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3D extrusion from sphere


pdnnoob

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This tutorial is available as a PDF, click here to view or download >> SphereExtrusion.pdf

 

EDIT: forum is rather buggy right now...it's not letting me post the whole thing

EDIT#2: I got around the problem by putting the whole thing inside hide tags...

Today, we are going to learn to extrude 2D objects (ex: text or continents) from the surface of a sphere. (requested by sashwilko)

Plugins needed:

Shape3D*

Magnifier*

Tansparency Adjustment

Bevel Selection

AA's Assistant

Alpha Mask

Grim Color Reaper

*use shape3D if you have an object that was originally taken off a sphere (ex: a world map). Otherwise, use magnifier. I will be using Shape3D for this tutorial because there are more steps involved.

For this tutorial, I will be using this map

IMPORTANT: If you are not following this tutorial exactly (and even if you are), feel free to adjust some of the settings to your liking! The settings I chose are not perfect for every situation, and even I decided to make further adjustments at the end of the tutorial!

Procedure:

1. Paste the map into a blank image. I'm going to start by shrinking the image to 25% the original size because that is one heluva big picture.

2. The map is a little too detailed for our purposes, so simplify it using Median (Effects>Noise>Median). Zoom in on Canada while you do this because that's where most of the problems are (not intended to be offending in any way). I set my radius to 2 and percentile to 75

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3. Next, we need to make everything either black or white because gray will result in semi-transparent areas and that's no good. Open up the brightness/contrast adjustment (ctrl+shift+c or Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast) and set contrast to 100.

4. (Optional) Use the paintbrush tool to remove the really tiny (1-4 pixels) islands because they tend to look like needles sticking out of the sphere when you are done, especially when they are all alone.

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5. Open up Shape3D (Effects>Render>Shape3D) and change the following settings:

~Camera angle: 1.0

~Anti Alias: on

~Lighting: off

~Object rotation: as desired

~Scaling: (optional) see screenshot

This will be your base layer and, later, will determine the color of the oceans later

3

6. Duplicate the layer and use Grim Color Reaper to remove the black on the new layer.

7. Duplicate the layer twice. You should now have three layers with just the continents on them and one layer on the bottom that has continents and oceans together.

4

8. Go to the third layer (the one I named “continent extrusion”) and pull out your magic wand. Set tolerance to 0% and selection mode to global, then click on some empty space. Now invert the selection so you have all the continents selected (ctrl+i)

5

9. Use the bevel selection plugin (Effects>Selection>Bevel Selection) with strength set to 1.00

Set the bevel radius to something from 5-15. This will create the lighting on the edges of the object, so figure out where you want the light to come from and adjust accordingly. Once you have that done, press esc to deselect.

10. Now the real magic begins. Zoom blur (Effects>Blur>Zoom Blur) with the focal point at the center of the sphere. The amount of zoom used determines how far the continents will pop out. Then, use the transparency adjustment to make it completely opaque

10a. (optional) run Basic Antialias, then AA's Assistant at default settings to reduce the pixelation around the edges.

6

11. Go to the top layer and select the continents using the magic wand technique from step 8. Resize the selected pixels to match the zoomed image. (see yellowman's tutorial for help)

12. Now for some color. Select the base layer (the one with the oceans) and open up the curves adjustment (ctrl+shift+m). Set it to RGB mode and play with the checkboxes at the bottom and the points on the left. For help on the curves adjustment, see PrettyDarnNeat's curves tutorial.

7

Now you have your basic 3D effect. It seems to be missing something...lighting!

Lighting can be done a number of ways, but I like to make it tedious. Here's how!

13. Remember that layer from step 7 that we haven't touched yet? Select it and use the drop shadow effect (Effects>Object>Drop Shadow) with 2 widening radius and “keep original image” unchecked. Play with the blur radius and X and Y adjustments until you get something you like. Woot! Shadow is done!

14. Merge the top three layers together. You should now have only two layers—the raised continents and the base planet

15. Select the base layer and duplicate it twice.

16. Pick one of the new layers and use brightness and contrast (ctrl+shift+c) at 100 brightness and -100 contrast. This will be the highlight layer.

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17. Go to the other new layer and make that one -100 brightness and 0 contrast. That will be the shaded area.

18. Get out your radial gradient tool and set it to transparency mode. Make sure you are on the highlight layer, decide where your shiny spot will be, and left click and drag from that spot to the farthest edge of the planet.

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19. Go to your shadow layer and right click and drag from and to the same spots twice.

20. Duplicate the continents layer and press ctrl+shift+c then press enter (to set brightness to -100)

21. Right click and drag as in step 19, then adjust the layer opacity as desired.

22. Flatten the image (ctrl+shift+f)

Congratulations! You're finally done!

23. Just kidding. You forgot to show off your new picture on the forum ;)

10

Another example (I used the Magnify plugin for this one)

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  • Upvote 6

No, Paint.NET is not spyware...but, installing it is an IQ test. ~BoltBait

Blend modes are like the filling in your sandwich. It's the filling that can change your experience of the sandwich. ~Ego Eram Reputo

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This is a sticky-worthy tut. Amazing tutorial! :)

 

But couldn't you just use Posterize instead of Median-Contrast? Seems like an easier way to do it.

