When I create some 3D objects in Photoshop CS6 (a good example would be one of a dinner-plate), artefacts always show on the surface of the plate.

Question

Hello! The title of this message says it all, really (When I typed the above, I thought that I was typing the actual message, since I had been invited to ask a question). So, can anyone please help with this problem. The plates look as if they have wedges of the spread-type cheeses that can be bought in a circular pack, only they are bigger than those would be on a plate, and black.
With thanks in anticipation,
True To Form

Answer 1

I started with 3D in my teens (Amiga Sculpt/Animate 4D 1987) - from a personal perspective I "grew up" with 3d applications.
I have taught Blender (and other 3d application) classes, though, and like any other software it depends a bit on the person. If you have never used a 3d application before, then Blender is relatively easy to pick up. The basic tutorials on Blender Cookie (and many other sites) are easy to follow. Learning 3D is fun, and can also be intimidating at times, because there is so much to learn in terms of scope.
My advice is to pick your battles: the above image is not that hard to recreate in Blender (together with that tutorial) once you understood the basic GUI and handling of Blender.
The funny thing is that when 3D was introduced in Photoshop, I kept thinking and wondering why the developers made it so unintuitive and hard to use. It is quite slow and cumbersome - compared to Cinema 4D, Blender, Max, Lightwave, and so on, Photoshop's 3d always kills me. I just do not want to deal with it - and the quality is well below par compared with the current state of rendering technology. I am not saying it is useless (far from it), just that once you become aware of what is out there, and are dazzled by what even free software such as Blender can pull off, it sort-of becomes a "frog leaves the well" paradigm shift.
Point in case: the above image is completely CG and done in Blender. And if you have a decent Nvidia GPU you can even render on the GPU (many times faster). In the above tutorial the instructor looks around the scene while it is rendering in almost real-time - thanks to Blender's GPU renderer. Change a material, and see it update in almost real-time. Splendid! Compare that to Photoshop's archaic and dead-slow renderer, and you will never want to go back.
Here are the demo reels for 2014 and 2013 to get a basic idea of what Blender is capable of nowadays. It's insane to think this is freely available to anyone! And if you like After Effects: Blender has smoke and fluid sims, as well as a nodal compositor with full 3d scene and object tracking. Passes can be sent to After Effects and Photoshop for further editing.