Tutorial Details
- Program: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Estimated Completion Time: 30 Minutes
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
Today, Zorana Gee, Adobe Photoshop Product Manager will walk us through a simple design project using Photoshop CS5 Extended’s 3D tools. In this tutorial you will receive a brief introduction to the 3D workspace in Photoshop and receive some great tips on how to incorporate 3D into your Photoshop workflow.
Zorana has been on the Photoshop team for over 10 years and has been involved with Photoshop Extended from the beginning. Zorana was instrumental to the 3D effort as well as driving many feature improvements within Photoshop. She is the author of 3D in Photoshop: the Ultimate Guide for Creative Professionals and the iPad app, Photoshop 3D Guide. Zorana speaks worldwide representing Adobe and the Photoshop family line of professional products.
Part 1
Part 2
3D in Photoshop: the Ultimate Guide for Creative Professionals
Check out Zorana’s book 3D in Photoshop: the Ultimate Guide for Creative Professionals to learn more about Adobe Photoshop CS5‘s 3D capabilities.
Enjoyed this Post?
Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!
By Zorana Gee
Join our newsletter!
Create a Tutorial, Get Paid!
Have something to teach the world? Want to earn money doing it? Tutorials, screencasts, and articles published here on Psdtuts+ are largely contributed by readers just like you! We'll pay you great money for good content. Find Out More
Even after seeing some tuts on 3D in PS, I find it too cumbersome to do 3D stuff in Photoshop.
I have always preferred Cinema 4D.
But seeing as the tutorial is done by Zorana I am actually downloading the tuts,
Who knows, after watching this tut my perspective may change.
I agree. Photoshop for 2D, Cinema 4d/Maya/3DS max for 3D :)
Having tried maya, modo, cinema4d, max, and probably 5 others that I can’t remember the name of at the moment I can say for certain that it’s totally worth it to give modo & cinema 4d a try.
If you happen to have access to a max or maya expert willing to show you how to skip their ugly defaults and go straight to making simple pretty things then that’s a good experience too.
Many people will complain that learning a different user interface in any 3d program is “too hard, I already _know_ photoshop”. To those people I suggest thoroughly digging through the 3d related UI components of photoshop and _realize_ just how _crammed_ and hard to find everything is. Compare that to having a full screen UI dedicated to just 3d modeling and rendering. There’s no comparison. I remember making logos like this in Bryce almost a decade ago being a more enjoyable experience.
I don’t agree. Illustrator with Photoshop is a very potent package. You could accomplish almost anything with those two software.
I got lost at the internal punch out of the P. My internal constraints are greyed out. How can I make them active?
Did you select any of the constraint tools?
Me too, greyed out IC tools.
Try this –
OK out of the dialog. Use the elliptical marquee tool and make a small selection on top of the psd tut text (where the hole of the P should be). Choose 3D > Repousse > Create Constraint from Selection – are the constraint tools active now?
For some reason it never picked up the text. So I made my own work path and rasterized the text. Then it worked just fine. Thanks Zorana!
“Create Constraint from Selection” is gray, I cant select it.
But, must I make the small selection in the same layer of the psd tut text or in a new layer?
Thanks!
..Lu
@Luca – it would be on the same layer (the 3D layer)
Another thing to try for those who are experiencing this problem – update PS to 12.01 – we fixed some problems here. But secondly, if you are playing around with type and only have ONE internal constraint (i.e. “A”), the tools will be inactive but the pulldown menu to select Hole or Inactive, etc. will be available.
Nope, I don’t think it’s worth it using constant tool here because I can’t select it :/
Thanks! the update fixed the problem :)
Go to path > right click and make selection… > create new 3D object with current selection source.
Just try it. It’ll work
I never Photoshop can do this stuff. Cool!
Correction: never know
Correction: never knew.
Thanks. :)
Never knew, I’ll remember that.
Nice article thanks!
This is fantastic, thanks.
Awesome screen cast, a lot easier to learn with a screen cast then pics and text..
Keep them coming!
Thanks for this great tutorial Zorana, I only just got to grips with the very basics of PS and it took me forever just to make a plain old 2d logo – this tutorial makes turning a plain looking logo into something really special and unique! Keep up the great work!
Nice video! What software do you use to have the nice zoom bubble?
I’m using ScreenFlow for recording – great tool and easy to use.
Best tutorial of 2010.
The box behind the lettering of the psd tuts logo is two-tone. How would you apply that to the punched-out box?
Later on in the tutorial I show the Material Drop Tool – that’s what I used to copy the exact material and drop onto the extrusion. You can also create a texture from scratch by going to the Materials panel (filter view in 3D panel), select the Extrusion material and then next to the Diffuse property, click on the dropdown and select New Texture. That will give you a photoshop file that you can create any material you want. Hope that helps.
Zorana–this is the best, and most complete explanation of the new 3D capabilities in PS that I have seen. It’s wonderful! Thank you :)
Awesome post! expanded my Verizon on ps by infinity!
Absolutely great tutorial. Thanks alot Zorana!
Very useful Thank you :)
Thank you very much！！
Another Breakthrough of PS.
Hi Zorana
Thanks a lot for a
Great Tutorial, i manage to create a Nice Logo in 3D just with Imported Text, the problems I encounter were to Create the path something to do with a TEXT Faux bold that was not able to be rasterized untill i click on smart filters and for some reason it fixed.
