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Creating a Horn Texture?


Marilynx

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Continuing on with the making of the Talismans from my writing....

 

The next one is a horn, akin to a Jewish shofar, such as the one here. Or here.

 

For the first image, I can probably recreate the metal ornamentation with the various jewelry skills.

 

The shading on it does not appear to be too hard -- different layers for the darker shadows and the highlights.

 

What I'm having trouble with is the texturing on the horn itself. It appears the texture can run either along the length of the horn, or around it.

 

I've experimented with Effects => Blurs => motion blur which kind of gives the effect without the 3D aspect. And I cannot figure out how to wrap it along the curves of the horn. Either lengthwise or around the horn.

 

I wondered if MJW's Texture Shader plug-in (Effects => Distort => Texture Shader) would be the solution, but I looked at the UI and said "Ack!" because I have no idea what I would be doing with it. It's obvious from the thread on same (see above link), that some of the effects may be what I want, but I have no idea how to get there.

 

Any assistance would be appreciated.

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I used a simple bucked fill and noise on default (except for the saturation which I set to 0) before running a motion blur. After that I used Pyrochild's grid warp plugin to stretch the texture I made alongside the horn. Then I made a gradient-looking shading, duplicated and ran MJW's texture shader to add some lighting (downloaded the plugin today so I'm not going to say I know what I did there before it happened :P ) I put the texture shaded layer above and set it to Lighten, the duplicated shadow layer on top and set to Overlay.

Horn_zpsroxhwmjq.png

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Oh, because I am allergic to things I do not want to do. *Cough*

- Michael J. Caboose

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Marilynx, Texture Shader looks more complicated than I think it is, because it does two separate (but related) functions, so it requires controls for both. The top controls determine how the image in the clipboard is mapped onto the height-map. The bottom controls control how the height-map is shaded. They let you set the position of the light, along with its color and brightness. They also let you set how shiny the surface is with the specularity controls. I think most of what the controls do is fairly intuitive -- particularly with the lighting.

 

Limon, I've been very impressed with your images. I hope you experiment with Texture Shader, to see what you can do with it.

 

EDIT: I removed a suggestion on how to apply the clipboard image to the height-map, because I don't think it would work well with the type of height-map needed for the horn (the height map is too high, which makes the low 8-bit precision a problem.)

Edited by MJW
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I used a simple bucked fill and noise on default (except for the saturation which I set to 0) before running a motion blur. After that I used Pyrochild's grid warp plugin to stretch the texture I made alongside the horn. Then I made a gradient-looking shading, duplicated and ran MJW's texture shader to add some lighting (downloaded the plugin today so I'm not going to say I know what I did there before it happened :P ) I put the texture shaded layer above and set it to Lighten, the duplicated shadow layer on top and set to Overlay.

 

 

I like the effect you got.... but I'm not sure what a "simple bucked fill and noise" is or how to do it / find it.

 

I know where to find motion blur, at least -- nice to know I was on the right track with that!

 

I have Pyrochild's grid warp -- guess I will have to tinker with it and try to figure out what the dickens I am doing with it.

 

When you say you made a gradient-looking shading, where you meaning linear? Or was it a solid the shape of the horn which you ran a clear gradient over to make shading?

 

And yeah -- I have MJW's plugin, but I really have no idea what does what on it.

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Marilynx, Texture Shader looks more complicated than I think it is, because it does two separate (but related) functions, so it requires controls for both. The top controls determine how the image in the clipboard is mapped onto the height-map. The bottom controls control how the height-map is shaded. They let you set the position of the light, along with its color and brightness. They also let you set how shiny the surface is with the specularity controls. I think most of what the controls do is fairly intuitive -- particularly with the lighting.

 

 

Uhm... I'm sorry. Texture Shader is not intuitive to me, at least. Maybe I'm slow on some of this stuff.

 

Let's say I want something like the MJW in Black effect, as here. What would I have to do, step by step, and setting by setting, to achieve that? I don't know... I literally cannot see the "intuitive" part of this.

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The first step, which I'll be happy to explain in more detail if you wish, is to make a height maps that looks like this:

 

MJW_zpsqyy8wygc.png

 

All it is is blurred white letters on a black background, with a bit of motion-blurred noise added. In a height map like this, white represents the raised areas, while black represents the low areas. The whiter it is, the higher it is. Texture Shader applies an image and shading to the height map. However, in this case there is no image, so it's simpler. (Note: sometimes I refer to the height map as the "texture.")

 

Copy the height map (the MJW image) into PDN.

 

Run the Texture Shader.

 

Set Image (the topmost control) to Primary Color. Since black is PDN's default Primary Color, this will make the color of the image black.

 

Because there's no clipboard image to worry about, none of the other image-control settings matter. You can ignore them.

