Icebergs - A quick guide to Alpha Displacement.

[Onemorelevel]

IceBergs

Today im going to show you how to make icebergs, but first off, I would like to say, I did not come up with the idea, or method, I am just translating yellowman's video tutorial on youtube, (Which you can find

) For a better understanding.

Plug-Ins you'll be using:

Alpha Displacement

Clouds

Ed Harvy's pack (Color tint)

Alpha Mask (Needed for method 2 at 2.5)

Note: You can use the built-in clouds option, but I dont believe it gives a nearly good enough effect for this tutorial.

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Text Color key

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Any word in Red Text is a keyword, you need to pay attention to these.

Any word in Blue Text is a layer. Make sure to not miss-read these.

Any word in Green Text is a effect. Use them wisely.

Any part of picture highlighted in Yellow is the focal point, this is what you look at and do.

Now lets get started!

Step one: The BASE.

1.1 Open paint.net, and make a new canvas, about 800,600.

1.2 Fill your current layer Black. And rename your layer to Water

1.3 Add a new layer :AddNewLayer: , name it Clouds/Icebergs.

1.4 Effects > Clouds on our iceberg layer at these settings, Remember dont use the built-in clouds, use this one for a better effect.

Note: I've blocked the reseed boxes in this pic, so you dont steal the same outcome.

Your canvas should look similar to this:

Good job you finished our first step!

Step two: The Iceburg!.

2.1 Flatten ALL Layers. :Flatten: (Ctrl-Shift-F)

2.2 Apply Rotate-Zoom (Ctrl-Shift-Z)at these settings:

2.3 Now, Use Alpha Displacement at these settings:

EDIT: Instead of using the 1 in the picture, use 3.

2.4 Ctrl-F until you think it looks good.

2.5 Now there are two ways to do this step.

Method 1 (Easy)

Hidden Content:

Guassian blur at a radius of one

Method 2 (Medium, but better results)

Hidden Content:

Duplicate your layer, use Edge detect run at 90.00.

Use alpha mask with default settings, and no mask loaded.

Guassian blur :GaussianBlur: and flatten :Flatten:!

You should have:

2.6 Color tint at these settings:

2.7 Select the part where your iceburg is with the rectangle selection tool, and crop to selection. :Crop:

Tada! Your finished Image!

Please post your results! Ill update it tommorow, I need to go eat now!

[Aqua Tail]

Very Cool! This is a really easy guide to follow! Clear and Flowing! (Yours is way better than mine!)

I see a bit of transparency at the bottom of mine, but that's okay! Again, really cool!

[Onemorelevel]

Thanks a lot! For the transparency at the bottom, Try using the clone stamp. :CloneStamp:

And for the pointy edges, use guassian blur, or try using 3 instead of one when you do alpha displacement.

[Sarkut]

A well organised tutorial. Thanks.

[flip]

Good thinking. Nice.

[Goonfella]

Here`s mine -

[Onemorelevel]

Wow Im lovin it goonfella, but one thing, you see how there is black on the bottom of your iceburgs? Just use alpha mask to remove it.

[Goonfella]

That is the drop shadow I added to try to make the icebergs more `in' the water than `on' it if you see what I mean and to try to match the dark colour of the water.Plus the background is quite dark as well so there is not much sun, if any.

Maybe I was wrong to add it.

btw - how would I use alpha mask to remove the dark areas? I rarely use it so I`m not sure.

[Onemorelevel]

Alpha mask can remove all white, or all black if you invert it. If you have no mask loaded, try it, it helps with feathering, and doesnt leave :AntiAliasingOff:

[yellowman]

Thanks Onemorelevel, you raise the tutorial one more level with this, that's is well written.

And nice images Aqua Tail, Sarkut and Goon that is awesome view.

[Onemorelevel]

Thanks Onemorelevel, you raise the tutorial one more level with this, that's is well written.

And nice images Aqua Tail, Sarkut and Goon that is awesome view.

I love it when People say onemorelevel in their posts haha. Thanks yellowman, Im going to see if I can get a good mountain texture, and add on to this tutorial how to make mountains.

[barbieq25]

@Onemorelevel, thanks heaps for transcribing the tute. Clear and easy to follow. Great tips too to follow up.

@Sarkut, looks great. Kinda like when they do a flyover in a plane or something. Nice one!

@Goonfella, awesome. I like how you put it with a background.

Here's my go at it...idea was great but execution needs a lot more practice.

[theonlychad]

very well written tutorial i will have to give a go sometime

[TopHATslash]

Scary how realistic that looks..

[Curmudgeon]

I finally got a bit of time to try this one out...pretty fun little tutorial.

The clouds settings were too over the top for my taste, so I changed the clouds settings as well as using height field to normal mapping instead of the edge detect.

Then pasted it over some cropped water photo, et voilà, it's a spring thaw

[schmang]

I'll go through this a 3rd time when I get home from work. Maybe I missed something.

[blackpenny]

I must be missing something too. I've tried this a few times and it still comes out the same.

Method 1 works fine. In Method 2, after Edge Detect I have an all black picture. Alpha Mask doesn't seem to change anything. So I tried Invert Mask, and it deletes everything and leaves a blank layer. What am I doing wrong?

[Sarkut]

blackpenny,

The Alpha Mask Import plugin has been updated

and no longer works exactly as described in "Method 2".

Updated directions would be:

Duplicate your layer, use Edge detect run at 90.00.

Next:

On your keyboard-

Ctrl A

Ctrl C

Ctrl D

Use alpha mask with default settings,

with checkmark in "Paste from Clipboard".

Guassian blur :GaussianBlur: and flatten :Flatten:!

==========================================

You should have something like this as top layer when finished.

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/3069 ... player.png

[blackpenny]

Thanks Sarkut

I just tried it and it worked!

I've noticed in a few tutorials the plugin isn't quite the same, but I've been able to figure them out reasonably well. Except this one.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[mamabear2000]

Edited April 4, 2011 by pyrochild
AUGH Please don't quote the whole tutorial!

[mamabear2000]

This is my first time doing anything like this

[johnnysdream]

Can anyone do this tutorial over?Well I guess just the main parts where there are no pictures?I am missing all kinds of info because those images are gone now.Very disappointing.I would be most grateful if someone went through the trouble of posting the images that are no longer here.Or tell me how to finish or whatever.

[toe_head2001]

Can anyone do this tutorial over?Well I guess just the main parts where there are no pictures?I am missing all kinds of info because those images are gone now.Very disappointing.I would be most grateful if someone went through the trouble of posting the images that are no longer here.Or tell me how to finish or whatever.

No one is going to have the missing info from the broken images. Are you looking to achieve the same outcome of this tutorial, or will any Iceberg tutorial suffice? If the latter, I'm sure we can do much better looking icebergs than the ones in this tutorial (no offense to the original poster).

[Cc4FuzzyHuggles]

I'm not sure if I would call them good looking icebergs, but it is still a cool look. I personally am more interested in how the OP used Alpha Displacement to achieve the look that he made. I'm not very familiar with Alpha Displacement yet, so tutorials on ways to do cool stuff with Alpha Displacement is what I would want to see.

[johnnysdream]

Well another iceberg tutorial would suffice.