create a 3d pushpin

7/28/2019 Create a 3D Pushpin

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Create A 3D Push Pin

Introduction

Back when I wrote the popular A Scrap Of Notebook Papertutorial quite a few of you wanted to

know how I created the push pin shown in my final image. Well the waits over my friends! In this

Photoshop tutorial Ill show you how to create your own 3D push pin using Photoshop Extendeds

3D editing capabilities.

(*note: Youll need to have Photoshop Extended CS4 or newer and were going to be using the Pen

Tool a little bit in this lesson, so youll need to be minimally capable of drawing curves and lines if

you plan to follow along with this tutorial at home.)

Step 1 Setting Up The Photoshop FileOpen a new Photoshop document by choosing File > New from the Main Menu or by using the

keyboard shortcut Command-N (PC: Ctrl-N). Im using my usual 540px by 300px size at 72

pixels/inch and a background color of White. Then I jumped over to Google and did an image

search for push pin to find a good piece of reference. The important thing for me was that the

photo needed to show the pin straight-on since well need to do some tracing.

Once I located an example that would work I simply right-clicked it, copied it to the clipboard and

pasted it into my document by pressing Command-V (PC: Ctrl-V) (be a slacker and just copy and

paste from the image below.)

Step 2 Set A Guide At The Centerline

To keep things symmetrical we only need to trace one half of the pin, so lets place a guide at the

center-line to make it easy. Make sure your rulers are showing by choosing View > Rulers from the

Main Menu or by simply pressing Command-R (PC: Ctrl-R). Now, simply click on the left-side rulerand drag a guide onto the stage to the center of the pin.
http://pshero.com/photoshop-tutorials/graphic-design/a-scrap-of-notebook-paperhttp://pshero.com/photoshop-tutorials/graphic-design/a-scrap-of-notebook-paperhttp://pshero.com/photoshop-tutorials/graphic-design/a-scrap-of-notebook-paper


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Step 3 Cuddle Up To The Pen Tool

Were going to be handling the top and bottom pieces of the pen separately so lets get started

with the top first. Grab the pen tool from the Tools Bar or simply press the P key. This process is

easiest if you first draw the center-line (dont forget to hold down the shift key when placing your

second point to keep the line perfectly straight, then continue around the left side tracing along

the edges of the top of the pin.

TIP: Once youve created your path, jump over to the Paths palette and rename it so if you need to

go back to it it wont get lost when we create our next one.

(*note: In my example below I only dropped the opacity of the pin so you can see my path more

clearly.)

Step 4 Create And Fill A New Layer

Create a new layer called Pin Top by pressing Command-Shift-N (PC: Ctrl-Shift-N) and fill it with

50% Gray by pressing Shift-Delete (PC: Shift-Backspace) and choosing 50% Gray from the Use drop-


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down menu.

With your path still selected choose 3D > Repouss > Selected Path from the Main Menu to open

the Repouss dialog.

Step 5 Using Repouss To Create The 3D Effect

With Repouss open, well need to make a few initial modifications to the Extrude settings to get

our object to spin around the centerline (lathe). In the Extrude settings first change the location to

the middle left box by clicking to select it, then change the Depth to 0 and the X Angle to 360.

Dont close the dialog just yet because theres more Repouss coming up in the next few steps.

Step 6 Loading A Glossy Red Plastic Material

With Repouss still open, jump up to the Materials section and click on the top left box marked All.

This will open the Material Picker and chances are good youll have to load in the Plastic set, soclick on the little arrow at the top right corner of the Material Picker and choose Plastic from the

list as shown below.


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Step 7 Loading A Glossy Red Plastic Material

With Repouss still open, jump up to the Materials section and click on the top left box marked All.

This will open the Material Picker and chances are good youll have to load in the Plastic set, so

click on the little arrow at the top right corner of the Material Picker and choose Plastic from the

list as shown below.

(*note: If you dont see these default materials in your list, you may need to install the

Materials.zxp file from Photoshop.com which can be downloaded Right Here.

With the Plastic set loaded Ill go ahead and choose the one called Plastic Glossy (red). from the list

to apply it to my push pin top. Were not going to worry about lighting or anything else just yet, so

go ahead and click OK to return to your Photoshop file.

