texture and wrapping in photoshop

[tony620d]

not sure if the search is working on the forums.. didnt come up with anything. but my question is.. is there some sort of tutorial on how i can do a texture wrap in photoshop? i need to do some light 3d work and its not my expertise.

[Ghastly]

If by texture wrap you mean put a texture onto a surface that *looks* 3D in photoshop, one important principal has got to be mentioned...If you load a PSD file and it depicts a teapot, Photoshop hasn't got a clue that its a teapot. Photoshop can differentiate between different colours but what you percieve as a three dimensional image is merely an array of coloured pixels that are arranged in such a way as to suggest a teapot to you. Consequently it is beyond the abilities of Photoshop to recognise that a *3D* object has any dimensions other than width and height. There are ways to fake it to a point but these would entail learning how to manipulate tools such as dodge and burn etc... to suggest depth with colour, and filters such as displacement maps etc... to distort and move pixels in such away that they seem to look like they occupy a space in 3 dimensions. (a particularly good resource is www.teamphotoshop.com (http://www.teamphotoshop.com/) )

If the objects you wish to apply textures to are spherical, cylindrical or cuboid in nature then you may have a chance to fake the effect by filters>render>3D transform. If in a fortunate circumstance this does apply, then place your non mapped surface onto a layer (or just keep it on the layer it came in). Put the texture on to its own layer and adjust the settings with the above filter until you achieve something close to the desired effect.

If your texture is not easy to select (or inverse select) a good way of removing pixels that you don't want (and so make it easier to see the effects of the above filter) is to double click the offending layer and manipulating those blend if bars. (I could explain this in more detail but a) i'm nowhere near my graphics computer, and b) I could go into more detail than is really necessary at this time and end up looking like a plonker :D )