Preserved Topic: Glassy/Plastic looking text and sphere effects

Hi Doc! Does anyone know how to make simply glassy/plastic looking text and/or sphere effects?<P>

Very conveniently located.... http://www.ozones.com/handson/glass/ .
Also, this isn't really glass or plastic, but here's a cool text effect:
<a href="http://www.ozones.com/handson/dl-44/SkyTaffy/">http://www.ozones.com/handson/dl-44/skytaffy/</a><P>What care I how time advances? I am drinking Ale today. -- Edgar Allen Poe<p>[This message has been edited by DL-44 (edited 15-04-2000).]

If the Sky Taffy and Doc Ozones Glass doesn't work for you, do you have a URL that has an example of what you are looking for, or somthing close to it? <P>-I'm not a complete idiot,
there are some parts missing.

Yeah, that'd be good too -- there are *tons* of ways of making glassy/plastic looking things, depending on exactly what you want. For instance, check out F1_error's variation of the Sky-Taffy (if he'd be kind enough to repost it) - pretty cool effect.<P>What care I how time advances? I am drinking Ale today. -- Edgar Allen Poe

You can find my Sky Taffy / Gullwing image at http://www.innerworld.com/F1_error/F1_gull.jpg <P>You can find the Sky Taffy Tutorial by DL-44 at
http://kublai_khan.tripod.com/dagnabit/skytaffy.html
at Ozones has a copy at
http://www.ozones.com/handson/dl-44/SkyTaffy/ <P>Phil did two versions
http://scansped.tripod.com/cgi-bin/Images_1/Sky_Taffy.jpg and
http://scansped.tripod.com/cgi-bin/Images_1/Stars_2.jpg <P>2winspapa built a website around Sky Taffy and other Ozone style stuff
http://www.hypersolutions.com/ <P>Steve showed everyone yet another way to achive the Gullwing / Sky Taffy look
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/s-nelson/GullWing/typesample.html <P>My orginal Sky Taffy is at
http://www.innerworld.com/F1_error/f1_gullwing.jpg <P>And I have been playing around with a clean plastic look, and I have been trying to achieve a believeable glass.
This is my current Desktop image
http://www.innerworld.com/F1_error/flames.jpg this is a huge file so be willing to wait a minute. It's an attempt a plastic hot rod fire. (this was only a rough attempt, I made it into my desktop so I could try to figure out how to make it better.)
http://www.innerworld.com has a blueish glass block that I am almost happy with.
If either of any of these images help you in any way, let us know. We are alwyas happy to lend a hand.
Of course if none of these images do anything for you, give us some examples of something that does and we'll figure out how to do it. We love a challenge.<P>
-I'm not a complete idiot,
there are some parts missing.<P>[This message has been edited by F1_error (edited 16-04-2000).]<p>[This message has been edited by F1_error (edited 16-04-2000).]

Thanks for everyone to giving me good examples! I think the best glassy/plastic was http://www.innerworld.com/F1_error/flames.jpg do you F1_error happen to have an tutorial of it? Also http://www.innerworld.com/F1_error/F1_gull.jpg was super cool looking! Thanks again for everyone I relly appreciate this!

I can have a tutorial of how I did that up in a few weeks or so, I'll work on it in my spare time. Busy building an online store, scanning photo after photo after photo, coding, designing, developing, etc...
What color text would like to see done with it? And are there any 'extras' you'd like to see as add ons? <P>As long as I'm doing this, if anyone wants to see something that works with this let me know, and I'll add it on. <P>-I'm not a complete idiot,
there are some parts missing.

Nice flames! Like Rend said -- I wanna lick 'em!<P>What care I how time advances? I am drinking Ale today. -- Edgar Allen Poe

for what it's worth, I was totally smitten by the glass ball centerpiece at http://www.pseudoart.org/main.cfm and spent ages trying to get it myself. If you agree it's gorgeous, I'll be putting a step-by-step on my site in a week if I can. I looked all over the net for someone who had already cracked this nut and shared how, but no luck. ts of simple treatments, but none tht were convincing. More fun to do it yourself anyway. The trick is in the subtlties - what would a glass sphere reflect (since, if it's clear, ALL you can see is reflections!), and how would those reflections look. It may be a cinch in a 3-D program, but if you choose to do it in Photoshop, it's hard!

Steve do you mean the greyish black orb in the center of the spiny thing? If you do, I can tell you how to do that with ease. <P>In PhotoShop as well. <P>-I'm not a complete idiot,
there are some parts missing.<p>[This message has been edited by F1_error (edited 17-04-2000).]

