Some Vue readers here might be interested in my experiences with the 3D part of Photoshop 3D Extended. I have written about them on the Front Page of Renderosity. Normally I don't post when I write my articles, but I thought this might interest some since it does involve 3D and might be in people's mind as a possible program to use for changing 3D object's textures. 

Thanks for the heads up !

I have been curious about this part of the new version of Photoshop.

Yes, thanks Paula. I enjoy reading your reviews.

 I don't have PS3 - I wanted it but amazingly Adobe doesn't offer an upgrade from the standard PS3 - which cost me almost $AUD1000 - to the 3d version.  The only way I could get it was to obtain a refund within 60 days of purchase, and rebuy  PS with the 3d component - which would cost an extra $AUD700.  We pay more here in Australia than the software is sold for in the US.  I think it's to protect the profits of Australian reserllers.  Stinks as far as I'm concerned.  So..no 3d in PS for me..but I'm still interested to read what I'm missing.

I don't see this on the front page anymore. Is there an archive somewhere I where I can still read it?

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/news.php?viewStory=13719

Alas, it's still too much £ to upgrade from CS2, to CS3 :(

Quote - Is this what you are looking for ? If not, just search the site for Photoshop CS3 and you will find a few articles from there.

Yes, thanks Agiel

FWIW -- the 3D layer in Photoshop CS3 is garbage, IMO.

Paula refers to some of the issues in her review, but I'll expand on them.

Basically, Photoshop's 3D layer is a very poorly implemented Open GL-like render, without any of the speed of hardware accelerated GL. Dead slow, even on some modest sized models.

Its astonishing to me that Adobe would release such a poor 3D implementation . . .  It is only theoretically useful to a 3D textue painter, who works in Photoshop, and wants  some way of lining up his maps and UV coordinates.

Adobe could have gone and licensed FPrime from Worley, or something like that . . . would have been very, very useful, and worth the upgrade fee. But they didn't, and its not.

I think that the 3D stuff has potential and will hopefully be perfected in a future edition of Photoshop.  The most useful thing it would have been good for is painting texture maps and previewing them.  As it is you can modify existing maps, but you can generate a UV map from scratch and create a texture from the ground up.  

As it stands now, the 3D import may be good for low res web animations or compositing 3D elements into pictures, but I'm sure it would take a lot of tweaking to get it into something that looks really cool.  Here is an example of something I did with a photograph and some 3D birds:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1433422

Had I been able to evaluate the software first and learn what it's limitations were I probably would have just gone with the regular Photoshop.  Generally speaking I was dissapointed.

Hmm.... FaceShop is coming out with a plugin for CS3.

But if you want 3D paint for less, how about the Blacksmith 3D paint?
It's jsut been released for free!  oO

bB

I tried the demo of Blacksmith 3D and found it rather difficult, I am more familiar with photoshops tools and think I could do better with them.