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Having spent some time searching the internet for a guide to making something like a starship hull texture, I came up with pretty much nothing. Maybe I'm just bad at searching, but either way I decided to make my own. It's my first tutorial, so if anyone has any advice or criticism I'd appreciate it.
This is the texture we're going to create:
I did mine on a 2000x2000 pixel canvas, since I intend on using it, but of course it works fine on a smaller one too. (I'll put future images
in spoilers in case some of them aren't needed.)
For this tutorial you'll need:
Random Shape Fill, and Stitch, both from Pyrochild's Plugin Pack
And Basic Adjustments, from Tanel's Plugin Pack
1.
Start with your canvas, and run clouds on scale 250 and roughness 0.75. On the same layer run clouds twice more, but this time with blend mode set to xor.
2.
On this layer, go to distort > stitch, at a distance of 340 and a width of 3. Make sure that wrap is ticked.
Still on this layer, run a motion blur at an angle of 0 and a distance of 15, making sure that centred is ticked.
3.
Make a new layer, and go to render > random shape fill, and set the settings close to what I've used, depending on your taste. As far as I'm aware, this is the only step that depends on your canvas size.
4.
On your squares layer, go to stylize>relief , at an angle of about -125. I did this 3 times, but you can do it 2-4 really.
Still on this layer, go to colour > colour to alpha, and run it at the following settings: Only brightness ticked, from 0 to 252, and a tolerance of 3.
5.
Still on the squares layer, go to photo > basic adjustments, and set it to brightness 20 and black level of -60.
Then set the blend mode to multiply.
6.
Make a new layer, in between the other two. Run clouds at scale 250 and roughness 0.75 again. Set the blend mode of this layer to additive and its opacity to 105 roughly.
7.
Make another new layer, just above the last one. Render clouds at the same settings as before, and then render them again at scale 470 and roughness 0.15, with a blend mode of colour burn. Then set this layer's blend mode to colour burn.
8.
On the same layer, go back to colour to alpha, but this time from 0 to 32, with 0 tolerance, feather at 65 and inverted alpha.
9.
Step 9 involves repeating steps 7 and 8 to make a 5th layer, but leaving the blend mode on normal. It should look something like this:
10.
You can leave it there, but I went on to set this layer's blend mode to xor (not normal) and ran a gaussian blur of about 90 to it.
And that's it! This can probably be played about with (or simplified, since I tend to take the long way 'round).
Thanks for reading this
