Faux 2.5D with Paint.net

[Justanother1]

A fun little project in Paint.net is to try and copy the Zbrush 2.5D effect. Understand, all CG art is based on the same idea as the older generation film makers like George Lucas used in movies like Star Wars. "Tricking the camera into capturing what you want". To start I used Sculptris to build an elongated chunky wall using a popular reflective material and rendered it in sculpt-mode. That render became the base layer for my work in Paint.net. Paint.net uses layers similar to Photoshop so I added a layer, used the paintbrush mode and drew some squiggles. I used the selection wand to select the painted area and then the clone tool to color the selection using the first layer as a reference. Paint.net also has an effect, Bevel selection which adds a 3d effect around the edge of any selection, so I used that. Then I did the same to another layer. Then I used the selection wand on the transparent areas of both layer, using the difference to finally select the overlapping area. then I copied and pasted that to a new layer and used the bevel effect which adds the appearance of layers. To finish, I added a layer just above the first layer to block it out, and used a gradient to mimic the ZBrush default background. The same effect can be used with text, shapes, and other images.