I have certainly made more complex scenes, but this time, I modeled each board, getting the grain of the wood at least plausibly right on each face, and placing each nail realistically.

Following the workflow for creating game assets, I converted the completely realistic 3D simulation with 3D boards and nails into flat images. The woodgrain and beveled edges in the video are all simulated textures.

The outer cube is just 6 completely flat planes, and is only designed to be viewed from a distance. The inner cube has a simple indentation in each face in order to give enough structure that you can see it up close.

I’ve followed tutorials to get basic displacement mapping. stencils, grunge and other 3D effects, but my goal is to go slowly so that I really understand what I’m doing.