Preserved Topic: how do I do this (right?)

As you may have noticed I did this for this months sig competition.. but its P'd me off as I don't think it looks anywhere near right.

SO.. how could I have made it better...???

I used a little inset-bar technique (which doesn't seem to lend itself well to deeep insets), airbrush, various blending modes, and even attempted to "displace" the sig behind...

So.. over to the experts... (do feel free to point out any tut's that cover this, or perhaps use my sig to show my how its done..)

thanks,

Pete

::edit:: - typos + I think I lost the displace effect after dumping another layer on top... thought I should point that out!



[This message has been edited by sonicsnail (edited 10-05-2001).]

what is it you're trying to do?

sorry - my mistake for thinking that part was clear!..

I want it to look like the footprint has stomped into the screen, pushing the image down with it.. like embossing with lighting effects, but not "3d coming towards you" as much as "3d going away from you". Insetting - that must be the word.

Remember the recent(ish) Godzilla film - they find this big imprint in the ground.. they're walking around it and only when the camera takes off into the sky can you see that its a footprint... Thats the look I want. But rather than stomping into earth, I want to stomp into the Asylum background - taking my sig with it.

Hope thats clearer.

err..umm....well, here's a base to work from



make a channel like the one on the left (fill with white, fill selection with black, g-blur a few times)

save the channel to a new file and run the displace filter at really low percentage (i used 3%)

run the lighting effects filter using the same channel

should give you a nice base like the one above...of course you will have to add details to make it look realistic, but the shading will be there


Edit: make sure you watch the transparency so the lighting effects don't run over onto your background (I didn't because this was just a quick example.) And of course, make a better foot shape (Again, this is justa quickie!).



[This message has been edited by mbridge (edited 10-05-2001).]

Select the foot. On the shell Layer, hit Ctrl + J and move this layer beneath the shell layer. Re-load the selection, ctrl + shift + i, back to shell layer, and add layer mask. Down to the bottom layer and move it around, like to the left and down a few notches. The rest is painting in the bevel between the two layers and various other tweaks.

Ahh...

ctrl+shift+i if you do not have ICQ on.

mbridge, that one looks like stepped from the bottom... like coming outside, understand me?

LOL Wakkos. Turning of ICQ hotkeys is one of the first things.

Okay, Mbridge. You had to mention Displace, didn't you? The problem with the approach you took is that there is shading all around the foot. That will never do for an isometric impression. There needs to be hard edge.



A real quick hack using Gauss/Emboss and some other channel ops. Displace 10% / -10%.

The rest is shading, preferably with some help from Alpha channels and more chops.

See the difference?

WOW that is way cool. I tried and tried and just couldn't get an image to be affected with the displace filter...

even tho I had a channel (opposite to usual - black shape on white). I selected it and on a flat image in Layers I ran the Displace, gave it 3% then 10% and when asked for a map I selected any old file) but the image remained the same.

Any more quick tips on the Displace filter? I guess the best example is the imprinted paw here, very effective so please can someone explains the steps more clearly (meaning save the channel to a new file doesn't make sense)

Cool!

When you get the channel the way you want it, Right click the title bar, select duplicate. CTRL+S ( File>>save ) name it so you can find it, and when the displace filter asks for a PSD, point it at the file you just saved.

The displace filter only recognizes PSDs, and only uses the first two channels to displace the image. So, you want to displace it with the channel you created for it.

For mre info see Mr. Displace



Why, yes. I was raised by Apes. How did you know ?

To build mine, I used a real sloppy variation on Steve's Highlights and Shadows. I was a little heavy handed on the Gauss, and I'm really not that practiced at a Gauss/Emboss combo, either. I did the background as 50% gray so that those parts of the graphic would be not be affected by Displace. I'm very picky about these things.

A D-Map is a PSD. If you layer it up like a PSD, it is very important to turn on Save Composite in Preferences > Saving Files (or equivalant, I think they changed it in PS 6). I'm in the habit of doing this just because. Steve doesn't do this and it took some savvy detective work on his behalf to figure this out.

I built my D-Map in a seperate doc. I did it as an RGB file, but that's not really relevant since R (horizontal) and G (vertical) channels are the same. Could very well have used a Grayscale doc. I won't chat more about this just yet as it could get messy.

Then I saved it as a PSD with the composite thumbnail.

Back to Sonic's graphic. To get the paw print into the Sonic's graphic for the dark shading, I used quick cut & paste. Then I ran Displace with 10/-10 for the values. It is important to get the grabbitude to match the direction of the blur in the D-Map. For this, any old percentages just won't do. Grabbitude has to be to the right (+ horizontal percent for white) and up (- vertical percent for white).

Rest was cake.

I must admit that I'm curious as to why you can't seem to get Diplace to work, Edesigns. If you try some of Steve's examples from his tut, let us know how it goes. It's got to be something simple. Telling us the *exact* steps that you used would help.


[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 10-06-2001).]

Sonic, I really like the edge you gave it. but the foot print over the snail shell thingy should be DARKer because it is indented so it should have shadows in it. You have it lighter... so it looks puffy.

::::izzay