 

The Texture Height Scale, which increases or decreases the height of the texture, will work with the default setting, so it doesn't need to be changed..

 

Go to the Directional Light Direction control near the bottom of the user interface. (You may have to use the scroll bar at the right side, since there are so darn many controls). It has a little ball control you can move around with the mouse. Move it upward and to the left until the control slider values read about 0.00, -130.00, 29.00. You can also use the sliders to adjust to these values, or even type in the numbers. The position of the ball control is the direction the light comes from.

 

The lighting will be kind of dim. Increase it with the Directional Light Intensity control (which is just below the direction control) to about 4.50.

 

Check the Antialias checkbok almost at the bottom of the user interface window.

 

You should now have an image that looks like the one you linked to.

Edited by MJW
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I like the effect you got.... but I'm not sure what a "simple bucked fill and noise" is or how to do it / find it.

 

I know where to find motion blur, at least -- nice to know I was on the right track with that!

 

I have Pyrochild's grid warp -- guess I will have to tinker with it and try to figure out what the dickens I am doing with it.

 

When you say you made a gradient-looking shading, where you meaning linear? Or was it a solid the shape of the horn which you ran a clear gradient over to make shading?

 

And yeah -- I have MJW's plugin, but I really have no idea what does what on it.

Thank you Marilynx!

 

Hehe butterfingers, I meant bucket fill :lol: (press F on the keyboard). Fill the clipboard with the color you want and open the effects menu --> Noise: Add Noise. Set the saturation of the noise to 0. Then use motion blur with a high number on the distance to obtain a wood/fibre-looking texture.

 

The gradient looking shading, yes. I did that one manually because I wanted to make it look like the horn was twisted. I selected the shape of the horn and filled it with a light grey color, using the brush with a dark grey color I made a thick lining around the edges and used Red Ochre's Overblur to make a smooth transition between light and dark (therefore the vague term "gradient-looking" :P )

 

Oh, because I am allergic to things I do not want to do. *Cough*

- Michael J. Caboose

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Tip: the reason you need to fill before adding noise is that the Noise effect will not yield results on a transparent region.

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Thank you, Si Borg. I'm eager to see what you do with it, considering how amazing your images have been up to now.

 

I think maybe I'll add a few mini-tutorials like the one above to the Texture Shader thread. Since I knew what I was trying to achieve when I wrote the effect, I tend to forget how confusing all those various controls can be.

Edited by MJW
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I think maybe I'll add a few mini-tutorials like the one above to the Texture Shader thread. Since I knew what I was trying to achieve when I wrote the effect, I tend to forget how confusing all those various controls can be.

 

Thank you for the step by step. I've been tinkering with it and have got some interesting effects -- I would dearly like to know how you did some of the examples you posted in the Texture Shader thread, so if that's what you meant by posting some mini-tutorials, I will be eager to see them.

 

If I'm following you correctly, you start out with a B&W image, and then change the primary and secondary colors to what you want before running texture shader?

 

And yes, when you know precisely what you wanted when you set up a plug-in or other device, it seems perfectly obvious. <grin> Remember, up to two months ago, I'd never used anything with more than one layer, and for the most part, not much more complicated than Windows Paint! So what seems intuitive to an experienced user / programmer may not be to a newbie!

 

(I ran into that with a recipe for mock chocolate cake... I specified the measurements in ounces. I meant mass weight. It was obvious to me that you weighed the ingredients. Then someone came back and said the recipe didn't work. Digging into what went wrong, I discovered the person had used, not six ounces (170 grams) of an ingredient, but six FLUID ounces, or three-quarters of a cup. The 170 grams of ingredient comes out to around a cup and a half if measured in "fluid ounces". Of COURSE the recipe didn't come out!)

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If I'm following you correctly, you start out with a B&W image, and then change the primary and secondary colors to what you want before running texture shader?

 

That's basically true. The height map only determines the shape; the coloring is either a constant color or from an image in the clipboard. Originally I intended the coloring to always be from the clipboard, but then I added the constant-color options as a convenience. So if you want to use a constant color, and it isn't white, you've got to make it the Primary or Secondary color before running the Texture Shader.

 

There's one significant exception. If you want something to look like colored metal -- gold being the most useful choice -- you can set the Image color to white, then set the hue of the Directional and Ambient lights to the metal's color. For gold, that something around 100% red, 75% green, 0% blue; for instance (255, 196, 0). The reason this works for metal is that, as I've mentioned before, the highlight on colored metal is the color of the metal, not white. I use this method all the time -- perhaps a little too often -- because I like the way it looks. To make the metal look shiny, set the Specularity to a high value.

 

For more advanced results, the clipboard image is used to apply a non-constant color to the shaded surface.

 

I'll try to add some tutorials to the Texture Shader thread soon.

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