Can you tell me how to do that?
Im probably not as well trained as Steve though.<P> - Dan -

I've been slowly putting together my site...<P>I've created 3 g's that have a nice glass effect...<P>Check out the site at http://www.groovyart.8m.com <P>the links section and the info section contain the other two g's

Hey! Here's another though. I have a collection of clear glass marbles, some of them with reflective surfaces, and I tend to just LOOK at them while working on glass effects. When we do glass, we're hoping to fool the eye into seeing something it's familiar with, in this case glass. Most folks aren't very observant,they can't tell you what specific things say "glass" to them, but they can always tell if something *doesn't* say glass! Artist should always be really good at observing, we need to get all of the details right, even if folks aren't quite sure what they're seeing, if you get all the details in there, things will always appear more real. (Note: I frequently exagerate reality, just in case folks aren't paying enough attention!)<P>
Your pal, -doc-<P>----- Doctor Thaddeus Ozone --------- "Specialization is for insects"---

Ok, I'm not able to spend much time on this so I did it a little quick. It takes a bit of tweaking but you can make a much closer match than I if you take more time.
Here is how I made my sphere to match the top_28.jpg found at http://www.pseudoart.org/main.cfm
1. New document 100x100 with a Transparent background. Select the round marquee tool. And set it to Fixed Sized 80x80 (anti-aliased). Place the Marquee in the center of your document. Fill with black. Name this layer Base. (To make the textured background I just airbrushed in some white on a separate layer but you can use any texture here.)<P>2. Make a new layer and call this layer HotSpot. With the HotSpot layer selected Ctrl-click the Base layer to load the selection. Fill the selection with white. Do not deselect. Ctrl+T to transform the HotSpot into a small ellipse, make the ellipse smaller than the HotSpot should be (I should have made mine a little smaller). Move the ellipse into the upper left 'corner' of the orb. Now here is the first bit of tweaking, Goto filters>distort>sphereize. I did my first selection at 100% mode normal. Before I applied the Spherize filter again I had to move my HotSpot back from the edge a bit. The next time I applied the filter I used a setting of 42% mode normal. It will pay to play around here.<P>3. Duplicate the HotSpot layer. And call this HotSpot Halo. Goto Fliter>Blur>Gaussain Blur and blur just a little bit. (I used 1.75) Next apply the Spherize filter to the HotSpot Halo layer, try a minimal setting 10-20%. Move the HotSpot Halo back into it's orginal position (spherize will move it towards the edge) and move the HotSpot Halo layer so it resides _under_ the HotSpot layer. Play with the Layer blending modes and opacity if you feel the need, I didn't do this and it may have made things better.<P>4. Make a new layer and call this layer Highlights. With the Highlights layer selected Ctrl-click the Base layer to load the selection. Select the Radial Gradient tool and open the Edit Gradient Dialogue. Make a new gradient with the left color Black and the right color White, move the Location Slider (that little diamond thingy) to about 80% or so. Now still in the Gradient Editor select Transparency, make the left color into 0% opacity and move the Location Slider to 80%. Close the Gradient editor. In the Highlights layer you should still have an active selection. With the radial Gradient tool start from about the outside edge of the HotSpot and drag down about 45 degrees until you are not quite to the edge of the selection. (You may have to do this a few times just Ctrl+Z until you are happy with your gradient.) Don't deselect. Now apply the Spherize filter ( I used 100% mode normal). Don't deselect. Now for the other part of the tweaking process. Goto Edit>Transform>Distort and distort the selection so that the bottom right outside edge / corner is about the same distance from the base edge as the HotSpot is, do not apply it yet. Distort the top left to match the bottom right. Now apply the selection. If your Highlight is too bright / hot adjust the layers blending modes and the opacity. (I used Screen, 70%)<P>You can find my Orb at http://www.innerworld.com/F1_error/F1_orb.jpg
And I mirrored the original at http://www.innerworld.com/F1_error/top_28.jpg <P>Now you can produce a similar effect (and perhaps a little better) with KPT 5 Shape Shifter. I did a little quicky using presets (it looks nothing like the top_28.jpg) and it can be seen at http://www.innerworld.com/F1_error/F1_SS.jpg <P>Total time to make the F1_orb.jpg about 10 min. to make the F1_SS.jpg about a minute. To write this tutorial, far longer.
Feel free to ask any questions. It's back to work for me.
<p>[This message has been edited by F1_error (edited 17-04-2000).]

Doc - great idea to keep your marbles in a box! I'd have lost fewer of mine if I'd thought to get a box! The solutions F1 presents almost get to where I want to be; now you've raisd the bar for me - I'll have to get my solution up faster than anticipated! Maybe late tomorrow (Tuesday where I live)? What I don't like about any of the filter solutions (like KPT and most of the simple tutorails on the net) is that the highlight is too diffuse and the sense of "clear" isn't there. Doc's glass tutorial is gorgeous, but again it feels more opaque than I am aiming for. Also, lots of tutorials on making "glassy" text, but a clear round ball is tougher 'cause there aren't the intricate shapes to work distorions around.<P>Just a teaser: I made my main highlight feel like it wrapped around the surface by using Polar Coordinates.<P>Doc is right on by saying most people don't "look", but have a sort of memory for what is right, and an illustrator needs to exaggerate. I'm a photographer, not a painter or illustrator. I'm trained to see something in front of me, but it's much harder for me to cook something up from a visualization. This is a really fun thread for me - keep it comng!

I seen a nice glass tutorial on phong.com
It takes some tweaking but the effects come out very nice once you master the technique. you can see some of the "marbles" done like that on the front page itself.<P>Never Pet a Burning Dog
Rend<P>

I hammered mine together. Read and react. http://people.ne.mediaone.net/s-nelson/steve/Photoshop/psindex.html