3D rendering and saving

Render settings determine how 3D models are drawn. Photoshop installs several presets with common settings. Customize settings to create your own presets.

Select a render preset

The standard render preset is Default, which displays the visible surfaces of models. Wireframe and Vertices presets reveal the underlying structure. To combine solid and wireframe rendering, choose the Solid Wireframe preset. To view a model as a simple box reflecting its outermost dimensions, choose a Bounding Box preset.

Customize render settings

Face options

Face options determine how model surfaces appear.

Draws surfaces using any of these methods:

Draws without shadows or reflections using the GPU on an OpenGL video card.

Draws without lighting, instead displaying only the selected Texture option. (Diffuse is selected by default.)

Applies the same surface normal for all vertices in a face, creating a faceted look.

Replaces textures with currently specified color.

Displays boxes reflecting the outermost dimensions of each component.

Displays X, Y, and Z components for surface normals in different RGB colors.

Displays a gray model, using luminosity to reveal depth.

Displays paintable regions as white, oversampled regions in red, and undersampled regions in blue. (See Identify paintable areas.)

When Face Style is set to Unlit Texture, specifies the texture map. (See 3D Materials settings.)

For exported video animations, produces smoother shadows and realistic color bleeds from reflected objects and environments. This option requires more processing time, however.

Show or hide these Ray Traced rendering features.

Hides surfaces on the back of two-sided components.

Edge options

Edge options determine how wireframe lines appear.

Reflects the Constant, Flat, Solid, and Bounding Box options described for Face Style above.

Adjusts the number of structural lines that appear in the model. A crease, or line, is formed when two polygons in a model come together at a particular angle. If edges meet at an angle below the Crease Threshold setting (0‑180), the line they form is removed. At a setting of 0, the entire wireframe is displayed.

Specifies width in pixels.

Hides edges on the back of two-sided components.

Removes lines that foreground lines overlap.

Vertex options

Vertex options adjust the appearance of vertices (intersections of polygons that make up the wireframe model).

Reflects the Constant, Flat, Solid, and Bounding Box options described for Face Style above.

Determines the pixel radius of each vertex.

Hides vertices on the back of two-sided components.

Removes vertices that foreground vertices overlap.

Stereo options

Stereo options adjust settings for images that will either be viewed with red-blue glasses or printed to objects that include a lenticular lens.

Specifies Red/Blue for images viewed with colored glasses or Vertical Interlaced for lenticular prints.

Adjusts the distance between the two stereo cameras. Higher settings increase three-dimensional depth but reduce depth of field, making items ahead or behind the focal plane appear out of focus.

For vertically interlaced images, specifies how many lines per inch the lenticular lens has.

Determines the position of the focal plane relative to the center of the model’s bounding box. Enter negative values to move the plane forward, and positive values to move it backward.

Save or delete a render preset

Render a 3D file for final output

When you’ve finished working with your 3D file, create a final render to produce the highest quality version for output to web, print, or animation. Final rendering uses ray tracing and a higher sampling rate to capture more realistic lighting and shadow effects.

Use final render mode to enhance the following effects in your 3D scene:

• Image-based lighting and global ambient color.

• Lighting from object reflectance (color bleed).

• Reduced noise in soft shadows.

After the render is complete, you can flatten the 3D scene for output in anther format, composite the 3D scene with 2D content, or print directly from the 3D layer.

Save and export 3D files

To preserve the 3D content in a file, save the file in Photoshop format or another supported image format. You can also export a 3D layer as a file in a supported 3D file format.

Export a 3D layer

You can export 3D layers in all supported 3D formats: Collada DAE, Wavefront/OBJ, U3D, and Google Earth 4 KMZ. When choosing an export format, consider the following factors:

• Wavefront/OBJ format does not save camera settings, lights, or animation.

• Only Collada DAE saves render settings.

To export a 3D layer, do the following:

Limitations while exporting to the U3D format

Ensure that any 3D layers that you're exporting as U3D have only triangular object geometry. Additionally, while exporting 3D layers as U3D, keep the following limitations in mind:

• Higher-level primitives, such as NURBS, splines, and curves, are not supported.
• Texture mapping is limited to only one diffuse map per material. Ambient, specular, luminous, or opacity texture maps are not supported.
• Material animation is not supported.

Save a 3D file

To preserve 3D model position, lighting, render mode, and cross sections, save files with 3D layers in PSD, PSB, TIFF, or PDF format.