Technique: "Carved" 3D-Letter

Question

Below you'll see a picture of a design done by Chae Byung-rok, a graphic designer based in Seoul. Can anyone help me figure out how this was done/what technique is behind it?

(No stealing of intellectual property intended, all credit goes of course to the original designer, I'm merely interested in broadening my horizon in regards to visual techniques)

Answer 1

The easiest way is probably to use a 2D greyscale image as a depth map to extrude a 3D object. 3D programs will give you more control but you can do this in Photoshop (see Create 3D objects from 2D images in Photoshop - Adobe Support).

This for example, took me a few minutes in Photoshop:

Using this as a depth map:

Chae Byung-rok does have a few other examples of what looks like the same technique, If you take a close up look at this poster, you can see it is made up of completely discrete shapes, individually styled:

Which makes me think this was made in a 3D program (i.e. not Photoshop like my previous example), but using a similar concept.

I'll see if I can come up with a better example later on, I havn't got much time now.

Here's an example made in Blender with the same technique:

In Blender before rendering:

Which was made with this:

Answer 2

It's seems to me that the easiest way would be to use any 3D program. Extrude the T letter, add some extra slopes and render the result using low poly settings.

But

Seeing that Chae Byung-rok is a member of Korea Society of Typography I would assume he went the other way.

So he could done this by hand (as in carve this, photograph and then process results on computer).

There is easy way to do this in photoshop using 3D capabilities of the program or in illustrator.

And as my mother says: "Never trust an artist, they always make things up".

Use whatever is easier for you to achieve this effects. I used square brush in photoshop and "add noise" filter.