Goonfella

Swankyfrank if you really want to advise people on how to safely download PDN I think you should offer up a bit of an explanation as well rather than just posting a link and nothing else.Some people need a bit of reassurance to go with it and it makes this forum a bit friendlier as well . Please don`t take this the wrong way. It`s great you are helping out and is appreciated but just bear this in mind in future. Hopefully fdsaevad will see we are trying to help and download PDN after all eh?

If you go to the correct place, as Swankyfrank has posted in the link above, you will be fine. There is no more risk downloading PDN than any other program. I have used it for years. The one thing I would stress is that if you do download it only get your plugins from this forum where you know they are safe. Do not download them from anywhere else. I have never had a problem with malware on this site in all the years I have used it. Don`t let paranoia ruin your time on the net. Just take sensible precautions and you should be fine.

That`s superb Eli. Really original thinking there. Looks fantastic. TR - got the latest version. Now Eli has given me something to think about with her nebula.

Thanks skullbonz. Glad to keep you occupied - for a while!

Coffee and croissants! My favourite Sunday brekkie. I like your World Cup football from last year. Have to admit Germany was the best team. But then when you have Arsenal players in the team (Ozil & Mertesacker) that`s not surprising.

Some great footballs being posted Well done to all. Nice to see the tut not just being followed but also adapted to various projects .

I like the animation racerx. Nice job. Thanks DrewDale. Colourful result you have there.

Thanks Eli. At least now I know what I was doing wrong. MJW - sounds awfully complicated to make any plugin - especially to someone like me who knows zilch about coding. ( tried it again and it works great. )

Nice football racerx. The panels look really 3D. Strange that you say Engrave/Emboss doesn't work in 4.05. I have this one and it works fine - as you can see in the tut. Are you sure you have the latest version of the plugin?

I must admit that I had the same problem as Eli. I actually thought it was not working properly and uninstalled it ! I might have another go now I know it was just me.

Wow Skullbonz what are you on? Excellent set of psychedelic images. Nice one.

We`d still beat you!

Thanks DrewDale. I want to try out different shaped panels if possible. If you look at Premier League footballs they have `stretched' hexagons (best way I could think of describing it.) Thanks Barbie. Third tut in a week! A record for me.

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it This tutorial was first posted by kake_fisk in April 2009. l have redone it, adding a few extra steps of my own, using newer plugins and (hopefully) an improved result at the end. A few plugins are used - Bevel Selection and Inner Shadow Selection from Boltbait`s Plugin Pack available here. Hexgonal Grid from Madjic`s plugin pack available here. Engrave/Emboss from Toli`s plugin pack available here. Shape3D by MKT available here. This is what we will be creating. Bear in mind you will need to change the Flood Mode of the Magic Wand and Paint Bucket tools to either Contigious or Global several times during the tutorial. This can be done by clicking on the highlighted section. OK here we go. 1. New image, any size as long as it is square. I made mine 600x600.Rename it Gridlines. 2. On that layer run Effects>Render>Hexagonal Grid at the settings shown. 3. Next do Effects>Stylize>Outline at default settings. You could always just increase the width of the lines when using the Hexa Grid plugin but I chose to follow the original tutorial here. 4. Duplicate the layer. Rename the new layer `Panels'. Select the Magic Wand, default tolerance, with the Flood Mode set to Global. Click inside one of the hexagons and you should select them all like in the image. 5. Pick the Paint Bucket tool, Flood Mode back to Contigious, choose your colour, and click only inside the hexagons needed for your ball. Mine is just a standard football pattern for the tutorial but there are numerous styles to choose from. 6. With the hexagons still selected go to the Gridlines layer and Delete. This will leave just the Gridlines on this layer. Then Select the Magic Wand again, change the Flood Mode back to Global and select the hexagons like in Step4. Ctrl-I to invert the selection, go to the Panels layer and again press Delete. This should leave you with just the grid on one layer and the panels on the other. We have separated them out as they will need to be like this to continue with the next stage. 7.Turn off the Panels layer if you wish so you can see the Gridlines layer below. Once again select the hexagons- Magic Wand at Global(you must be pretty good at this by now! ), turn the Panels layer back on again so you can see the effect of the plugin and make it the active layer Use Effects>Selection>Bevel Selection at these settings. To give you this. 8. Then on the same layer,leaving the Selection active, use Effects>Selection>Inner Shadow Selection at these settings 9. After deselecting you should have a football texture like this 10. Now on the Gridlines layer use Effects>Stylize>Engrave/Emboss at these settings. This is to try to bring out the panels and not to have a finish that is too flat. leaving the layer looking like this. 11. Either merge or flatten the layers. Then use Effects>Render>Shape3D at these settings- And Voila! We are finished. Save as a png file to use in your projects. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial . Now lets see some action!

