3D icons: six verticals,
one form language
Six IT verticals — fintech, SaaS, streaming, gaming, iGaming, big tech — as six objects built to one rule set in Blender, each with a loop of its own. Set on cards, then cut into a 34-second film on the beat of its track.
34 seconds, eight shots, every cut on a downbeat. Rendered frame by frame from an HTML timeline, not recorded.
Challenge
The objects were built for this site’s 3D hero, where they share the stage with each other. The brief I set myself: six of them — one per IT vertical — had to hold a card on their own, move, and cut together into a film, without being remodelled.
Approach
One rule set for every object: a Tabler silhouette, one mass, the two or three details that name it, one hue and one accent. Every still shot with alpha on the same lens, camera height and rig, so the colour lives in the card, not in the render. Every loop the same length. The film is an HTML timeline rendered frame by frame and timed in bars of its track.
Outcome
Six cards with their contrast fixed by measurement, six seamless loops, and a 34-second film on the home page. The whole chain is written down — rig, card grid, timing table, render recipe — so a seventh vertical is a day’s work, not a restart.
One per vertical: fintech, SaaS, streaming, gaming, iGaming, big tech
4.7 s at 30 fps, the same length for all six, seamless at the wrap
Eight shots at 60 fps, every cut on a downbeat of a 16-bar grid
Text on the worst card, up from 1.3 before the colour pass
Counted from the render logs, the card file and the film’s timing table.
One rule set, six materials.
Every object starts as a Tabler silhouette with the proportions of the real thing: thin stays thin, thick stays thick. One big mass with soft corners, then only the two or three details the eye needs to name it — the antenna and the play mark, the lever and the reels, the lamps and the slot. One hue and one accent each. The materials differ on purpose: matte plastic, anodised metal, glass. The set has to say six markets, not one product line.
The six cards, 1200 × 1500 each, as they stand 2.3 s into the film
From silhouette
to card.
Trace
A Tabler icon sets the silhouette, the real object sets the proportions. Six silhouettes, one construction.
Build
One mass, large radii, the details that identify it and nothing decorative. Modelled in Blender, lit on one rig.
Shoot
150 mm, camera at 35°, no background. 2000 px stills at 2048 samples; the card colour is added in Figma.
Move
One loop per object, 141 frames at 30 fps, the same length for all six so the set stays in phase.
Six objects, six loops.
Each one does the single thing it exists for. The card goes in and the tick lights up. The gear glows, then turns. The screen fills with snow. Four buttons, then the D-pad. The lever drops and the reels stop on 777. The lamps run up the rack.
Alpha first, colour later
Every still is shot without a background on the same lens, camera height and light. The card colour goes in afterwards, so a palette change is a Figma edit, not a re-render, and a coloured bounce never touches the approved light. Form and shadow are two different lights: a separate source almost overhead drops the contact shadow under each object where the key could not.
Eight shots, one field of cards.
The cards fly in and form the grid. Columns slide, one card rises and flips through all six. The camera pulls out in four steps to a field where the cards become a heart, a face and a house. The field collapses into a deck, six cards shoot out, and the wordmark assembles letter by letter.
Shot 07: six cards out of the deck, the loops playing on them
Rendered,
not recorded.
The film is an HTML page with one function: give it a time in seconds and it draws that frame. Headless Chrome steps through it at 60 fps and saves a PNG each step; ffmpeg lays the track underneath. The loops are the same function of time, so nothing drifts against the music, and a change to one beat is a re-render, not a reshoot. The field is a torus of the six cards, laid out so that no two of the same kind ever sit side by side.
Six objects, one system, written down.
The set is live on the home page as a 34-second film. Behind it: a rig spec, a card grid with its contrast measured, a timing table in bars and a render recipe — enough to add a seventh vertical without reopening the first six.
- Six Blender objects to one rule set
- Six loops, 141 frames each, seamless
- Minimum text contrast raised from 1.3 to 4.1
- A 34-second film timed in bars, rendered from HTML
If this is the kind of case you are hiring for, I am happy to walk through the decisions behind it.