Preserved Topic: Convincing scratches on metal surface?

I want to create an image, which - among other things - shows a brushed metal surface with some crude freehand carvings on it. The surface is no problem, but with the carvings I failed completely
Bump maps doesn't do the trick because I want rather fine scratches which should also overlay each other. I also tried alot of other things without success.
Anyone has a general concept how to do such a thing?

http://twh.telefragged.com/2d/corrode.html

Vague in some spots, so you'll have to do some playing around with it.
I'm not really fancy on metal, but I did get some pleasing results.

I just remembered quick and sleazy technique I once played with. Do the texture and start a new Layer above it. Set the new Layer to Screen. Add some Layer Effect > Outer Bevel. Paint away with Black as Foreground colour. Play with the Outer Bevel settings to taste.

Quick and sleazy.


[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 06-14-2001).]

You might also want to take a look at DarkGarden's "Weathered Metal" tut at the Gurus Network.

How's this?



I made some nice big scratches and some fine ones. If this is what you're looking for, let me know, and I'll go in depth with it.

By the way, excuse the crappy metal, I didn't want to waste time making good metal, so I just opened up an old phong tutorial.

http://www.gurusnetwork.com/tutorials/photoshop/met_texture.html

Yes yes yes, DL... I just thought that, since TripleAge didn't know about DG's metal tut, they might want to see what other tutorials GN has to offer. Of course, the direct route works, too...

mbridge: That's exactly what I'm looking for. Give me a hint how you have done it.

Thanks for the tuts. Now I will play around a bit and try to come to some results. Btw. I'm using GIMP to create images. Although there is much resemblance to Photoshop it's sometimes difficult to apply the PS tuts directly. Especially the often used Lighting Effects filter is a pain in GIMP.

warjournal: what does the Outer Bevel efect make? (Didn't find something like this in GIMP)

Well, back to work. It might take me awhile since I'm new to the CG scene. Maybe you want to have a look at my first image.
It's at: http://www.inf.tu-dresden.de/~bv1/pix/coverfront.jpg (Size: 1,011,952 octets)

I know nothing of gimp, so I'll have to explain it in photoshop. Hopefully, most of it will be convertable to gimp.

For the small scratches, I took a 1 pixel paintbrush with a 50-150 pixel opacity fade and drew random black lines. I set the blending mode to "Soft Light" at 50% opacity.

The larger ones, unfortunately, are quite a bit more complex.

Start with the same brush as the small scratch (with the opacity fade, black, etc.), and make another curved-ish line. Set the blending mode to "Hard Light" or drop the opacity down to around 75%.

Now duplicate this layer twice, move both duplicates down one pixel and to the right one pixel (assuming a light source in the upper left), invert both layers (color them white), and set to color dodge at 100%. Or you could simply drop the opacity down to around 75%.

Now duplicate the black hard light layer once again, and move it up and to the right one pixel. Keep the mode at "Hard Light" and set the opacity to 50%.

This should give you a pretty good background to experiment with. By hiding the middle, darkest stroke, you can create a shallow scratch, or by hiding the upper grey line (3rd layer created), you can make a skinnier deep scratch. Just fool around with different blending modes and opacities, and you should get a nice result.

From a general standpoint, just make sure you keep the lighter colored line away from the light source, unless you want to create the appearance of a rip in which the metal is standing up slightly.

Hope this helps.

TripleAge....Thatpic that you posted was very good for being your first one. Keep up the good work!

Sorry....thats all I had to say.

-+CarltonCig+-