Lance's Mini-Gallery - New - "Violet"

[Lance McKnight]

Retired from this forum.

Edited March 28, 2012 by Lance McKnight

[HELEN]

I just love the way you used different programs with Paint.NET to create such a wonderful piece.

[barbieq25]

I agree with Welshy on both counts there but glad you showed your mask image here. Love it!

[Lance McKnight]

Thank you, Helen, Welshy, and Barbie. Just so people are clear, I used Blender to create the mask and fractal, and then used PDN to put it all together.

Welshy, I wanted to have a clean slate, which is why I asked to have the other gallery locked.

[Possum Roadkill]

I'm so happy to see you back on here. (does little happy possum dance)

[Lance McKnight]

My first 2012 art piece. I decided that I wanted to focus on two art styles this year - space scape art and 3D science fiction art. To kick start the campaign, I made the "2012: The Journey Begins" this morning, and I had fun making this. Apophysis 7X was used to make the nebula and the rest was done in PDN.

[Lance McKnight]

Planet texture practice. Tip of hat to the master, Goonfella, for his invaluable tips and feedback. Long way to go and 2012 just barely begun.

[HELEN]

The planets are simply gorgeous, Lance. I love the latest one as it's so smooth. It seems that the glow is cut off, but not sure if it's supposed to be part of the image. Great work, btw.

Edited February 4, 2012 by HELEN

[delpart]

That is one impressive planet Lance. I rather like the muted solar/light source peeking around. The distortion rings are a nice focal point that seem to help set scale for your surface texture as well. Atmosphere halo density always seems to set overall scale. Not sure if you were wanting more glow or less scale. This seems to be the hardest thing to dial in from looking at all the examples/tut's etc. Though I like this one the way it is.

[Goonfella]

Nice planet Lance. I`ve just highlighted a couple of issues on the image. Hope you don`t mind.

You can see where you have erased some of the glare from the sun but not all of it. A bit of radial transparent gradient will get rid of those and blend it in nicely. I would also make the sun brighter and not so blurred and move it round a bit so it is in the middle of the glow of the atmosphere.

Shadows and actual atmosphere inner/outer glows are really well done. Couldn`t do much better myself.

I like 2012. Really nice idea. The nebula looks great! I`ve not used Blender to make fractals yet.

At this rate I will have some serious competition!

[yellowman]

Great Images Lance, the texture on the planet is excellent, as goonfella pointed out the glare, also in my screen I can see some problems in the light/shadow of the planet, not sure how to explain it, just run Auto-Level on the flattened file to figure out everything.

[Lance McKnight]

@ Helen, Delpart, Goonfella, and Yellowman - thank you for all of your comment about the planet.

Goon, I have taken in consideration of how to add shadows and highlight to my planets, which I have applied to my space scene.

The space scene was created with the inspiration of a tutorial at dA, and I really like how it have turned out. Hope everyone who stopped by enjoyed it.

Cheers!

[Goonfella]

Very nice Lance. Personally I find the colours of the nebula a little too `rainbowish' though. It`s like a false colour image with realistic coloured planets. For me it does not seem to gel.I would tone down the colours a bit. I know what you are trying to do, I`ve looked at a few colourful nebulae myself. It`s just a bit too colourful.More pastel colours would look nice I think. Having said that,the texture of it is really great and I love those filaments coming up from the bottom and making their way through the clouds. Now that is realistic and really well done. I have seen plenty of nebula images with these in.

As for the planets,the lighting is much better. But I`m not sure about the bottom right hand edge of the larger one. There is no really bright sun in the image so I don`t think that area would be so brightly lit. The smaller moon is just right. That`s what I think this image needs - a sun. A really bright point of light so we can see why the shadows are where they are and it would also help to light up the nebula. I don`t think the nebula on its own is enough.

Hope you don`t mind me picking at your image like this. I know you said you were happy with it as it is. I just thought there is no point in commenting without pointing out a few things.

[Lance McKnight]

Very nice Lance. Personally I find the colours of the nebula a little too `rainbowish' though. It`s like a false colour image with realistic coloured planets. For me it does not seem to gel.I would tone down the colours a bit. I know what you are trying to do, I`ve looked at a few colourful nebulae myself. It`s just a bit too colourful.More pastel colours would look nice I think. Having said that,the texture of it is really great and I love those filaments coming up from the bottom and making their way through the clouds. Now that is realistic and really well done. I have seen plenty of nebula images with these in.

As for the planets,the lighting is much better. But I`m not sure about the bottom right hand edge of the larger one. There is no really bright sun in the image so I don`t think that area would be so brightly lit. The smaller moon is just right. That`s what I think this image needs - a sun. A really bright point of light so we can see why the shadows are where they are and it would also help to light up the nebula. I don`t think the nebula on its own is enough.

Hope you don`t mind me picking at your image like this. I know you said you were happy with it as it is. I just thought there is no point in commenting without pointing out a few things.

I forgot to mention that this tutorial was the inspiration behind this piece. I largely followed his tutorial until it got to the planet portion, and I just went off on a tangent and created my own. Thanks for your comments though. If PDN had better Flare I would be more than happy with it, but it is what it is.

[HELEN]

Personally, I think the bright colors work great for a spacescape. I know that most people try to keep space images kind of subtle, but I don't believe everyting is so dark out there in real life. Adding a little more color than we're used to is refreshing. Great job on everything.

