Palletize Tool

Boxshot can clone the given item and arrange the copies for the pallet. This automates quite a tedious task and this tutorial shows the process in details.

Let’s Start

Make a new scene and add the Pallet object there. It is 120x80cm Euro pallet by default, we’ll keep it this way.

Now add the Simple box shape and adjust its width to be 40cm, and height and length to be 20cm. We simply make it big enough for that pallet. Ignore the texture distortion, it doesn’t really matter for this tutorial.

Align the box, so it stays on top of the pallet, you’ll end up with something like this:

Note that you don’t really need the pallet itself in order to use the Palletize tool, we put it here to see the end result straight away.

Once everything is done, move the camera a little further form the pallet, make sure that only the box is selected and then right click the scene and select Tools → Palletize… in the popup menu.

Palletize Tool Interface

The palletize window will pop up and you will see the scene has changed in background. There’s now multiple boxes stacked on the pallet.

Job done! OK, just kidding, let’s see what options we have. The top section is called Pallet size and defines the dimensions of the pallet. This is the area where the tool fits the items.

There is no way to define how many items to put in each layer, Boxshot computes this using the selected pattern and the pallet dimensions.

The second section is Stacking and it defines how to stack the items. We’ll cover it below.

Finally, the third section is Gaps which configures the minimal distance between the items and their layers.

Adjusting the options updates the scene and once you are happy with the result, you simply click OK to commit the changes.

Stacking Options — Layers

The Layers option defines the number of layers of items to put on the pallet. Let’s change it to 1:

You now see just one layer of boxes in preview. Note that the boxes are grouped by layers in the scene tree.

Stacking Options — Pattern

Let’s keep the number of layers at 1 for now and try changing the Pattern parameter to “Pinwheel”:

Note that the boxes are re–arranged on the pallet. This is a different stacking pattern and which one to use depends on many factors, which we are not going to cover here.

Boxshot supports row and pinwheel stacking patterns. Contact us if you need others.

Stacking Options — Stacking

The third parameter in the Stacking Options block is called Stacking and it controls how the items are arranged by the selected pattern.

Basically, there are two ways to arrange items in both row and pinwheel patterns and this option lets you choose which one you need or how to interleave them.

Try changing the stacking parameter from “Interlock 1” to “Interlock 2” and see the difference:

You might need to scroll up to compare it with the previous screenshot, but the boxes are now arranged in a different manner.

It becomes more obvious if you set the number of layers to 3:

You should now see it better. First and third layers are packed the same way, while the second layer in the middle is different.

There are two types of stacking options available: column and interlock. Column mode is more simple, as all the layers are the same, see below:

The difference between “1” and “2” in column and interlocked modes is in the pattern being used for the first layer. In column mode it is used for all the layers, in interlocked mode it is used as a starting pattern.

Gaps

Gaps are simple. Let’s set the Layers gap parameter to 5 cm:

You see that there is now 5 cm of space between the layer of boxes. Boxshot doesn’t apply any physics to the boxes, so they stay flying in the air. You can put a thick plane there if needed to simulate the separator.

Items gap is a bit more complex. Let’s change it to 1 cm and see what happens:

This looks weird… What happened? Well, first of all, Boxshot doesn’t do physics in this tool, so flying boxes are fine. The question is why so many boxes are missing?

See the answer below.

Sometimes It Doesn’t Fit

Sure, sometimes you might get weird results when using the tool. Boxes might hang in the air, there could be gaps and so on. It is like that for a reason.

To understand this behaviour we need to come back to the very top of the tutorial where we discussed the pallet dimensions parameters. Boxshot has 80x120 cm of space and need to put as many 40x20 boxes there, making sure the minimal gap between them is 1 cm. See it?

There is no way to fit two boxes of 40 cm with 1cm gap into 80 cm of space, so Boxshot only puts one row of boxes at the bottom. Same applies to another dimension: we have 120 cm of length and boxes with 20 cm side. Providing that the minimal gap is 1 cm, we can only put 5 boxes there and get the 20 cm of space left to distribute between the boxes

Long story short: items might not fit perfectly onto the pallet and Boxshot will have to do something about it. It tries its best, but sometimes you might need to adjust the gap or dimensions parameter to make everything fit well. Exactly as in the real life.

More Tutorials

Rendering

• Realistic Rendering — improving scenes visual appearance;
• Lighting — control environment and directional lighting;
• Saturated Reflection — make "rich" colorful reflections;
• Floor Reflection — reflecting scene objects in the floor;
• Job Manager — rendering jobs later;
• GPU Rendering — rendering scenes faster on GPU;
• Rendering Time and Quality — getting more control on rendering;
• Simple and Realistic Lighting — speeding up scene rendering.

Materials

• Texture Slots — how to use texture slots in Boxshot;
• Glass Materials — how to make semi–transparent objects look attractive;
• UV–Spot — how to make a UV–spot effect easily;
• Foil Effect — how to add foil–finishing to your shapes;
• Bump — adding relief to your materials;
• Copying Materials — how to copy materials to other shapes;
• Custom Materials — extend the materials library with your own ones;
• Semi–Transparent Labels — making semi–transparent and partial labels;
• Boxshot Materials — more details about Boxshot materials.

Features

• Decals — applying decals and configuring them;
• Bump Decals — applying bump where it is needed;
• Depth Of Field — adding more realism to your renderings;
• Tools — read more about Boxshot tools;
• Managing Images — how to manage image files used by Boxshot projects;
• Shapes Instances — creating lightweight copies of other shapes;
• Model Editor — edit embedded models in many ways;
• Shrink Wrap — heat–shrink film simulation for objects wrapping;
• Physics Simulation — applying gravity to your scene;
• Palletize — arrange scene objects for the pallet;
• Snapshots — save scene state to re–use it later;
• Translation — teach Boxshot to speak your language;
• Vector Artwork — how to maintain the quality of vector artwork.

Shapes

• Lathe Objects — making symmetrical objects using revolving curves;
• Loft Objects — making custom objects with 2D cross–sections;
• 3D Text — making 3D text objects in Boxshot;
• Extruded Objects — how to make thick 3D object of your flat 2D curve;
• Conical Labels — making conical labels with distorted artwork;
• Dieline Box — a very realistic dieline–based box;
• Custom Shapes — adding custom shapes to the left panel;
• Third Party Shapes — importing third party shapes to Boxshot.