When we began selling grocery dividers, we wanted a way to give our clients an image that demonstrated what they were getting. A flat jpeg doesn't really sell the product, so I built a scene with blender to render out once the artwork was finalized.

I've worked in 3d space before, but it had been quite some time, so I did my best with what I knew. Initially, the candy rack seemed to complex for me to tackle.

But as I learned a little more, and thought about it, arrays and modifiers aren't really that complex. I eventually added a bunch of generic candy boxes. While it wasn't the most realistic, it added a bit more complexity to the scene. The flat plane with a blurry texture just didn't cut it, and this allowed for the scene's camera to calculate the depth of field, which helps to unify everything.

Recently, I got the itch to push the realism a bit more, and went in to refine the candy rack. So I modeled a few types of candy, little bags for the M&Ms, bars for the Reese's, and little boxes filled with Tic Tacs.

Since these are all background elements and blurred by the depth of field, it wasn't important that they be very high detail, just enough to give the viewer an impression of what was going on. I still filled to boxes with Tic Tacs because it was fun to learn rigid body simulations. 😅