Still not happy with it.

[Paul]

The top edge bled out and not shiny enough, keep trying though

View attachment 18014

 

[dv8_fx]

Create the hilite again . And use the ball as the selection to create it - this will ensure an accurate shape. Delete the parts below the hilite within the ball you don't need with a hard eraser. Select the hilite on the layer and apply feather ( dunno your real image size - try a setting of 4 ). Invert selection hit delete. You may try hitting delete again for good measure and you may have to move the hilite a pixel or 2. down

Hope this helps, mate.

 

[Paul]

Thanks mate, i keep playing around with just photoshop tools at the minute - must be not being able to walk so stuck at comp all day lol.

 

[Hoogle]

I think you are best of for photo realism using the scene environment for your highlights and adding custom lights to it.

However once you start playing with shine, gloss soft shadows etc in photoshop you are looking at very long render times and I am talking over an hour to render out a still image.

I have not even found all the 3d tools in cs6 yet and not sure how flexible 3d is in cs5 as it is not something I play with ( I use cinema 4d) But there must be anti Alias settings and the ability to load a HDRI texture map for the enviroment these are what will give your object really really good reflections and lighting. You can google HDRI images for some free 1s but they are basically 360 degree textures so you get reflections and lighting all around your objects.

But if you want the illustrated look you are better off doing what your doing and faking it otherwise you will be there all day waiting for render peviews.

That is a good thing about photoshop though is the fact you can get 3d images and shadows etc without rendering but as soon as you tell it to render you are in for a long wait.

Here is an example quickly made at 6% rendered s you can see a long way of the finished product but I am not patient enough to wait another 59 mins for it to finish. Especially when I can do it in cinema 4d in 30 seconds.

 

[Fatboy73]

Hey Paul. I know this is far form perfect, but I noticed a few things that might help. The pool ball is a hard, highly polished, reflective surface. So to show that, any highlights need to hard lined.

There would also be a rim light which I have shown. The shadow on the other side is going to have the green form the pool table felt in it so I used that color on multiply for the shadow.

Even though there is a shadow on that side of the ball, it's still highly reflective so it's going to pick up a slight bounce highlight from the pool table, so I added that using the same felt green on screen.

As for the shadows on the table, because the object making a shadow is a ball, your going to have to different shadows. a light, longer one from very outside of the ball, and a smaller rounder one form where the ball is actually touching the table surface.

Like I said, it's not perfect, but I hope it helps.

 

[chitkaran]

I havent ever worked on a pool ball... but Here's my try for the first time...

 

[Hoogle]

I still think photoshop is very limited on what it can offer I played for 20 mins to create what I did earlier with best settings and in all honesty did not have the patience to wait for it to render the full shine, gloss and shadows.

However 2 mins in cinema 4d on the other hand Photo realism


So I think it will be a lot easier to use dedicated 3d software even if it is blender (free software) If you want quick easy results.

 

[Fatboy73]

Maybe it's because I was taught on Maya in college, I've tried Blender, and the GUI is ridiculous. for me it's completely counter intuitive and I can't do a thing with it.

 

[Hoogle]

No I am just mythed because I was watching a 3d promo for photoshop cs6 before it was released and the guy who worked for adobe said he was replacing his 3ds max as photoshop cs6 3d capabilities were so good.

The truth is yes they are a lot better for basic things than any other ps and does a reasonable job on text. And it may be that I am looking in the wrong places but I couldnt see the option for a soft box (by the way have you got a soft box in your pic looks like it in a reflection)
I couldnt find a tool to up the polygon count in spear to make smooth edges, Couldnt access any settings for anti alias just know it was applied. And then the worse thing is when you hit render in the 3d menu it was taking forever just for a basic image. it looked better without render but I could see after a few mins I was getting the shine come up more and more and the shadow edged were filling out and softening.

But really for what is basically a sphere on a flat surface shouldnt take any where near as long to render.

I have never used blender but I have seen some work done on it and surely creating a spear adding reflection and colour shouldnt take anywhere near as long to render as photoshop.

I will look into 3d more on photoshop but I dont think I will ever be trading to be my full time 3d app. I know cs6 also has greater video support but I am guessing it has nothing different for 3d animation either.

 

[Fatboy73]

No I am just mythed because I was watching a 3d promo for photoshop cs6 before it was released and the guy who worked for adobe said he was replacing his 3ds max as photoshop cs6 3d capabilities were so good.

The truth is yes they are a lot better for basic things than any other ps and does a reasonable job on text. And it may be that I am looking in the wrong places but I couldnt see the option for a soft box (by the way have you got a soft box in your pic looks like it in a reflection)
I couldnt find a tool to up the polygon count in spear to make smooth edges, Couldnt access any settings for anti alias just know it was applied. And then the worse thing is when you hit render in the 3d menu it was taking forever just for a basic image. it looked better without render but I could see after a few mins I was getting the shine come up more and more and the shadow edged were filling out and softening.

But really for what is basically a sphere on a flat surface shouldnt take any where near as long to render.

I have never used blender but I have seen some work done on it and surely creating a spear adding reflection and colour shouldnt take anywhere near as long to render as photoshop.

I will look into 3d more on photoshop but I dont think I will ever be trading to be my full time 3d app. I know cs6 also has greater video support but I am guessing it has nothing different for 3d animation either.

I apologize, but I'm very confused. I assume Paul created his pool ball drawing in Photoshop. You are saying that it's easier and faster to do this in a 3D program and are showing your renders, correct? I'm not sure if you think my example is a 3D render, but I did my example in PS CS3 extended. I simply mentioned blender and it's GUI because you had brought it up.

 

[Hoogle]

No I was asking if there was a soft box or an option to build your own soft box in ps as yours looked like it had a soft box reflection I was guessing you knew more about photoshop 3d than I do as I rarely use it because I use cinema 4d.

And yes there was a point made that a dedicated 3d application was easier to use and yielded better results with minimal render time.

 

[Fatboy73]

No I was asking if there was a soft box or an option to build your own soft box in ps as yours looked like it had a soft box reflection I was guessing you knew more about photoshop 3d than I do as I rarely use it because I use cinema 4d.

And yes there was a point made that a dedicated 3d application was easier to use and yielded better results with minimal render time.

Cool, thank you for the clarification. And I know nothing about PS 3D. Didn't even know something like that existed until this thread.
I know a few artist that use 3D renders in their 2d work. Steve Firchow does it all the time and I questioned him on whether it would be easier to just draw it given the the time it takes to sculpt and render and object. He said for him it would be easier to draw, but he likes the way the 3D looks and it cuts down on the guess work. To each his own I suppose.