39 replies to this topic

[welshblue]

This tutorial will show how to make something like this :

Plug-ins: Align Object Object Align Feather/Old Feather AA-assistant

Hidden Content:

Depending on your starting texture/ shine the results can be pretty varied:

The same technique used to make the keyhole in the image below. Point Warp used to distort into shape ...

[Aislin]

great tut, and more easy than thought

[nitenurse79]

I can't work out how it goes from blue to metalic. I just tried this on a wood style texture, and all I got was bland, dull blob with no hole in the middle, no shine and just basically awful.

Any chance of making a tute like this for clueless people like me, who no matter what they try, all results are dull

[TheHowler]

I get the ring just fine, I just can't seem to make it metallicy (if that's a word). Great tut anyway!

[delpart]

Was the texture touching the sides of the window frame NN? Rule of thumb to get a hole is negative on the slider and to ensure it the border is either a solid line color all around or transparent. Since these distorts work with circles you want the inner part to be round to avoid problems in this case as well. Its also a fair amount of trial and error to find textures that can handle being compressed and distorted.

Example of starting texture that doesn't quite work, but I chose something with this in mind:



Example of just turning it into a torus without highlights after processing it with vignette to create a black border and save me a step of back-lighting it:




Then a quick vignette to make a circle out of it plus the highlight blend and highlight layer creation (also because I rushed and forgot to show what it was like before the previous example):



Transformed with highlight and tiny amount of radial blur on the torus layer as it picked up some moire pattern in the inversion:



Transformed with highlight, then white balance to color it to a blue lighting effect:





Pretty fair example (I hope) of how it doesn't always work well with some things ... I can easily see how it wouldn't "grain" well without some more work due to the starting texture. Mainly point I had was to show that its "wee bit" glossy only since it has highlights to start with. To get more from it I think it would probably need maybe curves and such to bring back out the depth before applying the highlight.



Main thing is seeing how to radial blur a highlight on a torus for me. Thanks WB.

Edited by delpart, 13 January 2012 - 10:48 PM.

[welshblue]

I'll have to re-visit this to make it a bit more user-friendly.

For wood I wouldn't make the starting texture wooden. Work with B & W then make/ import a wooden texture and set it to Overlay

[jim100361]

Pretty cool tut.

[Red ochre]

Really inspiring tutorial

[delpart]

Very nice smiley Red. I almost did something like that but time prevails thankfully as that's pretty intense ...

@Jim: Mmmmmm, donuts. Still just seeing donuts thanks to the melt effect. Good one.



Figured I needed to throw out an example of the tut done in black. Change was using white balance to color the highlight copper'ish/sepia.


Torus from tut:


And various layers with highlighting tests using same polar inverse smashing:

Edited by delpart, 14 January 2012 - 04:45 AM.

[minners71]

Nice simple tut which is good as I haven't touched PDN for a while

[nitenurse79]

Thanks delpart, but you lost me first on the torus part and then on the rest of it too



@welshblue;
For wood I wouldn't make the starting texture wooden. Work with B & W then make/ import a wooden texture and set it to Overlay - when I try that the texture covers the whole object with no hole or any kind of shine that all the rest of you can do with ease.


No matter what I try it just won't shine like Red ochre's jim's or minners71. There must be a secret to getting it to shine, dang if I can discover it.

[jim100361]

No matter what I try it just won't shine like Red ochre's jim's or minners71. There must be a secret to getting it to shine, dang if I can discover it.

When I finished with tutorial itself I merged the layers down (except the background), I then used the metalize plugin and also toyed with the brightness and contrast.

[minners71]

I had a problem with the layer blending at stage 5 when I put it on multiply it dissapeared, the same happened on stage 9 with overlay. Will have to come back to this as all the other attempts are pretty cool. Especially like Red ochres and Jims.

[jim100361]

Latest piece:




Since del enjoyed the "donut" appearance in all of these, thought I might create one so he could satisfy her inner psyche.

Edited by jim100361, 14 January 2012 - 01:25 PM.

[nitenurse79]

Nice results here But that does not answer my question of how you can all add shine to an image, but I cant. It also does not help me finish this tute without getting what you all seem to do with ease. Should I stick with MS Paint? I think so.

[Red ochre]

Nice results here But that does not answer my question of how you can all add shine to an image, but I cant. It also does not help me finish this tute without getting what you all seem to do with ease. Should I stick with MS Paint? I think so.

Hello Nitenurse79,
The tutorial shows you how to make the first image - the blue one , which is not particularly shiny. Welsh's avatar and other examples here are lovely and shiny. The way I got mine (the outside at least), is by adding another layer, adding a highlight (I used my 'highlight plugin set on '6 way mist' - but a white radial gradient would do), then applying the polar inversion plugin again. (You may need to use 'Alpha-mask' to delete the bits not within the ring.)

I'm sure if you experiment adding layers and distorting using the polar inversion plugin you will get there .
It is the idea of this tutorial that I found inspiring and just a starting point with a range of uses. I love experimenting with what various plugins can do - often at the expense of never finishing anything! ... hang in there. - don't be afraid of adding layers, turning them off, back on again, changing the blend modes - throwing every plugin you've got at things and seeing what you end up with.

[yellowman]

@ nitenurse79, I just tried the tutorial, it works well, on step 5 don't blend with Multiply, use Glow instead, don't forget to use same settings on the Polar Inversion plugin as welshblue is showing in step-8

Edit, another great tut Welshy.

Edited by yellowman, 14 January 2012 - 10:42 PM.

[nitenurse79]

@ nitenurse79, I just tried the tutorial, it works well, on step 5 don't blend with Multiply, use Glow instead, don't forget to use same settings on the Polar Inversion plugin as welshblue is showing in step-8

Edit, another great tut Welshy.

Plug-ins: Align Object Object Align Feather/Old Feather AA-assistant So where is the polar inverson that everyone is mentioning here? this tute does no say anything about it! I can't understand how to do it, so I'm not trying to do it anymore. Thanks all the same, but I just can't do it. Nothing I try works..

[nitenurse79]

Hello Nitenurse79,
The tutorial shows you how to make the first image - the blue one , which is not particularly shiny. Welsh's avatar and other examples here are lovely and shiny. The way I got mine (the outside at least), is by adding another layer, adding a highlight (I used my 'highlight plugin set on '6 way mist' - but a white radial gradient would do), then applying the polar inversion plugin again. (You may need to use 'Alpha-mask' to delete the bits not within the ring.)

I'm sure if you experiment adding layers and distorting using the polar inversion plugin you will get there .
It is the idea of this tutorial that I found inspiring and just a starting point with a range of uses. I love experimenting with what various plugins can do - often at the expense of never finishing anything! ... hang in there. - don't be afraid of adding layers, turning them off, back on again, changing the blend modes - throwing every plugin you've got at things and seeing what you end up with.

This tute does not even mention polar inverson!

[nitenurse79]

I'll have to re-visit this to make it a bit more user-friendly.

Please do. It makes no sence to me what so ever, please make a "stupid" level tute.