Topic awaiting preservation: Water ReflecTao?

I have watched Moon Shadows sig development (The reflecting one) with great interest. So here we go MS with my first attempt at a reflecting tao.. I think I'm slowly getting the hang of it. This one is far from finished but I'm posting it up to get comments and to coerce myself to complete it

Not quite eh!
Methinks more work on a better DMap and perhaps a gradual fade on the reflection?

It looks more like its waving in the wind than it does reflecting in the water. Give the reflection more of an angle...it looks like its just waving completely vertically from the signature. I think its still a great attempt though. Very good for your first try.

looks like your sitting out on the water and your sig is sitting on shore right at the waters edge--but it's a bit jerky--could you just smooth out the motion?--mabe slow it down?--i don't really know anything about it, so maybe i should investigate before commenting--anyway it looks good so far.

Well,, I thought I was improving it but on reflection (heh) I seem to have taken a backward step somewhere. I tried to slow it down and make it smoother. This is most frustrating innit! Oh well, back to the drawing board for me.

The image is very clean Tao, and so is the reflection. I like

However, in my opinion I think you need to use another displacement map in order to make smaller waves, or make the actual big one smoother.

To quote Mahjqa : "The pattern I used was made with [filter>noise>noise], with gaussian blur in a setting of (I think) three pixels, and motion blur, horizontally, 8 pixels or so. Then I cropped it to the right size, ad used [filter>other>offset] (set to 'wrap around') and the smudge tool to make everything tileable." It worked very well for me, I advise you to make something similar.

Thanks Moon Shadow
I thought it might be the DMap, i will have to experiment some more with the settings. I think I remember seeing an example of a suitable DMap somewhere, can't remember where at the mo'. This is the first time I have tried to use "displace" it's powerful isn't it? Good news is that I have nearly finished my exams so I will have more time to devote to PS (ahhh)
Your sigs looking really good now bon ami

[This message has been edited by Taobaybee (edited 06-09-2003).]

I really like the most recent one. It's nice, and different from other water reflections I have seen. I really like the way it just sort of bounces around. I think I would stick with this general idea if I was you. It gives it some individuality.

The more work I put into this the further it gets from my original idea...Ah well yes meknows the answer methinks,,, somewhere here Displace Filter Tutorial In an attempt to make the effect smoother I used 20 frames with the Displace Filter Map "Offset" downwards 5pix each time. I'll try it again but this time I wont crop the image untill I'm happy with the animation. On the brighter side,,, I'm discovering lots of other techniques that are "jaw dropping", while I'm experimenting with this.



[edit] It hurts my eyes to look at it !!

[This message has been edited by Taobaybee (edited 06-11-2003).]

I like the one posted on 06-09-2003. I think its pretty nice looking.

I think the best way to make a DMap is by using a pattern. For a small sig the pattern could be 8 pixels high, so your animation will become 8 frames long.

an example of the pattern is:


the animation would be:


after perspective transform:


note: the horizontal scale in the Dmap options should be zero

I used this procedure for this animation, when I tried to imitate an applet.



[This message has been edited by zipper (edited 06-14-2003).]

Thanks for the help zipper but I'm afraid I'm light years away from achieving that effect. I think I am using two different methods or more likely a method only I know (that does not work). I have been trying to make a DMap displace an image layer. I made 16 layers and 16 DMaps. Each DMap I offset vertically (this time by 1 pixel). Then I used a separate DMap for each of the layers. Each layer I displaced by 3% vertically (ah perhaps thats it). Then export to IR and animate.
Result,,,,, a mess. Or at least not what I wanted. Your animation, which is beautiful, is just what I am trying to acheive. At what stage do you use the perspective transform?
Still, I know it's my plodding brain thats at fault, not the tutorials I have read. Perhaps I should write a step by step account of how I try to emulate the water effect. So other ppl could point out the various areas where I must have gotten it so wrong. I have not found a single tutorial that deals specifically with this animation. I have read the Displace Filter tutorial by Steve, which is excellent btw. Perhaps I should read it yet again for I surely must have missed an important step.
Once again thanx for the help ;¬
Tao
[edit]Opps forgot to add my latest effort. It's better than I thought but not quite it yet. I'll have to play some more.


[This message has been edited by Taobaybee (edited 06-15-2003).]

