Final Product

Below you can see the final image. We’re going to use several different textures, fonts and photos to recreate this piece.

Step 1

Open up the Photoshop and create a new document with dimensions set to 1680px by 1050px. You can use other settings if you’d like to create larger or smaller version of your drawings.

Step 2

You’ll need some textures and photos before you start. You may look for them on stock websites, free stock websites or you may pick some from your collection of textures. I used textures from cgtextures.com. I found them in Paper caterogry and Manmade category. I can’t make them available for download here due to their licence restrictions but you may download them free of charge from cgtextures’ website. You don’t have to choose exactly these textures I picked but if you choose them it’ll be easier to follow my tutorial. I’m leaving the choice up to you. Below you’ll find five textures that I used (a paper texture and four machines).

Step 3

Paste the paper texture into the Photoshop and scale it down by hitting Ctrl/CMD + T to fit the canvas.

Step 4

Open any of the machine photos. Use Pen Tool (P) to draw a path along its outline. Once you have it right-click on the canvas and select Make Selection… Then delete everything but the machine (remove its background).

Step 5

Paste the machine to the main document (if you haven’t been editing it in the main document). Scale it down (Ctrl/CMD + T) a bit to fit one page of the book like on the image below.

Step 6

Go to Filter > Blur > Surface Blur… and use it. Use 5 pixels for radius and 15 pixels for threshold. This way you’ll get rid of some redundant details. Go to Filter > Stylize > Find Edges. After that desaturate this layer by hitting Shift + Ctrl/CMD + U. Use surface blur several more times but beware of loss of some key elements. If they are starting to disappear simply stop blurring it or isolate the area which should stay untouched.

Step 7

Change its blending mode to Multiply. Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation… Select Colorize. You have to change the color of your first sketch to some shade of brown (lighter or darker – as you wish). To do it drag the last slider to something like +30 and first two sliders somewhere to the beginning of their bars.

Step 8

Hold Ctrl/CMD and click on a thumbnail of the layer you’ve just been modifying. Make sure it’s selected. Create a new layer (Ctrl/CMD + Shift + N). Fill it with any color. Go to this layer’s style and apply it the following style.

Step 9

Go to Image > Adjustments > Auto Contrast. Desaturate it (Ctrl/CMD + Shift + U). Your image should instantly become visible and grey. Go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast… and drag the first slider a bit to the left and the second to the right side.

Step 10

Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and use 44 pixels for distance and 0 degrees for an angle. Duplicate this layer. Move the original layer a bit to the right. Then move the duplicated layer to the left. Both layers should be moved only a few pixels (no more than ten to fifteen pixels). Make a selection of the original layer again (see the beginning of the eighth step for the instructions). Click on two layers from this step and apply a mask for both of them. Just hold Alt/Option key and click on a mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Finally change their blending modes to Color Burn and lower their opacity if necessary. You should get something like that:

Step 11

Once you enable the outline it should look like a sketch with light horizontal lines at the edges. Follow steps 4-10 to create other drawings and place them on both pages of the book. Their placement is up to you. I found some inspiration by looking at Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings and just placed my ones haphazardly like he did in most cases.

Step 12

Finally you can add in some text. I used a few different fonts with different setting here. Just browse some stock font websites and find something nice. Each font I found is free for personal and commercial use and they still look really nice. I generated some meaningless text and put it around the drawings.

Conclusion

That’s it. You may now adjust your image (especially the drawings) by hand as they are certainly not perfect. You may draw some other details and make your image look even more realistic. Thank you for reading my tutorial. I hope you enjoyed it and learnt something new! If so, please support my work and share it with your friends. Thanks!

Final Product

We’re going to create three different funky vintage badges in this tutorial. You may find this kind of effect useful in web design as well as in poster design or simply you may create a retro badge or a nice-looking wallpaper with this tutorial. Here’s the preview of what we’re going to create.

Step 1

First of all open up the Photoshop and create a new document with dimensions set to 1680×1050px. Fill the background layer with black using Paint Bucket Tool (G).

Step 2

You’ll need a plain fabric texture for the background. Take a look at mine background first and then head to the website like cgtexutres.com or any stock images website to get one. I downloaded a few different textures and finally used the one that matched well.

