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Hi, this will be hard to write for me because I have to learn you this without any complication. You can see the picture result at the end. This will be very good lesson for all of you beginners and maybe intermmediate. You'll learn:

In 3ds max -

1.) Making plane and adding texture to it
2.) Placing reactor wind and animating it
3.) Adding lights
4.) Rendering wavy flag, disturbed by wind

In the Photoshop -

1.) Add details to the picture
2.) Add noise
3.) Make glassy orb

You'll need:

1.) Photoshop and 3ds max (no matter which version, it matter to have reactor plugin)
2.) Vector picture of the flag you want
3.) Motive of your country (pyramid, castles, whatsoever)
4.) A lack of time (I need double lack of time :))

I'm gonna be clear in this lesson.

Open 3ds max. Make a new plane in Top viewport. Set its sizes:

Length: 20
Width: 40

Then open Material Editor (hotkey - M). Click any free slot in Material Editor and click little grey box next to Diffuse. It'll open Material Browser, then click Bitmap and browse the vector picture of flag and click Ok to set it as Diffuse map. Then click the Assign Material to Selection. Be sure that you selected plane you made before! It should look like this:



Then click the Select and Rotate tool in 3ds max and make sure the Angle Snap tool is turned on. If it's turned od, it'll make our rotating easier by snaping the rotation on every 5 degrees. Rotate the plane on the x-axis by 90 degrees.

Then select Wind tool which you can access through the Reactor toolbar or by going to panel Create, Helpers tab and choose Reactor from pop-up window. Then you can click Wind box. Then make the wind helper in the left viewport pointing directly to the front of the flag!

It should look like on this picture:



Now this is most important moment. You must create Cloth Collection. You can access it at the Reactor toolbar or at the same place as Wind. Then make it where ever you want. It doesn't matter, because that will not be rendered. Then click on the Cloth Collection you made and at the Modify panel under Properties pull-out menu, click Pick, and select flag plane on the viewport. You'll notice it doesn't adds flag to the Cloth Collection. We must add reactorCloth modifier to the flag. So, click the flag plane and under Modify panel choose modifier Cloth. Now try again clicking on the Cloth Collection, click Pick button and select flag!

What happens now. It works, a miracle. Okey, now select the Wind helper and edit this values:



Now, when you set everything as I said, go to the Material Editor, to edit our flag material. We want it to look better. So, click on its slot and edit values like the ones below:



As you can see, I added the Specular level map. So click on the box next to the Specular level map and from the Material Browser choose Fallof and set these settings:



You should also add MeshSmooth modifier with lterations 2 to the flag plane. Actually, do that if you want to have smooth surface. I added it!

Now the lighting. Add one sky, no matter where. Then make two area spot lights. Your viewports should look like this:



Now, select one by one areaSpotLight and check on Targeted (in the Modify panel), turn on Shadows and set shadows to Ray Traced Shadows. Set Multiplier to 0,8 for one, and 0,5 for other areaSpotLight.

We're almost finished in 3ds max. Go to the Rendering/Render... and set Mental Ray renderer and set Output size to 3508x2480 px. And of course at the Render Output, set in which folder do you want to save picture! Then at last in the Indirect Illumination set these options:



Now at last click Render button to render the picture!

This is what I get:



We've finished our work in 3ds max. You'll not get same result probably but no matter. It will be video tutorial on this in few days, to get your work easier.