OK I'm writing this as I am doing the animation. I am at the stage where I have my image with 8 layers for the reflection, The reflection images I have graduated the transparency from bottom to top to give a more realistic look. I have the 8 seperate DMaps each offset by 1 pixel vertically and saved as PSDs. Now I am going to select each layer in turn and displace that layer with its corresponding DMap. I now have the displace filter dialogue box open asking for the % Horizontal and Vertical displacement required. I am going to choose 5%. It also is asking for choice of "stretch to fit" or "tile" and "wrap around" or "repeat edge pixels".
I am going to choose "Stretch to Fit" and "Repeat edge Pixels".
That done (the distortion still looks too big but I will continue) off to IR.
Oh yes, the size of the image I have been working on in PS is 640 by 480. So I think I will reduce the image size now to 150 by 200 px before going into IR.
In IR I simply switch layers 1 to 2, then 2 to 3 etc.
here it is, still not quite what I wanted and rather jerky.


I know it's too big at the moment, all the better to see how cruddy it turned out :¬
[This message has been edited by Taobaybee (edited 06-15-2003).]

[This message has been edited by Taobaybee (edited 06-15-2003).]

Your latest animation looks good, but it seems like some frames are missing. This is causing this non-smooth animation.
I'd like to explain how to create the water effect step-by-step, but right now I don't have time.

see ya

Thats kool zipper I diddn't mean to imply I wanted that, 'twas just whinging.
I am encouraged by how (albeit slowly) my sig is progressing. I have a few other 'puter problems at the moment that are keeping me away from the completion of the SiG. I also want to carry on with the "Make it week 106" when I have a chance. But it looks like I will have to completly reformat my hard drive in an attempt to sort out some major faults.
(Dark mutterings)

Tao

I understand that by now you know how the displace filter works and your only problem is the animation itself.
Your goal is to make a smooth animation with as less frames as possible, not only for the Kb's but also for your own good.
So, first you have to make an animation and later every frame from this animation will be a DMap for your final animation... OK this sounds confusing.

We will start with making the DMap animation:
For a picture as small as an average sig 8 frames should be enough.

Make a pattern, 8 frames high, looking like this:

I did this with the gradient tool

When you fill your image with this pattern it should look like this


now copy this layer and move the new one out of sight:


Merge these who layers and jump to ImageReady
Create a new frame and move the layer in the second frame 8 pixels down, just by using your keyboard cursors. If you did it well the second frame looks exacly the same as the first one.
Now select the second frame and tween Add 7 frames and check 'Position'
Now you have 9 frames, since the 9th is the same as the 1st one delete the 9th.

Preview your animation in Internet Explorer and save the viewed picture and open it in ImageReady. This seems stupid, but believe me, you HAVE to do this.

Link all of your layers and do: Edit; Transform; Perspective
It should look like this
Holding your Ctrl keeps the transormation symmetric.

And now again: Preview your animation in Internet Explorer and save the viewed picture and open it in ImageReady.
Result:

Jump back to Photoshop...

Now we are going to save every frame/layer as a different .PSD
I advise you to make a new direcory for these files.
Since we will use only Vertical Scale in the Displace filter we won't touch the Channels.

Make the bottom-layer visible and the rest invisible and save the file as 1.PSD
Make the second layer visible and the rest invisible and save the file as 2.PSD and so on...

When you are done open the image you want to reflect, flip vertical and copy the layer seven times.
At last we will apply the dispace filter to each one of the layers;
Select the bottom-layer, apply Filter; Disort; Displace
Horizontal scale: 0
Vertical scale: 10 (find out yourself what looks best)
The file to open is your 1.PSD

2.PSD is for the second layer and so on...

To animate jump to ImageReady and create 8 frames and in every frame make the correct layer visible; frame one: bottom layer... you get the idea.

Optimize and you are done!

thanks to mahjqa, without him i wouldn't have got the idea to make this



[This message has been edited by zipper (edited 06-22-2003).]

zipper,,
What can I say but thank you, for the time, effort and consideration you have shown me. I am humbled and uplifted in one swoop.
I am taking more time over the next one I do, in tribute to this. So if you don't see a post here for the next few days or so, it is because of this, I'm not giving up, trust me.

zipper thats awesome. Heres my attempt. its a bit too big to use as a sig as it is.


