Packaging and mock-ups

I wasted a good 8-or-so hours the past 2 days trying to find out how to create 3D mock-ups in Photoshop CS5. It's no surprise digital mock-ups are a necessary part of the print design world and I was disappointed that there wasn't any real answer. The best solution I found was a third-party plug-in on Adobe's website. Unfortunately, it was premium and ran for $7! I don't have any money to spend! Some of the tutorials are just bad, too. Some suggest distorting it to fit, but it's so fake and obvious, that I wouldn't bother even trying it.

So what really put a smile to my face was when I figured out a solution that would work. And now suddenly the impossible and/or tedious now seemed possible. Here is a GIF of some packages in a 3D scene in Photoshop.

Boxes rendered in 3D using Photoshop CS5.

The textures are just placeholder for what I'll use these for in another project I'm working on for class. Now, if I can do this fairly easily, I can do much more with it! Precursor to a new tutorial, of course. I'm gonna mock up a box for that futuristic PET I made in the tutorial. Even though my method isn't perfect, it's far more flexible than the other methods I found and that always matters to me most.