Hummingbird Squeeze Toy
A client came to Itera Studios with a single reference photo of a custom squeeze toy, a stylized hummingbird with a slender upturned beak and folded wings, and needed it turned into a production-ready 3D master a factory could mold from. We reconstructed the form in 3D and delivered a clean, watertight print master engineered for soft-rubber manufacturing and verified down to the geometry.
Client
Private Commission
Timeline
Custom Package
Year
2026
The Challenge
A single product photo communicates how a toy looks, not the precise, watertight 3D geometry a manufacturer needs to cut mold tooling and pull a resin prototype. The form had to be rebuilt as a single closed surface, dimensionally real at roughly 3.5 inches, with every feature thick enough to survive both resin printing and soft-vinyl molding. The slender beak was the hardest part. And it had to read unmistakably as the original toy.
Our Approach
- 01Rebuilt clean orthographic reference views (front, sides, and rear) from the client's single photograph to drive an accurate, symmetric reconstruction.
- 02Generated the base 3D form through an image-to-3D pipeline, then selected the cleanest result and corrected silhouette and topology by hand in Blender.
- 03Engineered the model for manufacturing: mirror-symmetric for a natural mold parting line, a flat base for printing and display, and a minimum beak cross-section thick enough to mold and print without breaking.
- 04Prepared the geometry as a single watertight manifold, repairing non-manifold edges, making every normal consistently outward, and subdividing to a smooth, faceting-free surface for resin printing.
- 05Delivered a solid outer-surface master, since the manufacturer derives wall thickness and tooling from the outer shell, and verified the exported file's real-world dimensions and triangle count directly.
- 06Produced a clean clay-render set and a 360° turntable for client sign-off before printing.
"One photograph in. A factory-ready master out."
Outcome
A watertight, print-verified 3D master (single closed manifold, consistent outward normals, scaled to a real ~89 mm), delivered in STL, OBJ, and web-ready GLB, alongside clay sign-off renders and a 360° turntable. From that master we printed a physical prototype and shipped it to the client, so the design could be held in hand before committing to manufacturing, with full file ownership transferring on sign-off.
Deliverables
Watertight STL print master
OBJ geometry
Web-ready GLB
Printed prototype (TPU)
Clay renders + turntable
Full file ownership
The Physical Prototype
Once the design was finalized, we printed a flexible TPU prototype and shipped it to the client, so they could hold the toy in hand and feel the design before committing to manufacturing.
TPU prototype print, shipped to the client
Have a development that needs to be experienced before it is built?
Start a Conversation