hey just wanted to bring this to peoples attention. I just came about this while bored at work and wanted to know if anyone else had heard of this or has ever used it... I dont know much about it but I was thinking it would be cool to creat a structure and then import the image into PS to decorate!!!

http://sketchup.google.com/

Great free 3d prog. and so is Blender.

http://www.blender.org/

wow this website looks awesome!!! thanks for sharing, never even heard of it!!!

Yeah, it's been around for years.

The learning curve for blender is ridiculously steep. I gave up trying after a few hours. -___-

yeah downloaded Blender last night as a first timer thinking I was going to go on there and creat something cool... about 15 mins later.... I shut that program down absolutely clueless!!! However I plan on taking sometime next month to see what I can learn about it and I will go from there! Anyone got some pointers on where to start with that program?

I've played with the Google 3d thang before. It is pretty intuitive, and fun to mess around with. A good friend of mine actually used that APP to map out his apartment and then redesigned his whole layout in 3D before moving any actual furniture. You can get pretty detailed with it if you want to. Myself, I couldn't find any real application for it in my life, so I walked away from it (not like I need yet ANOTHER creative outlet in my life - I'm too busy already! AND, it was very difficult to make an ACCORDION look realistic! )

But if you want to dabble with 3D stuff, and if you have PS Extended, where you can really muck with the stuff you create in SketchUP, then this is an affordable (read:FREE) way to go.

At work we're currently toying with the idea of using Sketchup to show a rough rendering of what the customer's log home would look like on their actual lot photo.

Blender is not that bad - quite intuitive. You guys should see Maya - THAT is a killer - 100 billions of different icons and menus all over the screen.... I gave up after 10 minutes

This guy has some nice video tuts for Blender:
http://www.cgcookie.com/articles/

Designed2522: For sure you should learn basic shortcuts asap, they save lot of time and make the whole process more fluid.

You can try also another software - it's called Caligari TrueSpace and it's also for free. Much easier than Blender and I have seen people making lot of cool stuff with it.

I also used Sketchup to make a layout of my room before moving and furniture.

And tofu, a graphic designer friend of mine uses Sketchup on a regular basis for creating renderings of homes for real estate companies. He build the home in 3d and then makes every surface white in photoshop so that all you have left is the outlines. Then he does a quick coloring in ps, and makes it look like it's been sketched/painted and sends that to the company to see if they like the angle. If not, it's a quick process to change the angle. Once the angle is approved he prints it out with just the outlines showing (but at about 25-50% grey) and does the actual painting over it. He then scans it into the computer and makes any necessary changes in photoshop.

Astonishing detail on those artworks!

I have the program installed on my PC and i must say its pretty awsome once you get to know it
My wife uses it for her work and she's got some nice skills...