You can make 3D art without Blender when the artwork needs a convincing object rather than a model you built yourself. Start from a ready-made 3D shape, set its surface finish, aim three lights, and place it with your type. Artfkt’s free browser demo includes a built-in 3D model library, so you can make the poster above and export it as a PNG or a turning MP4 without installing anything.

This guide recreates that SOFT FORMS poster step by step. Then it covers two finishes that commonly fail on a first try: metal that renders black and glass that disappears. Each comparison changes the finish settings on the same scene.

Do you need Blender for 3D artwork?

Not for every 3D look. It depends on whether you need to build the object or use one.

Your goal A good fit
Model, sculpt, rig or simulate your own object Blender or another full 3D package. That depth comes with a long learning curve.
Drop a finished chrome or Y2K shape into a layout A pack of rendered shapes. Each file is a flat image, so you cannot change its light or turn it later.
Build an interactive 3D scene for a website A browser 3D design tool such as Spline. Its current pricing lists watermarked web exports on the free plan and video export on Pro.
Shape, light and animate a ready-made form inside a poster or cover An image-and-motion studio such as Artfkt. You choose and adjust built-in forms rather than modeling new geometry.

Photoshop is no longer a route to this kind of render. Adobe began removing its 3D features with Photoshop 22.5 in 2021 and pointed users toward its Substance 3D apps, as CG Channel reported.

Set up a square poster

Open the Artfkt demo. It starts with a sample image and effect; remove both from the Layers panel so you begin from an empty composition. Select Document, then in the Inspector:

  • Choose the Canvas preset Instagram Square — 1080 × 1080.
  • Under Background, turn Transparent off, keep Solid, and set the color to #2236C4.

A saturated, mid-dark background helps a glossy shape. The highlights read clearly against it, and its color does not compete with the object.

Add a built-in 3D shape

Choose Add → 3D Model. The Choose a 3D model picker includes simple primitives and more sculptural forms. Search for Liquid Loop and select it.

The model arrives small in the center. In the Inspector, set Scale to 245%. Under 3D rotation, set Rotation X to 35° and Rotation Y to 340°. Tilting the form toward the viewer shows its thickness; a straight-on view can look like a flat ring.

Give the surface a glossy finish

Open Surface and set:

  • Surface color #FF6FAE, Metallic 0 and Roughness 0.22.
  • Under Advanced finish, Clearcoat 1 and Coat roughness 0.05.

Clearcoat adds a second, sharper layer of highlights over the softer base color. That pairing produces the inflated, candy-like look in the cover image. Lowering Roughness tightens the highlights; raising it spreads them into a satin sheen.

Light it with three colored lights

Open Lighting. Artfkt gives each model three directional lights: Key, Fill and Rim. They have angles rather than positions. Select each one and set its Light color and Intensity:

  • Key: #FFE4C8, intensity 2.6. Keep the default angle of −45° azimuth and 45° elevation.
  • Fill: #8A7DFF, intensity 1.
  • Rim: #7AF4FF, intensity 3.5.

Keep the Fill and Rim angles at their defaults of 55° / 15° and 150° / 30°. Leave Ambient at 0.35. A warm key and a cool rim separate the form from the background. The violet fill keeps shadowed sides from going flat.

Put the headline behind the object

Choose Add → Text. In Text content, type SOFT on the first line and FORMS on the second. Set:

  • Font Inter, weight Black · 900, size 230 px.
  • Line height 2.75 and Letter spacing −9 px.
  • Alignment center, color #F7EFE2 and Box width 1040 px.

The large line height pushes the words above and below the shape. In the Layers panel, drag Text below 3D Model. Then use Transform → Center on canvas. The loop now overlaps the bottom of SOFT and the top of FORMS. That small overlap makes the object feel as if it sits in front of the type.

Why metal turns black, and how to fix it

To try a chrome look, change the finish to Metallic 1, Roughness 0.18 and Clearcoat 0. Use a pale Surface color, #E9ECF2. The object turns almost black. A metal surface shows what surrounds it. Here, it has only three directional lights and no surroundings to reflect, so the lights appear as bright spots on a dark surface.

