Tom Jackson

I've finally got around to implementing a single-effect implemenation of the fire effect. Due to the nature of this effect, it does best when you give it a blurry black and white image to start with: And it remakes the same shape as a firey outline: Try it out! http://ddrcoder.com/Fire/TJacksonEffects.zip

Nice work pyrochild, great minds think alike! I coded up almost exactly this about a week ago, and we're thinking about including it in a future version.

I see the issue you're talking about now... you're right, the red dots should form an ellipse. I'll investigate this.

korteck, I believe you are trying to create a spinning effect with the text by repeatedly rotating it. This isn't quite the right approach for doing this effect in Paint.NET. When Rotate/Zoom is performed on an image, it make the image look like it's been tilted/sized/rotated. The problem is that if you repeat Rotate/Zoom, it's not the case that you're rotating the flat text "KortecK". You're rotating a picture of the word, which is already rotated. If you want show text rotating as it does in your sig, you need to do this: [*:9bf73]Draw the text [*:9bf73]Tilt the text by 10 degrees [*:9bf73]Save the image, then UNDO the Rotate/Zoom. [*:9bf73]Tilt the text by 20 degrees [*:9bf73]Save the image, then UNDO the Rotate/Zoom. [*:9bf73]Tilt the text by 30 degrees [*:9bf73]... Repeatedly rotating the text with Rotate/Zoom is like taking a picture of a picture from an angle, printing that picture, then taking a picture of THAT picture from an angle. A bit of an odd concept, but that's what you're doing with Rotate/Zoom by repeating it. Try the above steps to accomplish what you're going for.

It sounds like your foreground and background colors are the same. Make them black/white.

I've changed the instructions a bit, I've found these steps lead to hotter results. Let me know what you think. The main difference is that I adjust the text layer's and clouds layer's levels before flattening, resulting in a better 'negation' image. Try it out.

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it Here's how you can create neat firey text like this: (More images will be added later, it's kind of late at the moment) [*:1d2fa]Create the text layer, white on black: [*:1d2fa]Use a large, blocky font [*:1d2fa]Blur this layer with a gaussian blur so that the details of the text are still recognizable (holes in letters like 'A' shouldn't end up closed). One eighth the point size works well. The stronger the blur, the less readable the final output will be. [*:1d2fa]Create the difference clouds layer [*:1d2fa]Set the blending mode for the clouds layer to 'Negation' [*:1d2fa]Render clouds with the scale for the clouds at roughly twice the font size. [*:1d2fa]Repeat it a bunch to get a whispy look [*:1d2fa]Use Levels to adjust the clouds layer. Open the levels adjustment, hit Reset, then under the output area, the replace the default values of 255, 1.00, 0 with 128, 2.0, 0. These are the output White point, output gamma, and output black point, respectively. [*:1d2fa]Use Levels to adjust the text layer. Open the levels adjustment, hit Reset, then change the input white point (the top-left textbox) to 210. [*:1d2fa]Flatten the image. [*:1d2fa]Use Levels to adjust the flattened image. Open the levels adjustment, hit Reset, then change the input range (the textboxes on the left) to 255, 96 (it defaults to 255, 0). [*:1d2fa]Open up the Curves adjustment. Choose 'RGB' under 'Transfer map', then uncheck the 'Red' and 'Green' checkboxes so you're only modifying the blue channel, add a control point as shown below. Do the same for the green channel so you have the curves shown below.

Kaiser Yoshi Wins.

Done

I also made this using similar techniques:

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to open or download the PDF Paint.NET has a new effect called "Clouds", which makes very nice looking fractal perlin noise. I've found that it's quite neat to use this to create fiery effects like this: It's pretty simple: Make a new image with dimensions 1000x500 Draw a gradient like so (with white at the bottom and black at the top): Make a new layer. Double-click Layer 2 to edit its properties Set the Blending Mode to 'Overlay', then hit OK. Go to the 'Effects --> Render' menu and choose 'Clouds'. Change the blending mode to 'Difference', then hit OK. Push CTRL+F to repeat the effect. Do this about a dozen times. On the 'Image' menu, choose 'Flatten'. This will give you a single layer with some nice black-and-white clouds. On the 'Adjustments' menu, choose 'Curves...'. Choose 'RGB' under 'Transfer map', then uncheck the 'Red' and 'Green' checkboxes so you're only modifying the blue channel, add a control point as shown below. Do the same for the green channel so you have the curves shown below. Q.E.D.! Other things to try: Use different shapes for the Layer 1 Gradient. Round gradients make neat looking explosions Tweak with the Curves, the general shape of them should be preserved to keep good saturation, but the channels don't need to go in the above order. Try Green, Red, Blue (instead of Red, Green, Blue) for a copper flame (copper burns green). Play with the 'scale' setting of Clouds for finer or Coarser clouds Play with the Roughness setting for clouds for softer or sharper fire Just try things out, you never know what you'll get.

I really need to be able to make icons in arbitrary sizes. I really do need to be able to save icons that are 190x35 or any other arbitrary dimension.

Thanks for the bugs, I'll look into those. I'm not sure about the wrapping thing, but I'll look at it. Don't count on a wrapping indicator, though. Ideally, we would write a full-fledged code editor, but that would be a little overkill for these purposes. -tjackson

The X/Y pan boxes refer to where the center of the image ends up as a fraction of the width/height of the image. Leaving it at 0, 0 causes the center of the image to stay in the center (no matter how the image is tilted). Setting it to 1, 1 causes the center of the image to be placed in the bottom-right corner of the output image, setting it to -1, -1 causes the output image to be centered on the top-left corner.

This topic will do fine, what's the bug?