Shiny 3D Dice

Step 1

Create a square with the marquee tool on a new layer. Make sure it is a perfect square by holding down the shift button as you draw it. Fill the square with a dark grey.

Step 2

Duplicate the square layer and move it to the left of original square. Use color overlay with a lighter grey and select about 3/4 of the square with the rectangular marquee and delete it.

Step 3

Duplicate the left side and go to edit>transform>rotate 90 degrees CW. Use color overlay with an even lighter grey and move the new layer to the top of the original square.

Step 4

Click on the top layer and go to edit>transform>perspective. Change the perspective until it is leaning about 45 degrees to the left. Make the side layer lean about 45 degrees to the top. Adjust the original square layer a bit. If you're not familiar with changing perspective, you may have to play around a bit to get the right effect.

Step 5

Merge the three layers together by linking all three and pressing ctrl-e. Then ctrl-click the new layer to make a selection around the cube

Step 6

Add a few lens flares to give some lighting effects later on. I used 3 lens flares with 105mm prime. One of them was 100% and the other two were 50%.

Step 7

Create a new layer and go to select>modify>contract and put in about 15 pixels in. Then fill the new selection on the new layer with black.

Step 8

Use Gaussian blur on the new layer. Use a large enough radius that the blur almost covers the cube.

Step 9

Change the blend mode to soft light.

Step 10

ctrl-click the original cube layer to select the entire cube, then go to select>modify>smooth and enter 5 pixels. Then go to select>inverse. Now click on the cube layer and hit delete. This will round the edges of your cube.

Step 11

This is a lot of steps, but it is really quite easy and quick. Press ctrl-shift-e to merge all the layers. Go to filter>sketch>chrome and use detail 4 and smoothness 7. Now press ctrl-a, then ctrl-c to copy the entire image and then ctrl-alt-z 3 times to go back to where you were. Select the top layer and press ctrl-v to paste the image we copied into a new layer.

Step 12

Change the blending mode to soft light and opacity to about 40%.

Step 13

ctrl-click the cube layer, go to select>inverse, click on the layer that we applied chrome effect to, and press delete to get rid of excess chrome

Step 14

Link the three layers and merge with ctrl-e again. The image should still look the same.

Step 15

Go to image>adjustments>hue/saturation. Be sure to click the 'colorize' checkbox. Move the sliders until you reach your desired color. I used saturation 73 and hue 0

Step 16

Take the blur tool and blur up the corners and edges a bit.

Step 17

Create a new image about the size of the original square. This image will be for the dots on the dice. I made mine 90X90.

Step 18

In the new image on a new layer, create a small circle and fill it with white. Make sure that view>snap is checked, then move the circle to the upper left-hand corner

Step 19

Duplicate the layer 3 times, and move one dot to each corner.

Step 20

With only 1 layer selected, press ctrl-a, then ctrl-c to copy the dot. Press ctrl-v and the dot will be pasted into the exact middle of the image as long as the entire image is selected.

Step 21

Link all the dot layers and merge with ctrl-e.

Step 22

You can spice up the dots a bit with a bevel or a pillow emboss and some other blending options. I went with a pillow emboss and an inner shadow.

Step 23

Drag the dots layer onto the dice image. Then go to edit>transform>distort and drag the corners of the box to the corners of the front side of the dice.

Step 24

Drag the dots again onto the dice image. Go to edit>transform>distort again and drag the corner of the box to the corner of the side of the dice. Do the same for the top.

Step 25

Use the eraser tool to erase unneeded dots to create whatever numbers you are trying to make.

Step 26

Now merge all visible layers, and duplicate the layer. Set the top layer to overlay to give it a brighter effect. You should end up with something similar to this: