Here's a quick tutorial, as easy and detailed as possible, to make digital camouflage.
Here's the effect we're going for:
Pick The Colours
In order to use accurate-as-possible colours, I'll smudge them to obtain the average colours. There is usually three colours in a pattern: Background (darkest); Middle (bit brighter); Front (Lightest)
Get those colours in an other image, in case you need to find them again.
Making the Pattern's Base
Start with the background colour, and fill your canvas. For this tutorial I went 500px squared, but I suggest you go as high as your computer can handle, for quality purposes.
Next, start up your CLOUDS plugin with your second colour selected on a new layer, with the following parametres:
Repeat again with the new colour, on a new layer. Make sure to press 'Reseed' when at the plugin's configuration.
Giving it a digitalised look
Select the top layer, and run a JITTER effect on it. This is to give it that 'windy' look.
Next, run a PIXELATE+ plugin. You can either use my parametres or try your own settings.
Now use the Magic Wand with a tolerance of ~45%, and select an empty-looking spot while holding SHIFT.
Once you have that, press the buttons in this order:
CTRL+I (Invert Selection)
BACKSPACE (Fill Selection)
CTRL+I (Invert Selection)
DELETE (Delete Selection)
Here's the result you should have:
Rinse & Repeat with the middle layer.
Also, unlike what I did, I suggest using a slightly different PIXELATE+ level for the 2nd layer.
Realistic Clothing
Now we want to give the camouflage a realistic look. If you look again at the resource image, you can spot a number of distrinctive features:
-The patterns are not perfectly aligned. You can replicate this by selecting the middle layer, pressing CTRL+SHIFT+Z and increasing the angle a single percent.
-The colours are not plain, this is woven. You can replicate this by adding noise to each layer.
-Woven Fabric: Run a STITCH plugin on each layer [OPTIONNAL]
-Shadows: Run a CLOUD effect with colours BLACK (alpha 250) and WHITE (alpha 0) and the
following parametres on a new layer. Don't forget the set the layer's BLEND MODE to MULTIPLY.
There you go! Hopefully you had much better results than I did, I really messed this one up...
Here's a better result:
Looking forward to seeing some results and critism!
-piney
Edited by PineappleQc, 02 July 2010 - 12:37 AM.
