighting and composition can be judged on their own

All in the trim

Tennis kit does not shout. Cover the crest and a polo is just a polo, so the whole identity has to survive in a collar stripe, a cuff, a tonal jacquard you only catch when the light rakes across the knit. That is where the modeling and lookdev hours actually went, not on the big shapes.

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!