Quick Project: 3D Bottle Label

The other night I was showing a friend some of the 3D Photoshop projects I've been working on. The next day he called and said he was designing a bottle label for a client's product. He had done the profile of the bottle and the label artwork in Illustrator.

20 minutes after receiving the files I sent him a Photoshop file with a 3D object; textured and ready to present to his client. The great thing about 3D technology is that you can grab the bottle and rotate it in real time, and save out an image from any angle of the bottle.

If you had done it the old fashioned way, you'd only have one angle of the bottle (the angle you drew).

Roll 'Em - 3D Dice

I have a massive list of frequently used graphics which I've been randomly picking from. Tonight's random pick: 3D Dice.

I live 90 minutes from Vegas. Eventually I plan on creating a library of gambling and game objects.

Here's the basics of creating this shape.

- Create a cube in Strata 3D CX. Round the Edges with the Bevel Tool. Apply a SDS cage to increase the polygon resolution.

- Strata 3D CX doesn't have the greatest UV mapping tools so I'm going to work around it. I'm breaking each of the 6 cube faces into their own polygon mesh. I'll create a single image texture which contains all 6 sides of the cube and then shift the texture into place for each respective side.

- Use the "Burn UV" command for all the textures and "Send Model" to Photoshop. Tip about textures: draw them in Illustrator when possible. Although you apply bitmap versions of them in Strata, you can swap them out for the vector versions once you're in Photoshop. And they retain infinite resolution!

- Replace the bitmap textures with a Vector Smart Object version. I only have to replace the one image map which contains all 6 sides of the cube and it automatically updates all the faces. It is possible to make a different image file for each face of the cube but I used the above technique to keep it simple... and to see if I could pull it off. Plus, I can use 1 map for the bump map, reflection map, etc. - which are all based from the original Illustrator file.

- Tweak the texture and light settings.

Now that I have 1 die, I duplicate that 3D layer, and change the camera view for the second die. It's easy enough to customize the dice textures so I did a second version of white dice.

This is as lucky as I'll get tonight. Time for bed.

It All Started With Adobe CS3 Extended

I had this idea in the Fall of 2007.

I had worked for Strata for a total of 15 years (on and off) and has some major changes in my personal life which required me to move to another company. Strata is still my family and I continue working closely with them.

Adobe CS3 Extended was released earlier that year. It contained the first version of Photoshop which had real 3D features. Strata was the first to release 3D Photoshop plug-ins; and up until very recently, the only plug-in that allowed 3D models to move back-and-forth.

The technology was in it's early stages and many people either didn't see the value nor understand the possibilities of using 3D in Photoshop.

I was working on DVD product shots for the online store of SigningTime.com. They had several new releases to their library but the packaging was being printed. This is a typical situation that keeps most designers in business: create an image of the product before it exsists.

It was easy for me to create a 3D model to use as a template for rendering packaging. Strata 3D CX made it very easy to load in a layered Photoshop file with each package design on a separate layer. I would 'show' the layer for volume 10, save the file, and it would automatically update in my 3D model. Render the model, repeat process. Not difficult but a lot of grunt work.

Photoshop CS3 Extended and the Strata 3D plug-ins changed that process to a fraction of the time. Going forward, it's as easy as a 'copy and paste' into a Photoshop file.

Fast forward to today. Everyone that has Adobe CS4 has the ability to do 3D. But the same question remains, "What is useful about 3D in Photoshop?"

My answer is, "It can save you time and make you more money. You get the benefit of using 3D without having to learn 3D."