Adding three-dimensional objects to still photography is rapidly becoming a popular trend among digital artists. However, doing this utilising standard installed texture packages seldom achieves truly satisfactory results, because the synthetic materials have a tendency to clash with the tones and subtleties that are inherent in natural photography.
Texturing woes aside, even creating objects that contain the level of intricacy and detail commonly found in the real world is a challenge in its own right, especially for users who only have a basic grasp of 3D programs. Fortunately, thanks to the powerfully effective structure-editing devices contained in software packages such as Cinema 4D, creating these objects isn't as difficult as it may first appear.
In this tutorial, you'll be shown how to create a basic abstract shape in Cinema 4D, and then I'll walk you through various structural effects that will help you to add huge levels of complexity with relatively little effort. I'll also show you how to create your own materials from stock photography, give you tips on how to generate the best quality results by tweaking render settings, and then show you how to easily extract the 3D into your photography using Photoshop. After that you can have a go at building your own mixed-media compositions.