Step 3

Paste your texture to the document and go to Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation… and use 24 for Hue, 40 for Saturation and -80 for Lightness. If you don’t get background like mine one then adjust your settings because you’re likely to have substantially different texture.

Step 4

Create a new layer by going to Layer > New > Layer… or by hitting Ctrl/CMD + Shift + N. Grab Gradient Tool and make sure that your colors are set to black and white (hit D in case they aren’t or set them so manually). Create two guidelines in the middle of the image both vertically and horizontally. You can create them by going to View > New Guide…. Use 50% as the value in the text field. Afterwards make sure that you’re using Foreground to Transparent gradient preset and that your foreground color is white. Also, make sure you’ve got Radial Gradient selected. Click in the middle of the image (there where your guidelines crosses) and drag it in any direction to create a gradient. Set this layer to Overlay.

Step 5

Create another layer, swap colors so that black is your foreground color now and select Reverse in gradient settings. Click in the middle of the image again and drag it to create another gradient. This one will make your borders darker. Set this layer to Overlay. At this point you may duplicate this layer or the layer from previous step if you’re getting insufficiently explicit and flat background.

Step 6

Use Custom Shape Tool (U) to create some shapes that are in shape of badges. One of my badges (star with 32 vertices) consist of two stars both of which has 16 vertices and the second one is rotated by 22.5 degrees against the first one.

Step 7

Grab your fabric texture again, duplicate it and scale it way down. Place it on top of the first badge shape. Ctrl/CMD + click on the thumbnail of this badge’s layer to select it. Then select the fabric texture back again and hit Add layer mask button which is at the bottom of the layers’ palette. This way your texture should remain only on the badge and it should disappear from around the badge. Do the same with other shapes unless you’re planning to make some badges different. Make sure you duplicate fabric texture each time. Group each badge somehow so that you could easily get to the right badges and modify them. Just keep it tidy.

Step 8

When you’re done duplicate your shape and place it above the fabric texture. Apply it the following style:

Step 9

Create another empty layer. Ctrl/CMD + click on a thumbnail of any badge shape. Make sure it has become selected. Go to Select > Modify > Contract. Type in something like five pixels there. Fill the new selection with any color you like. Just make sure you’ve got your empty layer selected. Go to layers styles of this layer and use the following settings to create a nice looking outline.

Step 10

Use Type Tool (T) to create a text for your badge. I used font called Harlow Solid Italic with 60 pt and white color. Little superscriptions were created with font called Freestyle Script.

Step 11

Duplicate fabric layer again (this one you used for the background of your badges) and place it above text layer. Ctrl/CMD + click on the thumbnail of text layer and use the selection that you’ve just created as a mask of the fabric texture. Do the same with each text layer.

Step 12

Make another selection of your main text layer. Go to Select > Modify > Expand and type in something like 3 px depending on the size of your text. Create next layer and fill it with any color. Use the following style for this layer and then use the fabric texture to make it look like a fabric outline. Your first badge is done. Group all its layers and hide the group for now.

Step 13

Copy all the text layers from the first badge (ForCG, Design Blog and Excellent Tutorials) and place them the same way on the second one. Use #004a80 color for Design Blog and Excellent Tutorials layers and apply them the following style:

Step 14

Use font called Script MT Bold for the ForCG.com layer and apply it the following style:

Step 15

Also, create an outline for this layer (follow ninth step again). Now, we’d like to use old paper texture instead of fabric texture. To do so you’ll need a paper texture. You can get one on any stock images website. I’d recommend to pick a few and then check what works for you. Place your texture on top of the badge. Scale it down if it’s too big. Make a selection of your badge’s shape (Ctrl/CMD + click on a thumbnail of badge’s shape layer) and mask your old paper texture. Mine texture is set to Hard Light bledning mode with 50% opacity.

Step 16

Now it’s time for the last badge. It basically starts the same as the second badge so you may follow steps 13-15 to create the background for the third badge but notice that this one is in shape of a circle.

Step 17

For the main text layer use font called Victorian LET. There’s also a red stripe beneath the text. Grab Pen Tool (P) and just draw it. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect. Once you have it delete its parts outside the circle (if there are any) and paste fabric texture again. Make a selection of your stripe and mask fabric texture. Then apply it the style that you used in eighth step. Also, mask your text so that it remains white. You should get something like this afterwards:

Conclusion

That is the end of my tutorial. You may add in some little details there if you’d like to or improve it somehow even more. I hope that you enjoyed it and you’ll find it useful. Thank you for reading!

