3D World’s question of the month

We’ve noticed over the years that people look at 3D in one of two ways. The first group of people work almost entirely within their chosen 3D application in order to finish their images. In other words, their renders are the final products. The second group of people work with renders in much the same way one would treat digital photos: that is, as raw products that will benefit from further refinement in an image-editing package .

We see examples of the former school of thought quite often in online galleries, where someone will post an image for the other users to offer feedback on. Once people have offered their insight into the problems of the current render, the artist will invariably go back to their 3D application to brighten areas which are too dark, add contrast and tweak colours. A better option, we think, would be to utilise the power of Photoshop to ‘finish’ the image instead of stepping back and rendering all over again. Just 10 minutes of postproduction work could save hours of re-rendering, and sometimes the changes you need to make are going to be more difficult to perform in the 3D application than in Photoshop.

In this tutorial we’ll explore such a workflow between Photoshop and a 3D software package. First, we’ll show you how to establish a good base for the lighting of the scene – the still life shown above – using global illumination for the bounced light in the room. We’ll also reveal some good practice tips so that any postproduction changes you need to make go as smoothly as possible. We’re using Cinema 4D, but as long as your 3D render engine supports 16 bits per channel, you’ll be able to make the same changes in your own projects. Be careful not to confuse 16 bits per channel with 16-bit images. A 16-bits-per-channel image uses this higher colour depth for each of the red, green and blue elements, bringing the total image depth to 48 bits (compared with a regular 24-bit image). This higher bit depth provides higher quality images when significant changes are made in postproduction.

Also note that 16-bit editing will require Photoshop CS. Earlier versions of Photoshop don’t have the ability to load anything other than 8-bits-per-channel files. You can still follow along with the tutorial, but you may see banding in the gradients of the image.

Click here to download the support files (~5MB)