Two renders of the same 3D ring on blue: fully metallic, nearly black with bright spots, beside a pale satin-metal version with soft gray shading.

Left: Metallic 1, Roughness 0.18. Right: Metallic 0.6, Roughness 0.3, Clearcoat 0.8. The model, lights, background and surface color are unchanged.

In the browser, use a partial metal: Metallic 0.6, Roughness 0.3, Clearcoat 0.8 and Coat roughness 0.08. The base color returns, and the clearcoat keeps a polished edge. The result reads as satin pewter rather than mirror chrome. For true mirror reflections, the desktop app can light a model with an HDRI environment. That gives the metal surroundings to reflect. If you want reflective lettering rather than an object, the chrome text tutorial treats an editable headline instead.

Why glass disappears, and what makes it work

Now set Metallic 0, Clearcoat 0 and Roughness 0.04. Under Advanced finish, set Transmission 1, Refraction (IOR) 1.45, Thickness 1, and Surface color #BFF7FF. Hide the text layer, and the form nearly vanishes. Glass bends whatever is behind it. A flat blue background looks the same after refraction.

Two renders of a transmissive 3D ring on blue: nearly invisible over the plain background, then bending SOFT FORMS lettering into curves when the text is behind it.

The same glass settings, at Scale 340%. Left: text hidden. Right: the headline behind the glass becomes the visible detail.

Show the headline again. The letters behind the shape curl and flip through its curves, which is what makes glass readable. Give a transmissive object something with edges behind it: type, a pattern or a photograph.

In our test, iridescence was also subtle under directional lights alone. We left it out of the finished poster, rather than showing a look the scene did not deliver.

Animate a seamless turn

A turning object adds movement to a cover. To animate a photograph instead, see how to make an animated poster from a still image. In the model’s Motion section, turn on Transform motion, then Rotate Y. It uses a Full turn from the current angle. In the bottom bar, switch from Still to Animate. Open Timeline settings and choose 5 seconds. Because the turn completes one full rotation in the timeline, the loop repeats without a jump.

Silent five-second loop. The glass ring makes one full turn around its vertical axis, and the letters behind it shift through the curves as it rotates. The lettering itself stays still.

Export a PNG or MP4

Open Export and choose PNG for a still or MP4 for the loop. Stills use the current frame, and animations use the full timeline. Demo exports include a small Artfkt watermark by default. You can turn it off for free in Settings → Export Settings → Include Artfkt watermark. Export sizes and video codecs depend on your browser and device.

What the desktop app adds for 3D work

The browser demo covers this whole poster: built-in models, finish and light controls, rotation, motion and export. Artfkt for Mac and Windows is for when the 3D element is part of a larger, revisable project:

  • Searchable material presets and 30 bundled texture presets. Both hosts accept your own image as a surface texture.
  • HDRI environment lighting for reflections, with optional visible backdrops.
  • Static GLB import for models you already have. Skins, morph targets and embedded animation are not supported.
  • Solid 3D text with depth and bevels, and a shared Document Scene for placing several layers under one camera.
  • Saved projects to change the words, finish or angle later, and the full collection library for treating the finished render.

To treat a model as a print, the engraving effect tutorial turns the built-in bust into a banknote-style portrait.

The desktop app runs on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 13 or later and 64-bit Windows 10 (22H2) or Windows 11 PCs.

Limits to know first

Artfkt is not a modeling or sculpting tool. You choose a built-in form and adjust its proportions, finish, lights and motion; you do not edit vertices or sculpt new geometry. The lighting is artistic rather than physically calibrated, and scenes do not cast shadows onto other layers. Browser rendering needs a current browser with hardware acceleration. These settings are a reproducible starting point for this composition, not a guarantee that every model will look identical on every device.

How these examples were made

Every image and the video were exported from the Artfkt browser demo in Chrome on a Mac on 4 November 2026. No 3D look was painted or added afterward. The poster uses a built-in model and Inter, bundled with Artfkt under the SIL Open Font License. The comparison pairs place two unedited 1080 × 1080 exports side by side at reduced size. The loop was exported at 1080 × 1080 and compressed to 720 × 720 for this page.