Introduction

Most people make their T-shirt designs in applications like Adobe Illustrator, by using templates and creating paths. However, if you want to do something more complicated, especially a design including human figure, it’s easier to start with Photoshop. Of course you can make a very complicated design using paths, but it’s just much easier and less time-consuming to do it in Photoshop. I’m going to show you here how do I usually do it and then share some of my thoughts about T-shirt business and passive income which should bring you some decent money! Here’s what we are going to create:

Document settings

Create a CMYK document – I won’t be printing it myself so it’s just CMYK, 300 dpi, no special settings. Before you create anything, think twice where you’re going to post it or how you’re going to print it, imagine how it’s going to look on an actual T-shirt (or G-strings, Dog T-shirt, Hamster T-shirt) or whatever product you choose. Mine is going to be posted on Spreadshirt so let’s use 2200×3000 pixels for your document.

Sketching

It’s good to start with a very rough sketch of what you want to actually draw, without creating any details yet, just an overall vision of your design. It’s useful especially with drawing humans (or zombies, vampires or…any humanoid creatures ) when you need to pay attention to anatomy. I’m using here graphic tablet but this can be also done with standard mouse. If you start with a neat, bold line at the beginning, at some point it may turn out that you need to erase it, because, for instance, the whole composition looks bad, which may cause frustration and you may end up breaking up random objects in your workplace… Of course, we don’t want that. You don’t have to be obsessive about the anatomy, most people who buy your art don’t even notice when there’s something wrong. Just make sure the character doesn’t look crippled. I didn’t even use any reference images here (like photos, anatomy books), I just made that pose in front of my mirror and drew myself.

So, now once you have your sketch, double-click on the layer and lower its opacity. Then, create a new layer on top of it and start drawing for real. I draw with hard round brush, with only size jitter on. Opacity jitter is turned off – most printers don’t like any opacity jitter, gradients etc. Besides, a detailed realistic illustration doesn’t really look good when you wear it, it’s tacky and you don’t want to look stupid. I wear my own T-shirts, so… I’ll just go for a simple, vintage look.

Adding clipart

It’s better to put each element of your design on a separate layer, of course you don’t always have to do this, but it’s much easier when you want to change something (move, erase or most importantly – change colors). There’s the moon and banners, time for the bats. You don’t have to draw everything yourself, especially when it doesn’t involve any creativity. It just takes a lot of your time and effort. So, I sugest to just paste a free clipart bat here (the bat should be on a transparent background), place it wherever you want to, hold Alt/Option key + Click on it with ‘Move Tool (V)’ selected and drag it. It’s the easiest way to duplicate things. Keep duplicating and modifying bats just by using the ‘Move Tool (V)’ and transform controls. All clipart and resources can be found using Google Graphics, it’s the easiest way. Make sure they’re all free to use (for commercial purposes, too)! I also used some free clipart and some elements of my previous designs for the background, by pasting and modifying them just the same way I did with the bats. It’ easy so I don’t think you’ll have any problems with it.

Finally, you can paste some irregular halftone pattern and place it around the shadows, for more ‘oldschool’ feeling. It’s best to use ‘Clone Stamp Tool (S)’ for that.

Coloring

The image is supposed to be visible on a dark background, so duplicate each layer (hold alt/option key + drag your layer down in the ‘layers’ palette) and fill it with white (using ‘Paint Bucket Tool (G)’). I’m not ready to commit coloristically yet. For the ornaments, bats and banners in the background I’ve added ‘Outer Glow’. Go to layer styles (double-click on a layer) and use the following settings:

Do it just once, then right-click on a layer to copy and paste layer style.
Now for the coloring part – I chose highly saturated colors (they won’t look so bright when printed!) and not many of them. In my case it’s just the matter of taste, but if you decide to print something on your own, remember that adding more colors = higher costs. Now if you don’t want the lightest colour to be white, Instead of colouring everything just create new adjustment layer ‘curves’ on top of it( don’t use layer fills!), double click on the ‘light’ sampler, choose the color you like and click with the sampler on the brightest place in the picture. Voila.