(*note: in the second image below Ive hidden the reference photo so you can see exactly what my

pin looks like so far.)
http://www.photoshop.com/products/photoshop/3d/http://www.photoshop.com/products/photoshop/3d/


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Step 8 Back To The Pen Tool

Youll notice in the example above that the edges of my red plastic pin top are all jaggy and nasty,but dont worry, thats just because we havent rendered a final version of the 3D object. Well do

that later though so stick around.


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The next step is to create the actual pin portion of the push pin. To get started lets create a new

layer called Pin Bottom by pressing Command-Shift-N (PC: Ctrl-Shift-N) and once the layer appears

in the Layers palette, click and drag it down so it will be beneath the Pin Top layer. This way we can

make the pin a bit taller to ensure it extends inside the pin top.

Go ahead and switch back to the Pen tool (if its not already active) and lets draw out the bottom

of the pin just like we did before. Centerline first, then the right side.

Step 9 Second Verse Same As The First

Ok, heres where we see if you were paying attention in the beginning Fill the layer with 50%

gray, jump into Repouss and make that sexy 3D happen, then load the Metal textures from the

Materials list and pick a nice shiny one like Metal Steel2 (stainless) or whatever suits your taste.

Click OK to commit the 3D effect and return to your Photoshop document. You can now turn off

(or throw away) your reference layer since we wont be needing it anymore. You can also hide or

delete the guide if youd like.


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Step 10 Combine 3D Layers

Weve now got both pieces of our push pin built out in 3D but because theyre on separate layers

we cant manipulate them in 3D space at the same time. Lucky for us theres an easy fix. With

one of the two Pin layers selected, simply hold down the Command (PC: Ctrl) key and click on

the other one in the Layers palette to select them both at the same time then from the Main

Menu choose 3D > Merge 3D Layers. This will effectively combine the two elements so we canmove them around together. Im going to go ahead and rename the newly combined layer Push

Pin as well.

Step 11 Let The 3D Fun BeginOk, so first let me say that youve done a great job so far and if I was there Id give you a big hug.

But since Im not, just close your eyes and imagine me giving you a big warm hug unless youre

a dude, cuz thats just weird. Dudes, high five.

There are a lot of things that you can do with the 3D object now but Im going to assume that

youd like to make it look like its sticking into something thats on a vertical plane in front of you

(like pinning a note to the wall) and for us to do that, the first thing well have to do is change

the camera angle so that were looking straight down on the Ground Plane. Dont worry if you

dont know that that is, Ill hold your hand through the whole process unless youre a dude.

First switch to the Camera Rotate Tool by pressing the N key and then lets turn on the Ground

Plane by opening the 3D (MESH) panel by choosing Window > 3D from the Main Menu. When

the 3D panel comes up, click on the leftmost icon at the bottom of the palette (it looks like an

eye next to a tiny grid) and choose 3D Ground Plane to switch it on. Instantly youll see the black

ground plane appear (itll extend farther than my screenshot below will show obviously. With

the Ground Plane on, we can now move on to moving the camera angle. All this preparation will

ensure that our shadows fall correctly when we get to that point.


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Step 12 Rotate The Camera Angle

You should still have the Rotate Camera View tool active, so now what you want to do is hold

down the Shift key and click and drag your mouse straight upward to rotate the cameras angle

to the top of the pin (since its sticking straight up from the Ground Plane. Holding the Shift key

will constrain the move so it doesnt get sideways. Theres no vertical snapping in this tool, so

youre going to have to eyeball the move. Luckily youve got Photoshops checkerboard

background to make it easier for you. When youve got it where you want it (you should be

looking directly at the top of the pin), let go of the mouse and head on down to the next step.

Step 13 Adjust The Push Pin Position

With the Ground Plane now in the vertical position, press the K key to switch to the Object

Rotate tool. You can go ahead and turn off the Ground Plane grid in the 3D panel now as well.