Edited by OddLlama

Here is my website - http://www.oddllama.cu.cc

Here is my gallery - http://oddalpaca.deviantart.com/gallery

Am I odd? - yes

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Here is my go. I really enjoyed this one. I thought as the seas were being coloured blue I would call this the `Blue Planet'. I got the texture in the sea by using a colour world map , S3D`d to the same size as the extruded one. Then I selected the land from one of the extruded layers, went back to the map and deleted the landmasses leaving just the sea. I then played around with layer blending modes and settings until I was happy with the result. Anyway here it is. Hope you like it - 

 

BluePlanet.jpg

  • Upvote 1

 

 

Please feel free to visit my Gallery on PDNFans

And my Alternatives to PDN

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But couldn't you just use Posterize instead of Median-Contrast? Seems like an easier way to do it.
Posterize, if I'm not mistaken, only reduces the number of colors used in the image. The purpose of using median was to reduce the amount of details in the picture. Honestly, I could have used a blur or something instead, but median allows for a wider range of adjustment.

I did try posterize just now, but it didn't do anything because the picture had only two colors to begin with.

 

Awesome picture, Goonie! Looks like a bunch of icebergs floating in the ocean :D

No, Paint.NET is not spyware...but, installing it is an IQ test. ~BoltBait

Blend modes are like the filling in your sandwich. It's the filling that can change your experience of the sandwich. ~Ego Eram Reputo

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For someone new to paint.net, I am quite impressed with my ability to follow this tutorial and not scream & shout at my pc :D

Here is what I managed to do :)  Thank you so much for an easy to follow tutorial pdnnoob :) Thanks for the name check too. 

finaleffort.png

 

Edit

I do have a question relating to step 12 changing the colour using curves, no matter what I tried I couldn't get it to be green (I even ended up using pyrochild's curves+) and still couldn't make it green. 

Edited by sashwilko

swIFX9v.png

 

 

 

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Looks like you followed the tutorial quite nicely!

To make the planet green, just make sure you have only the green box checked

curves.png

 

Keep in mind that you are starting with a completely black image, the color of which, in the curves editor, is governed by the left side, so to make it green, you need to change the point at which the green curve meets the very left side of the grid.

No, Paint.NET is not spyware...but, installing it is an IQ test. ~BoltBait

Blend modes are like the filling in your sandwich. It's the filling that can change your experience of the sandwich. ~Ego Eram Reputo

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I got so excited when I look at the recent posts and saw pyrochild in this tut. Yay! Stuck!

 

@pdnnoob:

 

 

 

Next, we need to make everything either black or white because gray will result in semi-transparent areas and that's no good.

Couldn't you posterize for this?

Here is my website - http://www.oddllama.cu.cc

Here is my gallery - http://oddalpaca.deviantart.com/gallery

Am I odd? - yes

Am I a llama? - yes

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Thanks for the sticky! <added another example image at the end>

 

Couldn't you posterize for this?
True, but you would need to use Median first either way. It's just a matter of preference at that point ;)

No, Paint.NET is not spyware...but, installing it is an IQ test. ~BoltBait

Blend modes are like the filling in your sandwich. It's the filling that can change your experience of the sandwich. ~Ego Eram Reputo

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6. Duplicate the layer and use Grim Color Reaper to remove the black on the new layer.

Or just use 85-95% tolerance magic wand on black with global fill mode and delete. (The less plugins, the better!)

 

Also, I found a better map.

 

http://images2.layoutsparks.com/1/227815/black-whtie-world-map.jpg

 

There's less detail, and it's already black and white. There is antialiasing though, so just run posterize at lowest settings once.

 

Surprising how easy it is, too. :)

IHPU6.png

Edited by OddLlama

Here is my website - http://www.oddllama.cu.cc

Here is my gallery - http://oddalpaca.deviantart.com/gallery

Am I odd? - yes

Am I a llama? - yes

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Plugins are there to help you!! Grim Color Reaper happens to be one of my favorites too.

So you see the method in my madness, here's why I did what I did with respect to antialias:

At the beginning of the tutorial, I tell you to make everything completely black and white (no antialias) because I knew that later, the antialias would come back due to the Shape3D plugin; and it was more important that the large areas of gray were made black. After that, though, I had to make sure I preserved the antialias so things didn't start to look pixelated, hence the use of Grim Color Reaper instead of magic wand.

 

In the case of the map you have there, then (thanks, by the way), there's no need to simplify the map, so no median, and therefore no need to posterize/increase contrast. Antialias isn't a bad thing--it tends to make things look more polished.

 

@everybody: thanks for the comments, guys! ^^ much appreciated!

Edited by pdnnoob

No, Paint.NET is not spyware...but, installing it is an IQ test. ~BoltBait

Blend modes are like the filling in your sandwich. It's the filling that can change your experience of the sandwich. ~Ego Eram Reputo

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I've removed the Hide tags from the original post and added a *.pdf version of the tut for download.

:star: nice job 'noob!

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I figured someone would do that eventually xD That looks amazing, kap!

 

@sasha looks like you beat me to the text version. great work!

 

@EER thanks! the tutorial wasn't showing up when I tried to post it without the hide tags earlier (sorta like the problem with my gallery)

No, Paint.NET is not spyware...but, installing it is an IQ test. ~BoltBait

Blend modes are like the filling in your sandwich. It's the filling that can change your experience of the sandwich. ~Ego Eram Reputo

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Thank all, it was not so complicated as it sounds I just swapped the black and white map by a color and texture, the rest were the same steps of tutorial

 @HELEN: I liked your sig also found cool the lights growing to pink

Edited by kap
  • Upvote 1

sing_zps8064bba5.png

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@pdnnoob,  I've said it before and say it again, you are no more pdnnoob, but pdnmaster,

Excellent tutorial, with fantastic result, and  thanks for referring to my tute, but I think if you explain the procedure in an additional step, it will be much better for those who want to download it, to save their time

 

 

BTW, as long as the sphere is in the center, then you can use layer Rotate/Zoom to zoom it

And I have tried it with the Point blur and got a good result as well, without needing to my technique.

Edited by yellowman
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