One of the biggest challenges I have faced when creating work that features 3D elements is getting them to mesh seamlessly with my composition.
Getting the textures spot on and the lighting in sync with the rest of the piece was quite a chore, one that I usually handled by batch rendering 20 or 30 versions of the same model from different perspectives to ensure that I had something appropriate to work into the piece. With the advanced 3D file handling in CS4 this process is made substantially easier, as the program enables me to introduce 3D elements directly into my document and manipulate everything from their orientation to their texturing directly. In this tutorial we will look at importing 3D files, various aspects of texturing and integration, as well as how to manipulate the lighting of the scene.