Also i download trhe material ZIP file and try to installed on this Path: C://Program files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS5(64 Bit)/Presets/materials.
And I copy the P3M file called Glass but it does not appear in my materials panel.
It would be nice to have a nice tutorial on How to Import materials in both Mac and Pc
Thank you
Julio Cesar
Julio-
Thank you for watching – you’ve uncovered a bug with faux bold! Our engineers are working on this problem now but unfortunately Repoussé is having problems rasterizing with this effect. Another option for you is to create a type layer using the Type Mask tool – you’d have to either start with the color of interest as a background layer or change the Diffuse color after you’ve extruded.
Also, regarding presets – good idea I’ll see if I can get that in one of my next tuts. Let me check on the path. But you should be able to double-click the file and have it automatically install to the right place…
Re: installing materials on Windows
You have to ‘Run as Administrator’ in order to simply double-click the file downloaded so that Extension Manager (installed by default with PS) will put the preset into the right folder. Hope that helps.
Very useful & Absolutely great tutorial.Thank you
Thanks Zorana. Needed this badly. Hope to see more tuts from you.
Hi Zorana,
This is a great tutorial! I loved it and I am going to buy your book as well. Do you know when the book will be available in the UK?
I loved your article and I posted a post on my blog to spread the word about it. It is here:
http://photoshoplightroombridge.co.uk/
All best,
Marek
Hi Marek-
Thanks for posting it to your blog! The book is sold worldwide and it should be in the stores by now. It also should be on Amazon UK by now.
Nice video Zorana! i’m soon to taking my photoshop knowledge to a new level with 3D…
Hi..I dont have an option named “3D” in my PS CS5..what can i do?help me please?
Joseph – you have to have Photoshop CS5 Extended for 3D capabilities. If you don’t have a 3D menu (or an Analysis menu), you don’t have Extended.
I think this is one of the best featured tutorial that a ever see. Congrats!
Not everyone has access to C4D/Maya etc… This tut offers a great alternative for designers.
Would love to see this technique being adapted or extended into a full poster design!! (although that’s kind of up to us to use these techniques further).
Great Tut. ★★★★★ stars
Why i cannot make the Repousse effect ? I have followed the steps exactly, but i cannot make the Repousse effect. Can you help me please ?
Im in trouble with the Tutorial at 7 mins.
There Zorana Gee show us how we can make a hole in the “P”.
She open the “Internal Constrains” Panel and can click on the functions.
If I do the same, complete like in the Tutorial, a cant use these functions but why?
I realy dont know what I do wrong. I have done everytime the same like in the Tutorial.
Can anybody help me? Sorry for bad english, im from Germany.
Thanks for the great Tutorial.
tank you.gooooooooooooooooooooooood
i love photoshop
10x zorna
Hi,
thx for this tutorial… I was searching a long time for the problem with the wholed letters. Here I could see, that the cue is “internal contraints”.
But now I would like to do the same flow with my own selected vector. But the result is allways the same… my internal constraints are disabled and I have no idea why… Does anybody have an idea how I can endable it or what simple preference I have to choose to use it?
I hope you’ll understand my “simple English”… thx
Greets Patrick
I forgot to tell you, that I read the answers above, but none of the answers had the anticipated effect. It is allways disabled… :-(
Now I found another possibility… When you finished the 3D-object at first, you can choose the whole of a letter by the magic-wand-tool (don’t know the original name, only the German word “Zauberstab-Tool”). Then choose Repousse -> internal contraints by choice…
But there’s another problem… if you may choose a circle, after opening the 3D-Panel-window the circle is an egg, more or less… it’s not round. So this possibility is also nothing for an attractive logo in 3D.
I hope I will find in any time a simple program for extruding a simple vector-logo in simple 3D-form for using as an 3D-object in after Effects…
HEY PART 2 ISN’T WORKING?
Am I correct in assuming this will not work on CS4 Extended? I am not seeing a Repousse option in the 3D menu options anywhere, but then again I have never tried 3D in Photoshop.
I know this is an older posting but I can’t find the 3D axis widget for the life of me. I went into preferences and made sure my open gl was clicked to run. I went to view – show – 3D axis. Even tried to do it by twirling down the drop down menu in the bottom left hand corner like you said and nothing… I’m lost, anyone?
Thanks for this tutorial i have been looking all over for some info on this stuff. Really appreciate your websites plethora of good articles pertaining to adobe photoshop.
Chiao, Kevin – Houston – photoshoptutorials101.wordpress.com
can i apply gradient on the front bevel of the text? i wanted to make it glossy and shiny with reflection in a gold metal texture. help anyone please
Its verry nice…!!!! Thanxxxxx!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is just Woooooow ^^
thank you~
Hi Zorana,
You just save me $20 bucks because I am gonna to buy the Photoshop Books just to create my simple logo for my site.
With your tutorial, I can do it within 1 hour.
Thanks.
Good tutorial on Simple photoshop 3d logo, thank you!
It seems that Repousse works just fine for Apple systems but doesn’t work at all for PC’s. I’ve tried everything listed here and nothing has worked.
When I try to do REPOUSSE with proper selection it gives ERROR: The command repousse from selected path is not currently available, AND, ERROR: THE COMMAND ROPOUSSE IS NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE”,
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ZORANA OR ANYONE ELSE?
i don’t have option in 3D menu. I am using Photoshop CS5 Extended.
I hope you guys will give me a solution
. thank you.