The Object Rotate Tool weve activated will allow us to move, rotate and angle the objectwithout disturbing the camera angle we just set. Go ahead and click and drag around with your

mouse on the push pin to see what I mean. Im going to tilt mine up and to the right so that


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theres a nice view angle of the pin. Feel free to switch over to the Move tool (keyboard shortcut

V) if you need to move your object to another spot on the stage and then switch back to the

Object Rotate tool to continue fiddling with your pin.

(*note: you can also use the arms of the 3D tool to rotate and skew your object)

Step 14 3D Lighting

This is probably the toughest step to explain because its all about little adjustments and

eyeballing things, but Ill do what I can to get you on the right track. I probably went through this

process 10 times while preparing the sequence for this lesson and never once got it to turn out

exactly the same, so dont be to hard on yourself if it takes some time to get it the way you want

it.

Take a look at the 3D panel we opened earlier and down at the bottom where you turned on the

Ground Plane select 3D Light from the menu. By default your 3D object comes with 3 lights, but

you can turn them on and off as you wish. At the top of the 3D panel, click on the little light bulb

icon to switch to the lighting panel.

Each light has a little handle at the end that can be manipulated by clicking on the Light Rotate

tool along the left middle of the palette and you can select each light from the list above to

change its settings. Each light has a few main options that were concerned about, mainly Light

Type, Create Shadows and shadow Softness are all were concerned with in this lesson. I prefer asoftness on the shadows of about 50%. You wont see your shadows just yet, but Ill show you in

the next step how to turn them on. You can grab each light by its handle and move it around

until youre satisfied with the lighting on the pin.

While were here, lets click on the little icon in the top right corner of the 3D palette and choose

Ground Plane Shadow Catcher from the menu. This way when we change the render settings in

the next step, the shadows will appear.


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Step 15 Render Settings

So, when youve got all your lights arranged and you think youre all set its time to test how the

shadows fall by rendering out our 3d object. First click on the far left icon at the top of the 3D

panel (the one that looks like boxes connected by lines), then just below that icon, click on the

word Scene to view the settings for the entire scene. In the lower half of the panel under Render

Settings change the Quality to Ray Traced Draft. This will run a basic render sequence which is

much quicker than a full render and will give you a good idea of where the shadows fall and if

you need to make any adjustments. You can stop the render at any time by pressing the Space

bar, and then if you need to make changes, switch back to Interactive (Painting) in the Quality

drop-down. Make any adjustments to your lights etc and then try again.

If you dont want all 3 lights to throw shadows, you can switch back to the Lighting area and by

clicking on each light in the list you can check or un-check its Create Shadows checkbox.

TIP: If you select the Pin Top or Pin Bottom objects in the 3D panel asset list, you can set Shadow

Opacity and whether the object Casts and Catches Shadows as well.


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Step 16 Clean Up On Isle 5

Ok, so we get to the end and even with the preliminary rendering my round push pin is still

shaped like a stop sign whos been messing with my Photoshop presets?

Luckily a few little adjustments will fix us up. Click on the Pin Top object in the 3D palette and

then click the Edit in Repouss icon at the bottom of the icon stack in the bottom of the palette.

This will bring back up our original 3D settings and we can make a few tiny adjustments as

needed. All I had to do was change the Extrude Depth to 1 and then in the Scene Settings area

change the Mesh Quality to Best (which was the problem all along). Click OK when youre done

and go ahead and run a preliminary rendering once again.


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Conclusion

So Im sure by now youre head is spinning with all this 3D mumbo jumbo, and who could blame

you, this tools a powerful disaster area and nothing is user friendly at least at first. Experiment

experiment and practice practice, there are a ton of great tutorials out there and guys like Corey

Barker from Photoshop User TV have done a ton of great video tutorials on the topic.

When youre finally satisfied and ready for the final result, go back to that Quality setting (dont

forget to select Scene from the list first) and choose Ray Traced Final. Sit back and have a drink,

take a short nap or maybe go outside for some fresh air, this is going to take a while. When its

all done the edges will be pretty and round, the shadows will be soft and hopefully youve

learned a little something valuable along the way. In my final image I used a Curves Adjustment

Layer to increase the contrast of my push pin a little bit as well.

(*note: should you decide to move your object and its been cut off by the edge of your

document during rendering you can simply toggle the render settings to have the object render

out again)


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create a 3d pushpin

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