1. First off, we will work on the 3d art that will be used in this layout. Open up your 3D Studio Max, and goto the bottom right hand corner. Hit the min/max toggle button to make it easier to work with (see image below). Now we're ready to start the real 3d part.

2. Go up into Create >> Standard Primitives >> Torus. Now make a few of these guys all over the place. Doesn't matter what it looks like, or what color. That will all be fixed in the next step. I made 6 or so, all having different sizes and widths. The more variety, the better.

3. See near the top/center... theres an arrow sort of in a circle? It's called the "Select and Rotate" button. Hit that baby, and go move your toruses around. Any way is fine, make sure they're all different though... that's what adds better detail to the 3d art.

4. Click here for the names of the buttons at the bottom, you will need to know them. Now i took the zoom tool (look down to where the Min/max toggle button was... it's near there. hover over the buttons for their names), and zoomed in a little bit. After that, look for your "Field-Of-View" button (which is again near the min/max toggle button and zoom button), and pull your mouse out. You should have some weird shape like the one in the picture below.

5. After that, look for your "Arc Rotate" button (once again, bottom right hand corner). This button allows you to move your image around to get a good angle. Just put it anywhere, and keep turning/twisting untill you find the angle you like. The image below shows the angle I liked best.

6. How about a sexy material now? Hit m on your keyboard to bring up the Material Editor. Hit the button I have highlighted in the image below, and set your's up just like mine. In other words, you'd select the Metal Chrome material by double clicking it.

7. Now you'll see the sphere have a metallic look to it. That's what we want. Click it once, and drag the sphere to all of your toruses. Make sure each torus has the metal material on it.

8. Well, we're almost done the 3d part. All we have left to do is save this baby. Go up into Rendering >> Render. A popup should come up. We want the image to be rather big, so select 800x600 for the size (see image below for details for this step). Look for the button that says "Files", and click it (about half way down). Now you want to put in the box the name of your image. Name it something you'll remember, and save it some place close. Make the format a .png, so when we open it in Photoshop it will be transparent (and easy to use). When hitting save, a popup comes up. Select "RGB 24 bit (16.7 Million)". Also check "Alpha channel". Now hit ok :)

9. Finally, hit render. This renders your 3d image and saves it for you (once completely rendered). May not look too great right now, but don't worry. It will start to look better once we go into Photoshop and mess around with it a bit, I promise!