>>3898461no you dumbass, why would I post about 3d if it was a photograph? photography was used as reference, it's a 3d model. a 3d artist modelled it using assets, probably added or finetuned assets here and there, set up the lighting, rendered a very high quality still shot of the scene, passed that off to a 2d artist, and the 2d artist worked his magic and finetuned it into the finished image.
the lesson here is, 3d+2d = 1 day of work for an amazing picture like this that clients will happily pay 800-1k for.
if you wanted to do this in 2d only the process would be much less flexible, not allowing for you to adjust things and finetune details and it would easily take 3-4 days to achive a similar result.
standalone 2d is largely done for commercial art. the skill is of course still incredibly valuable but if you don't incorporate 3d you're underselling yourself.
