So I started off by using the pen and ellipse tools to make a shape that was clean and simple.
Then I rasterized and merged all of the layers into the shape and followed the tutorial to get to what’s in the screenshot below, which I took right before I uploaded it on Shapeways.
I thought this was a fun exercise, and it’ll be really interesting to see how my pieces turn out once I get them. I’d be interested to work further with 3d stuff in photoshop or other programs. I’m surprised to see how easy it is to get started.