We're getting back to Photoshop. Open the Photoshop and the picture you just rendered. Copy the background layer and rename it to Flag soft light. Then click on the new made layer and change its blending mode to Soft Light! Then go under the menu Layer/New adjustment layer/Hue/Saturation. Set its name to "Flag - Hue/Saturation" and click Ok. It'll open the Hue/Saturation window automatically. Lower the Saturation scroller from about -60 to -80. Whatever you want. I set my to -70. Be sure Colorize is unchecked and then click Ok. The image should be a bit 'greyed' now. Now, we want to lower that grey by adding a gradient. Make a new layer, rename it to Flag Gradient. Select the gradient tool. Set colors to your flag's color. In my case, it's yellow and blue. Now drag the gradient tool from the bottom left corner to the top right corner. Now, change the blending of the layer Flag Gradient to Color blending and set its opacity to 50%. This is how it should look so far:



We're finished with the flag. Now it's time for the motive of the country. I'll put the motive of our stone made sculptures from the middle ages called 'stecak'. Make a new layer and rename it to Motive Base. Make an elipse in the middle of the picture and set colors you want for the gradient. Then from the top of the elipse drag the gradient tool to the bottom of the elipse. Then add the Underpainting... filter from the Filter menu and Artistic sub-menu. Then, double click on the icon next to the Motive Base layer and add Drop shadow with your own values.

Now, if you lost selection of the Motive Base layer, you'll get selection back by holding Ctrl and clicking on the icon next to the layer Motive Base. Then get back to the new made layer rename it to Stone Texture and open the texture you want and add it to this layer.Then go under Selection menu, Modify and click Contract and contract the elipse selection by 10 px. Then click Ctrl+Shift+I to inverse the selection and click Delete to delete everything except the elipse texture. Then change the blending of the layer Stone texture to Multiply and set its Opacity to 50%.

Now, we're going to make a new layer and call it Motive. Then open the motive you want and drag it onto that layer. Double click icon of the layer Motive, it'll open Layer Style again. Turn on Stroke and set the color to white. Then change the blending of the layer Motive to the Color, to get the texture of the stone for our motive. Because this motive of our country of a man holding his hand up is sculpted on the stone. That's our national treasure (now there's a pyramid too :)).

Now get back the selection of the layer Motive base and make a new layer and call it, Shine #1. Fill the selection with white color. Set the blending of that layer to Overlay and click Add Layer mask in the Layers pallete. Now when you made layer mask it selects mask automatically. Fill the mask with black color, whole mask. Then take a Brush tool, white foreground and still editing mask of the layer, brush the top of the motive. Before brushing you should lower the flow to about 40%-50%.

Again new layer, rename to Shine #2 and get back selection of the layer Motive Base again. Fill it with white again. Then click Add Layer mask again. Now, leave the white color of the mask of the layer. Then change blending of that layer to the Soft Light. Then take Brush tool again and take black color. But be sure to be brushing on the mask of the layer, not on the layer itself. We want to color mask. Brush the mask on the top of the motive. Then just duplicate that layer once.

Then make a new layer called Frame and fill it with black. Change its blending to the Color. And double click its icon to open Layer style again. Turn on Stroke and set black color, Inside and its blending to Color. Then just click Ok and set the Fill of that layer to 0%.

One more thing and we're finished. Add new layer and rename it to Inner Shadow. Now get back selection like you done before, but now selection of Stone Texture layer. Color the selection with black. Add layer mask again and leave the color of the mask at white color. Now with same selection, go under Select menu, Modify and click Contract and contract it to middle of its size. Then go again in the menu Select but now click Feather and set to 60 px. Then just fill the contracted selection with black color.

Now we only left the text if you want to add it. I'll add it. Select Horizontal Type Tool and type text you want. Center it just under the motive, then right click on the text layer and click Rasterize Type. Then Double click on the icon next to text layer and turn on Drop Shadow. Set the values you want, I have set distance to 5, spread to 4 and size to 14.

Whoa man, I really like it. I hope your thakful on this tutorial. I am exosted. I would like to thanks to Vedad Dizadarević for giving me an idea, support and lot of help about this work and tutorial. Thanks Vedad!

We're finished!!! My result is this:



Now, I also wanted to archive you all files I used in this tutorial so you can work with them if you don't understand them.

Archive download link

That would be that, I'm exosted. I hope you like tutorial. It'll be in few days in Video explained. So, bye once more, enjoy your stay and happy designing :))