Photoshop has long been the king when it comes to editing 2D images. In fact, many 3D artists have come to use it as their primary application for painting texture maps on their 3D assets. With the introduction of Photoshop CS6 Extended and it’s new Mercury graphics engine and enhanced 3D tools, painting textures for 3D assets in Photoshop has never been easier.

In this tutorial, we explore texturing a 3D asset from start to finish primarily in Photoshop’s 3D space. We’ll not only explore different methods of working but we’ll also learn about tools and techniques that will help make you successful immediately. You will be surprised at how well your 2D painting skills translate into 3D space using the tools in Photoshop that you already know.

By the end of this Photoshop training, we will have created texture maps for diffuse, bump and specular data for our model.