[This message has been edited by hellfireclanx (edited 06-25-2003).]

that looks very nice, hellfireclanx, but i see you didn't use perspective transform or am i wrong?
by the way, nice flames

uh, very cool zipper.

Did you give us permission to archive your utterings in the faq?.
If not, it still would be cool if you could turn this into a real faq-minitutorial!

so long,

Tyberius Prime

yeah I think I did perspective wrong. I filled the whole image with the pattern and transformed that. the ripples only occur at the 2nd half of the image so you cant see the perspective as well.
update

[This message has been edited by hellfireclanx (edited 06-25-2003).]

This thread is taking ages to load on my 56k.
Zipper I can't see any images on your posts just the little redX thingy. I hope thats only temporary.
Hellfireclanx, the practice adopted here is, if you want to test out your sig then start your own thread. It makes it easier for all concerned. Also try to keep the file size down. Some of us are only using 56k modems. Thanx

No offence, Tao, it looks like flapping to me.

quote:

---

Hellfireclanx, the practice adopted here is, if you want to test out your sig then start your own thread. It makes it easier for all concerned.

---

thats not my sig, its just what i made using zipper's method. I resized it and made a sig for use on another forum.

Hellfireclax
Either way dude, You put it there, not me, its not my sig, and it turns out that the "whatever it is" is not even for this forum!
Do me a favour then, take both examples off this thread. They are both large files and they double the time it takes for this page to load, (2-3 minutes for me at the moment). Thank you.

Now, back to you zipper.
I get as far as previewing the animation in Image Ready. At the stage where you say
"Preview your animation in Internet Explorer and save the viewed picture and open it in ImageReady. This seems stupid, but believe me, you HAVE to do this."
Then you say "Link all of your layers and do: Edit; Transform; Perspective". With this you give a link to an example. In the example you have 8 layers! In my work there are only 2. The original, and the empty layer that appears when you duplicate a frame. There are eight frames that play the animation perfectly, but only two layers.
Where did the extra layers come from. I apologise if this is a stupid question, but as far as I can see I have followed the instruction word for word.
Still i will work away at it. It feels like I have nearly cracked it.

okay, with

quote:

---

"Preview your animation in Internet Explorer and save the viewed picture and open it in ImageReady. This seems stupid, but believe me, you HAVE to do this."

---

What he means is, that when you preview it in IE (or any other browser), you need to save the GIF in the explorer window, by right-clicking it and clicking 'save image as'.

what you need to do next is to open the GIF, not the PSD in Imageready. whenever Imageready opens a GIF, it makes a layer for every frame. in frame 1 only layer 1 is visible, in frame 2 only layer 2, and so forth.

Previewing in a browser is not the only way to do this, you can also do this by clicking 'save optimized' and opening the GIF that you saved.



[This message has been edited by mahjqa (edited 06-25-2003).]

Are you sure you opened the GIF in ImageReady and not Photoshop?
As far as I know only ImageReady recognises all of the frames. Photoshop only opens the first frame.

If this is not the problem then perhaps you have a different version or some import-settings are different. I am not familiar with this problem :-s


wohoo polar coordinates!



edit: that's what I mean, mahjqa ;-)



[This message has been edited by zipper (edited 06-25-2003).]

Ah ha I see methinks . Inbetween my last post and your I did another one by just creating one DMap (as described above) and then moving down 1 pixel saving it moving 1 pixel Saving it ect anywho I think the problem with this one is that I only get the larger displacements showing in the reflection. because I made the DMaps the size of the whole image rather than just where the reflection is.
Thanks for the terrific help guys. We're nearly there!

zipper the pond ripples look awesome, ill try it out. you better remove it though, otherwise tao might get angry

In this one I seem to have the ripples moving a bit better, but the whole reflected image seems to shake a bit.
What do you recommend for the settings in the displace map for each layer. On this one I used 2% displacement on horizontal and vertical, with Tile and Repeat edge pixels as the other settings. This latest effort looked a lot nicer before I scaled it down. I am going to try out a few variations for the image reflected next I think.



Thank you for removing your "images" anyway Hellfireclanx. I'm not angry, just right.

it still does.

TaoBB - it's come a long way. Lookin' good!


Cell 617

I still like the one posted on 06-09-2003 01:59 AM the best.



But I mean, the more you try the more the learn.