Bryce3D Rendering and Photoshop Artwork - Miscellaneous Artwork

I've always has a fascination with 3D renderings and the models that artists used to create those fantastic life looking characters. Being someone who when I first started using Photoshop, I hated the program; I was a bit skeptic about working in the 3D environments. So I decided to start small and just try some abstract renderings that I've seen other people on DeviantArt produce using basic shapes and then mirrored effects. Then those users would import the design into Photoshop and do some amazing 2D artwork.

I opened Bryce3D and started working on the ovals and shapes, then I created huge sphere which encompassed all my other objects and gave it a mirror texture so that it would reflect the other surfaces inside itself. The last item I needed to do was add my lights to create the reflections and add more depth to everything. I placed 3 lights in a triangle fashion and then did my first full render. After it was finished, there was a lot of dark spots so I figured I needed to move the lights around some more. I repositioned the lights and did another render, this time the finished product was the base you see in this image. I loved and thought I could do something with it. I saved it, and then exported it into a PSD file.

After importing the PSD into Photoshop I went to work. I thought that the bottom right area would work for some kind extraterrestrial weapon firing a beam, so I started to work on the main beam by doing a few different brush strokes and some blurring. I then created the glowing effects at the base of the beam by creating solid spheres, multiples on top of each other, blurring them, and changing layer style, and then dodging the outer edges. After that, I created the lightning strands coming out by starting with a 3px brush and creating a random brush, then I would create 2px brush, less opacity and fill, and would follow the same path, and then finally a 1px brush following the same steps. The soft smooth ellipses were creating by an elongated ellipse, transformed, and then half of it erased. I duplicated those patterns and blurred some more.

I spent a total of about 6 hours working on the 2D effects and when I was finished, I was satisfied and did some basic background pattern effects to help with a technical look to it.