Create a 3D Pool Ball

Quick reference

• 00:04 In this video, we're gonna be taking this photograph of a pool table and
• 00:08 we're gonna be adding the missing eight ball.
• 00:10 The result that you're going to see won't be a 100% perfect, because after all,
• 00:14 it'll take days to get a near-realistic result.
• 00:16 But it's pretty close.
• 00:18 And as always, the point of these videos is for
• 00:20 you to take away few tips and tricks to apply them to your own projects.
• 00:24 The first step in this project is to create the texture of the eight ball,
• 00:28 which is pretty simple.
• 00:29 In the Tools bar I am gonna o grab my rectangle pool, and draw out a rectangle
• 00:33 over the whole document, making sure that the color is set to black.
• 00:37 Once that's in place,
• 00:38 switch over to the Ellipse tool to create a circle in the middle.
• 00:42 If you want to make sure that it is constrained to a perfect circle,
• 00:44 hold down your Shift key while dragging.
• 00:47 For this shape I'm not gonna use a pure white.
• 00:49 I'm gonna add a touch of yellow so it plays nicely with the lights.
• 00:53 And finally, the number.
• 00:54 The font is completely up to you, but
• 00:56 make sure it's nice and visible in the middle of your circle.
• 00:59 Now that the texture is ready to go, in your Layers panel, select all three
• 01:03 layers and then head up to the 3D menu, down to New Mesh from Layer.
• 01:07 Mesh Preset and then Sphere.
• 01:11 This will take the texture that we just created, and wrap it around a 3D sphere.
• 01:15 However, it won't be perfect.
• 01:17 If I go ahead and click on the newly created sphere, and rotate it so
• 01:20 we can see the number, it's slightly stretched out.
• 01:23 Here's how to deal with that.
• 01:25 In your 3D panel, find and click on the Spheres Material.
• 01:28 That just switch over your Properties panel to
• 01:30 display information about your sphere.
• 01:32 Right beside diffuse, click on the icon to the right, and choose Edit UV properties.
• 01:38 Now, in this window we want to squeeze the use scale to deal with the stretching.
• 01:42 Setting it to around a 150% should work quite well.
• 01:46 So now that our texture is scaled properly, let's move the ball into place.
• 01:50 Clicking on the grid will allow you to move and
• 01:52 rotate the camera to better position the ball on the table.
• 01:55 One thing I'm gonna do first is position the eight ball over top of
• 01:58 the purple ball.
• 01:59 Which will allow me to scale it properly.
• 02:01 Now clicking on the sphere will bring up its controls.
• 02:04 The square box in the middle will allow me to scale uniformly.
• 02:09 That looks a little bit better.
• 02:11 Now I can use the same controls to move the ball back and over, either left or
• 02:15 right, until I'm happy with the position.
• 02:18 I can also rotate right from here as well.
• 02:20 At this point the ball might be sitting either above or below the ground plane.
• 02:24 If this is the case under the 3D menu you can tell Photoshop to
• 02:28 snap the current object to the ground plane.
• 02:30 That'll ensure that the shadows are displayed properly.
• 02:34 So now that the ball is in place, there's an obvious problem.
• 02:37 The purple ball should be in front.
• 02:39 Luckily, 3D objects in Photoshop CS6 Extended can benefit from masking.
• 02:45 Hopping back into your Layers panel, I can add a blank layer mask to this layer.
• 02:49 Once added, I'm gonna zoom in and grab my elliptical marquee tool and
• 02:53 draw out a perfect circle over top of the purple ball.
• 02:56 If you went want to move the selection wall creating it hold down your space bar.
• 03:01 Now, to make sure that the mask isn't too sharp, feathering might be a good idea.
• 03:05 Under the Select and then modify menu, we can find the feather option.
• 03:09 We don't want an extreme feather, so around 0.5 should be fine.
• 03:13 Now that the selection is ready.
• 03:15 Filling it with black will create a mask over top of the purple ball.
• 03:18 Perfect. Now we're ready to tweak our scene.
• 03:21 Selecting the sphere again, let's hop back into the 3D panel and
• 03:23 go through some of the keys features.
• 03:26 The first element I want to tweak is the light.
• 03:28 Selecting our light will display its properties as well as
• 03:30 the handle on our document.