All PDN.

That's a great comparison of fake vs real racerx. You've done a superb job with your waterdrop, I would never have been able to pick it out from the rest.

Excellent result Eli. I like the fact you adapted the tut to your own needs. Nice work.

Very nice Seerose but the drops are a bit grey don`t you think? Drewdale had a similar problem. Hope it`s not my tut at fault. (tried doing my tutorial start to finish with a flower this time instead of a leaf and it still worked out fine so I am lost as to why you guys end up with grey waterdrops. ) I did notice that I forgot to mention at Step 3 that you first have to Deselect the ellipse before adding the Drop Shadow so I have added that in.

That`s odd. Maybe adjusting the opacity of the layer would do the trick . Stock leaf? I think it must have been the green background and the stalk that deceived me. Sorry.

Nice work racerx. You just need to rotate a few of the waterdrops to suit the direction they would be running but other than that it`s a good result. Drew did you remember to change the blend mode to overlay? The drops look a bit grey and this could be why. I like the way you made your own leaf as well.

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it This is an updated version of the Waterdrop tutorial first posted by Eraesr using a slightly different technique with newer plugins. These are the ones I used - Drop Shadow from KrisVDM`S Plugin Pack The new Inner Shadow from Boltbait`s Plugin Pack OK let us begin. Open a suitable image.In my case I have used a leaf but water drops, as we all know, can be found in lots of different places so just choose one you like . 1.New Layer. Use the Ellipse Select tool to create a water drop shape. Bear in mind the surface you will be using when making it. 2.Then, with the colours default black & white, get the Gradient too land make a Linear Gradient across the selection with the white side nearest to the direction of the light.Set the layer blend mode to Overlay. 3.Deselect the ellipse (Ctrl-D ), then go to Effects>Object>Drop Shadow and add a shadow to it. These are my settings but you can experiment- Then go to Effects>Object>Inner Shadow plugin add some internal shadow to the waterdrop. These are my settings- Adjust the opacity of the layer for the best effect. I decided on 130. New layer called Highlight. With the primary colour set to white use the Paintbrush to add a small dot at the brightest part of the drop then blur it slightly with Gaussian Blur. I used a setting of 4. You should end up with something like this - If you want, for a bit more realism, you can distort the image under the water drop. To do this go to the Water drop layer and select anywhere outside the drop, then Ctrl-I to invert the selection. Then move down to the leaf layer, and use your preferred method to distort the area underneath the drop. I used the Effects>Distort>Bulge at these settings- When you have deselected you should have something like this - You can then merge the waterdrop layers, copy and paste onto a new layer, move and adjust the shape to have a few more of them quite easily. You will need to redo the highlight and distort the leaf under each new waterdrop. I did this quickly for this tut and got this result. It could probably be made to look better with more time spent on it. Hope you find this tutorial useful.

Thanks Dryda. Can`t believe you are still `forbidden'. Hope they fix it soon.

Lovely image Seerose, of course I like it. I think the frame looks superb . Well done. Thanks to everybody who has done the tut. It`s so nice to see it`s used.

Nice image Dryda. I particularly like the star constellation at the top right hand side. Reminds me a bit of the Big Dipper. The nice little moon at the bottom helps to show what a giant the planet is and that is an interesting use of different colour stars, although I think the red is a bit too strong for my tastes.It`s a great background though. You can see how much work went into it. Have to admit I`m not sure about the Nebula in the background . The clouds have a rather rough look to them. I think smoother ones would look better with more diffuse lighting. It looks more like an explosion behind the planet rather than a nebula (unless of course that is what you meant it to be, in which case it looks great!) And on the subject of lighting take a look at this - http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/gallery/PIA01969.jpg&imgrefurl=https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?IM_ID%3D2121&h=569&w=894&tbnid=6Zzu0neEtHHFuM:&zoom=1&docid=4rPaQ5ySqF4NPM&hl=en&ei=ACXNVMejAcq17gbP24GICg&tbm=isch&ved=0CB4QMygAMAA&biw=1366&bih=649 This is a photo from NASA .See how the shadow is far sharper and the sides of the rings are still in sunlight? So from directly behind the planet more of the rings would still be visible. Personally I think you have put too much of the rings in shadow. The rings themselves are well done, I like them. Seems a shame to hide so much of them! All in all another excellent spacescape Dryda. Hope you don`t mind my comments.

That`s right toehead , you are basically going from top left to bottom right. You could also just make a selection using the Ellipse Select tool and create the circle that way. With Metallize, I found it turned it black as well but if you set the Angle of Start at 360 and the Type to 0 it should work.