[Cali Jeepboy]

If you used “create 3d extrusion” from your graphic you should have a Extrusion in your 3D panel with some materials like front/back bevel/cap and extrusion. The first and last two are the edge and face of of extrusion, the middle layer (extrusion) is the side.

You’ll want to select the front cap (second material) and then in the properties (showing the material properties) in the Diffuse you’ll click the diffuse map and create a new file, this will be your color for the face. Paste in a metal image. Then play with the specular, shine, reflection and roughness settings. You should get a nice metal. If you need it to look better create additional texture maps for the specular, shine, etc…

Download the first issue of Photoshop Dimensions magazine (PDF), it’s free and covers 3D in Photoshop (CS6 Extended, but the features are mostly the same).

https://www.photoshopdimensions.com/issues/Photoshop-Dimensions-Issue-1-Photoshop-3D-Reference/

[Cali Jeepboy]

After you render the 3D scene you can either right-click/control-click on the 3D layer and rasterize it, or create a blank layer, select it and press, command-shift-E (I think) and that should merge all visible layers into the selected (blank) layer, keeping the original 3D layer, in case you need to make changes.

[Cali Jeepboy]

If you have a texture map in Diffuse, you can click on the Nornal map icon and select “Generate normal map from diffuse…” It will use the diffuse map to generate a normal map in the normal channel. This works in Photoshop CC and later, I believe.

[Cali Jeepboy]

You can download the first issue of Photoshop Dimensions magazine as a PDF (see link). The issue covers the 3D features in CS6 which are all in CC (2014).

It sounds like you want to make a camera (save camera location) for you main view/position, then make a second camera that looks at your scene from the side. You can click on the cameras to switch between the two locations.

https://www.photoshopdimensions.com/issues/Photoshop-Dimensions-Issue-1-Photoshop-3D-Reference/

[Cali Jeepboy]

There are several things that are important when creating a 3D Extrusions in Photoshop CS 6 Extended, the first being resolution—the higher the resolution when creating the 3D Extrusion, the better it will look. You can always down-sample the image (Image Size) after the asset(s) have been created.

Also, be sure that you are Rendering the 3D Layer before you Save for Web… If you don’t render it you don’t get the Ray-Trace image (and all that it has to offer) at all, you just get the OpenGL preview.

I hope this helps. Cheers!