for making items, believe it or not alot of people have a easier time making 3d objetcs in bryce as they can build whats in their head with actual physical objects in front of them instead of trying to draw it from scratch.
if you have photoshop thats great, thats all you need. creatively either you can draw in photoshop directly or either sketch items out, scan them in, then draw them in photoshop.
uhmmm say your drawing a vial, or potion jar, you start off by selecting the round marquee tool (top left in photoshop, or click and hold top left square marqee and youll see other marqees in photoshop 6)
draw a circle with it preferably while holding shift because it makes a perfect circle. so after you click and drag a circle select the square marqee tool which is in the same tool set as the round one. after selecting the square marqee, hold down shift, and draw a little neck for the bottle while holding shift. holding down shift this time lets you add to your selection instead of making a new one. you can do it with masks also but lets keep it real for now.
now you should have a selection that looks like a little vial bottle. click on your gradient tool (6th down on the right side of the tool bar in PS6) youll notice that when you select that the toolbar at the top changes also, you have many gradient tools like left to right, pyramid, circular etc. choose circular. click and drag on the screen with the bottle selection. youll figure out how it fills the bottle up etc, you want a look that has the bottle slightly shaded on some edges with a light source coming from the top left somewhere etc.
you can further shade your bottle by using the dodge and burn tools (7th tool down right under gradient, both of them) dodge lightens anything you drag it over, like a lightening brush and burn darkens anything you drag it over. this lets you further shade the edges to something like a sword or bottle while the dodge tool lets you add highlights and lighten dark areas.
you can always add color by hitting command+b and moving the sliders and mixing the colors you want or you could use a gradient with color in it from the begining.
if you want i think i could make a tutorial of making a sword and vial and post it at my site. maybe add some of the advanced stuff too like highlights.
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Morvera ner Morden