[delpart]

Finally realized there is a change to the top post ... The new yers pic is gone and I liked that (hint hint, plenty of space ...)

I could get all critical but I'm not sure it would be of help as this is a "first" and adaptation from PS to PDN is not usually fun IME. The color could be done differently, but I wasn't there to see what in under there to make a recommendation on any change ... not that my experience to date would probably help there ...

Maybe I should have just said I dont think the colors work but I still see a solid space scene and can appreciate the work in doing one. I actually like the planet but it lacks scale in my eye, but that could be because of the color/nebula and lack of harder contrast or shadow throw ... Not sure why it lacks scale to explain it. Maybe the missing flare to draw the eye "into" the image?

Again, small disclaimer, I've looked at too many of these creations to be impartial in my head so I dont want to just tear it apart.

RE: Flare. Agreed, the one click wonder of the PS flares have to be created more or less from scratch. I'm still trying to figure out if I understand how Majik's works and how to modify it reliably to create similar (not the code, just the method). Just not enough time in the day to work on that. Suffice to say you pretty much have to create it by hand. Line with overlapping circles with some gradient blending, then layer blending to get the flare/glare from a splinter blur curves corrected copy, then some black and alpha or similar to make it an easy integration ... Meh, I'm sure you have better ideas on how to make one with all the glass work you've managed. Now of course I'm wondering if I can figure out a "formula" of sorts. I've only managed one example of my thinking on it so far, Digital DNA in my gallery just to see if that

[Lance McKnight]

I forgot to mention I had a much larger work. I reduced the original size so I could have it hosted on Photobucket, but the much larger piece actually contained more details, and it's available at dA. However, being generous sort I am (I know some are snorting at that thought), I'm going to link to it - take a peek. WARNING: The size is 3500x1500. You have been warned.

The flare is actually created with the Highlight plug-in, it took me some tinkering with the setting and using a grey color (for some reason grey works the best) I think I got close to how the tutorial had it. No blending mode was used since the color took care of it. I also neglected to mention that there is a fractal inside the color of the nebula and it was created with Apophysis 7X.

I am actually inspired to create another space scene. It's starting to become addictive!

[delpart]

I forgot to mention I had a much larger work. I reduced the original size so I could have it hosted on Photobucket, but the much larger piece actually contained more details, and it's available at dA. However, being generous sort I am (I know some are snorting at that thought), I'm going to link to it - take a peek. WARNING: The size is 3500x1500. You have been warned.

The flare is actually created with the Highlight plug-in, it took me some tinkering with the setting and using a grey color (for some reason grey works the best) I think I got close to how the tutorial had it. No blending mode was used since the color took care of it. I also neglected to mention that there is a fractal inside the color of the nebula and it was created with Apophysis 7X.

I am actually inspired to create another space scene. It's starting to become addictive!

Never been happy with Highlight, just not enough patience yet ... Like a lot of the tools with range its harder to "experiment" with while trying to be time frugal.

Thanks for the full size linkage. I still dont haunt DA and a lot of the original full size are hidden a lot of the time anyways ... I already ran into the headache that reductions rarely capture more than an impression for what I've toyed with. Being able to see more of the detail made this a different picture in many ways ... Sort of similar to being able to see an original painting versus the small 18x30 poster print. Not matter what its printed on, it's never the same. Planets still dont push like I would hope for, but the background is nearly night and day thanks to the detail.

Good luck with the 12 step program later on.

Edited February 22, 2012 by delpart

[Lance McKnight]

Good luck with the 12 step program later on.

Eh?

[delpart]

It's starting to become addictive!

12 step program ...

[Goonfella]

Never realised it was a tut, which is why you had the colours you did. Sorry.

But I think the problem with the planet is that it is not big enough and does not reflect the actual colours of the nebula, like the one in the tut. I know you decided to create your own planet, (which is great - I don`t like just importing ready made planets either) but it just needs to be bigger and to have a bit more colour to blend it into the scene. Also try duplicating the planet, move the new layer underneath, turn the it bright white using hue/saturation and then blur it so the lit up portion of the planet appears brighter. Then you can easily erase the parts you don`t need around the darker areas.

As for Len Flares, I never use PDN`s , it`s rubbish. What I do is go to Gimp, make a lens flare on a transparent layer, and save it as a png file as you would a normal image. Then you can just insert it to any image that needs a decent lens flare. Alternatively you could use it as a brush in Custom Brushes, but I prefer doing it the other way. You could make a file with a selection of various flares for use later. If you have PS you could do the same.

Glad to here your starting to become a space junky!

[Lance McKnight]

Actually, Goon, I found that using Highlight plug-in works. I think I didn't run the brightness/contrast to increase the brightness of the "flare." Thanks for the tips on the planet. Delpart was saying the same thing with the planet's scale. I'll be keeping those tips in mind.

Another thing, I did try to switch between GIMP and PDN, but no dice. Finally, I decided to kick GIMP off my computer permanently. I do have MyPaint, and I think I'll try to use the brush system in that software to do some work.

[Lance McKnight]

"Violet" added to 1st page, and added a link to a much larger version. It's a big 'un as well.

Software used - Apophysis 7X with random Foci as the only variation of the fractal, MyPaint to add color, lights, and shadow, and finally, PDN for the planet, layers blending, and some post production work.

Enjoy.

[dug]

Good to see you posting your work again.Spacescapes a nice change,I love the way you can mix the softwares together with excellent results.