• 03:32 To match our scenes light source I'm gonna rotate the handle back and a little bit to
• 03:36 the left, until the shadow on the ground plane matches the shadow on the photo.
• 03:41 Now in the Properties panel, because we're dealing with a pretty dark object and
• 03:44 we're looking for
• 03:44 a strong light source, I'm gonna increase the intensity of this light to 650%.
• 03:50 Then, to deal with the harsh shadow,
• 03:52 increasing the softness to around 55% should help quite a bit.
• 03:56 That looks pretty good.
• 03:58 Next, under the Environment section, we're going to add an image for
• 04:00 the IBL, or Image Based Light.
• 04:03 This will not only give us a more natural look to our scene, but
• 04:06 it's also gonna help with the reflections and shines.
• 04:08 Clicking on the icon to the right will allow us to load in an image.
• 04:12 I'm not gonna use the exact same image but a similar image of a pool table.
• 04:16 When it loads into your scene, you may see a strong overlay across your document.
• 04:20 Once you click off environment that will disappear.
• 04:23 One more thing before we move on, the shadows on this image are pretty strong.
• 04:26 Down under the ground plane section we can increase the opacity of
• 04:29 the shadows on our image.
• 04:30 Increasing this to around 85% should match quite well.
• 04:34 Now if you're working with an image that contain a shiny surface, you can
• 04:37 also add reflections here, but for this project that wouldn't make much sense.
• 04:41 Good, now moving into our spheres material again,
• 04:43 we want to boost the shine on the ball.
• 04:45 We don't want a dull or matte looking sphere.
• 04:47 Somewhere around 90% should look really nice.
• 04:51 I'm also gonna add a slight reflection, nothing too heavy, but
• 04:54 just enough to show the image based light source that we added a moment ago.
• 04:57 10% should do the trick.
• 04:59 And you're gonna notice that as I'm tweaking these settings,
• 05:01 it's updating live on our document.
• 05:03 It's not a 100% to what you'll see when we render it, but it's pretty close.
• 05:07 Next I'm gonna add a bump to the ball.
• 05:09 This is basically a way to give your object texture,
• 05:12 which can help heighten realism.
• 05:14 Again, clicking on the icon will let me load a new texture.
• 05:17 I found a nice scratched texture over at CGtextures.com, which'll look really nice.
• 05:22 When the texture is loaded,
• 05:23 the unrendered preview will look much harsher than it actually is.
• 05:27 But I'm still gonna reduce the percentage to around 3%.
• 05:29 I'm looking for a very subtle texture.
• 05:32 So now that we went ahead and
• 05:33 tweaked the scene, let's check out what the render looks like.
• 05:36 You have to keep in mind that when rendering a 3D scene,
• 05:38 the first few passes won't show the final result.
• 05:41 Photoshop is layering on certain elements before it gets down and
• 05:44 dirty with the detail.
• 05:46 When you start to see the render slow down, you know that the detail's coming.
• 05:50 The lighting and shadows will start to smooth out.
• 05:52 You will see nice reflections, the bump's texture will start to
• 05:55 become more visible and the overall scene will start to look a lot more attractive.
• 05:59 Now that looks okay, but there is something missing, if you look at
• 06:02 the other balls on the table, there are strong lights that reflect off of them.
• 06:06 These aren't really easy to create in a 3D scene in Photoshop, so we need to fake it.
• 06:11 Let me show you a trick.
• 06:12 Heading back into our Environment properties,
• 06:15 click on the icon beside your imaged-based light and choose Edit Texture.
• 06:19 This will allow us to make changes to the image that Photoshop is using for
• 06:22 a light source.
• 06:23 With the image open,
• 06:24 I'm gonna add two white rectangles to act as our light boxes.
• 06:28 One at the top left of the image, and then another one on the right,
• 06:32 just above the midway point.
• 06:35 Once the image has been edited, saving it will update our scene.
• 06:37 You will notice that when I switch back to the pool table,
• 06:40 you can now see the newly created, fake light boxes.
• 06:44 Now, if we render a scene again, it should look a lot more believable.

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