Tutorial
How to make a mug mockup that wraps right
Design gets cut off at the handle when a template and the print area never agreed. Here is how to size art so the wrap lands right the first time.
3 min
Put your design on a 3D mug that turns in the browser. Wide art wraps around the wall, a logo sits on the front, and several designs share one link.
You finish a mug design and need to show it. The usual route is a flat photo template: the art pasted onto one side of a mug, lit from one angle, with the handle hiding whatever runs around the back. The buyer sees a third of the print and guesses the rest.
A 3D mug mockup shows the rest. In i3Dify it is a project type called Mug. You upload an image and it is printed around a mug that turns on its own in the browser. The visitor drags to turn it, flicks to spin it, and scrolls to look closer.
The design is projected onto the straight outer wall of the mug from its angle and height, so it bends around the curve the way ink does. The printable band runs 300 degrees around and stops short of the handle, leaving a 60 degree gap there. It also keeps a small margin under the rim and above the base. That is the area a print can cover, so the mockup never shows art where a mug cannot take it.
Colour and finish are settings. The body and the inside each take their own colour, so a black mug with a red inside is two pickers, not a new photo. The finish is glossy or matte, and the print follows it.
Placement is automatic by default. An image at least 1.8 times as wide as it is tall wraps the whole band. Anything narrower, which is most logos and badges, is printed centred on the front at its own proportions. It takes about four fifths of the band's height and never runs more than 130 degrees around. Transparent pixels stay unprinted, so a logo on a transparent PNG shows the mug's own colour around it.
When the guess is wrong, the Print placement setting forces Wrap or Front for the whole project. A wrap never stretches the art. An image with other proportions than the band is scaled to cover it and the overflow is cropped. Keep text away from the edges of a wide design.
Each image you upload is one design. The visitor moves between them with the arrow keys, a tap on the mug, or the dock under it, and a counter shows which design out of how many. Autoplay changes the design on its own at an interval you set between 2 and 15 seconds. Loop starts over after the last one.
That fits how merch is sold. A seller with a dozen designs for the same mug sends one link instead of a dozen images. A coffee shop puts this season's house mug next to last season's. Preparing the files is covered in how to make a mug mockup.
The finished mug is shared as a link, or embedded with an iframe in a product page, a portfolio or any shop page that accepts custom HTML. It opens on a phone the same way and turns under a thumb. On the free plan the viewer carries the i3Dify watermark in the corner. Pro removes it.
It is a mockup, not a print service. i3Dify does not print or ship mugs, and this type has no clickable hotspots. What it gives you is the view a buyer cannot get from a photo: the back. If you are weighing it against a flat template, rotating mug mockup vs a flat photo says when each one fits.
Show the whole print and the buyer stops guessing about the back. Make your mug mockup.
Upload a PDF or a few images, pick a project type and share the link. The free plan is enough to try it.
Create Mug