Last time, we converted our 3D rendering into vectors. We left off with a Photoshop file which we’re going to finish today with textures and shading.

First things first, I made a slight mistake in the last tutorial that I need to correct. Luckily, there’s a quick fix.

In the previous version of the graphic, I colored in the vectors with shading. This certainly makes the image more interesting, but shading so early not a good idea, as we can do it much better with Photoshop.

Dull, but fixed.

So, if you’re following along, go ahead and make all of your fills a neutral version of their base color. In my case, it’s mostly brown with a little light gray for the blade. When that’s done, export the file again and you’re ready to go for today’s tutorial.

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We left off last time with a high-resolution high-contrast rendering of our model. Now it’s time to explain why.

Here at DLB, we prefer to make most of our assets as vectors. Vectors are mathematical representations of lines (rather than pixels which have a fixed scale) so they are always crisp and perfect at any scale. That’s why we like them so much. We’re absolute neat-freaks, whether it’s geometry or CSS and we don’t like building things more than once.

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Before things get rolling, I should say that I’m only going to provide a 1,000 ft. view of our process. This is for two reasons: 1.) every project is different, so the best I can do is provide a summary of the steps we take, and 2.) this needs to fit into a digestible blog post, so I can’t be too verbose with my details (lest I venture into QED territory). If there is enough demand, in the future I can write up something more in-depth.

In general, there are four steps to generating a graphic from a 3D object the DLB way:
1. get a model, 2. render the model, 3. vectorize the rendering, 4. style the graphic.

We’ll cover steps 1 and 2 today and finish off 3 and 4 in future posts.

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One of the hallmarks of “Web 2.0” style are graphics that use 3D effects—glossy reflections, depth cues, etc.—but aren’t truly 3D at their source. At DLB, we often take the opposite approach, using 3D models to produce graphics that aren’t overtly 3D. We’ve found over the years that this method not only looks good, but in some cases has increased our productivity over more traditional techniques.

I should state upfront that we didn’t set out to work in 3D. It’s primarily a symptom of my training as an architect. Although most architects still draw your standard 2D plans, these days we also do a fair amount of design work using 3D. The majority of us know how to model fairly well. When Paul and I first started out, I used to draw everything by hand, but since I went to school, whenever I want to create a graphic it just seems easier for me to start with a model of it.

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