Now create a new layer on top of all layers (except the ‘curves’ layer), set it to ‘Multiply’ and paint all objects that are supposed to be red. Green is a complementary color for red and also the skin color of zombies, so paint your zombie with green (use the same brush settings as for the sketch). For the banners and the background motif, just click on their white fill layer, press Ctrl/CMD+Alt/Option+U and add colours using the ‘Colorize’ option.

Adding text

Now we’re going to add the text. The easiest way to make the text fit my banners is to type it on a path. To do this, make a new layer, choose pen tool and create a path (click where you want the path to start, then click where you want it to end – keep holding the mouse button (or tablet pen) and move it so that you can shape the path) then choose type tool and click on the path (once ‘T’ symbol appear) and you can type. Once you’ve typed anything interesting you can add some effects to the text, like outer glow (the way it’s described above). I added some black outer glow.

Final touch-ups

Create another layer just above the background layer and add some spatters with a custom brush. If you don’t have a spatter brush, create one yourself or google some – make sure they’re free to use for commercial purposes. Just save a brush on your computer and load it inside of Photoshop:

Then again make another layer on the very top and ‘damage’ the image a little bit with your custom grunge brush.

Final T-Shirt Design

Here’s my final T-shirt design:

You can also find it on my Spreadshirt page where I’m selling my designs. I’m really dissatisfied with Spreadshirt though. Their previews are always blurred, you can’t get better view on the design you want to buy and the shop layout is far from being user-friendly. I’m rather thinking of moving to Zazzle or RedBubble (they are both markets where you can sell your works). So, before you open your online T-shirt business, think about the things I listed above. They’re importaint from the buyer’s point of view. Selling T-shirts online will increase your passive income considerably and is basically easy. Actually, after a few this could bring you quite a lot money!

I hope this was helpful! Please, comment my tutorial below and let me know what do you think about my tips. Thanks !

Apple Wallpaper Preview

Here is what we are going to create (there are a few more versions):

Step 1

Open up the Adobe Photoshop and create a new document with dimensions set to 1680 x 1050px. Fill the background layer with black using “Paint Bucket Tool (G)”.

Step 2

Create another layer and fill it with black. Set your colors to black and white an go to ‘Filter -> Render -> Clouds’ (hold alt key to make the effect stronger). After that go to ‘Filter -> Pixelate -> Mosaic’ and set ‘Cell Size’ to 19. Optionally you can improve your image even more by going to ‘Filter -> Noise -> Median’ (set its radius to two pixels).

Step 3

Afterwards duplicate this layer and go to ‘Filter -> Stylize -> Glowing Edges’. Use one for edge width (can be more), 20 for edge brightness (can be less) and seven for smoothness. Set this layer to a ‘Soft Light’ blending mode. If it doesn’t look like mine try to adjust its contrast and brightness.

Step 4

Paint something like on the image below on a new layer and duplicate this layer four times.

Step 5

Set the first one to ‘Color’. Select the second and go to ‘Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur…’. Blur it a lot (set the radius to something between 100 and 200 pixels). Set this layer to Color. Set the third layer to ‘Color’ again and fourth to ‘Vivid Light’ but decreare its opacity to something like 50%. Finally you should get something like this (if not play with the Brightness/Contrast again):

Step 6

Grab your layer with ‘Glowing Edges’ filter applied and duplicate it. Lower its brightness and increase its contrast. It should start glowing in some places like on the image below. If necessary, duplicate this layer and change its blending mode (I used ‘Exclusion’ with opacity set to 45% here).

Background is ready. You can make it even better by adding in some little details or by duplicating some of the layers you’ve created and using radial blur on them (with mode set to ‘Zoom’). I’m leaving it up to you.

Step 7

Now open up your 3ds Max and create an apple. I doesn’t have to be perfect at all. Just a sphere with a few top verties moved a bit upwards would be enough. Take a look at my example. It’s just a sphere with ‘Edit Poly’ modifier applied. I used ‘Soft Selection’ to move more vertices at once.

Step 8

Hit ‘6′ to get to the ‘Particle View’ and create a new particle system like on my image. Make sure you’ve added your apple to the ‘Position object’ and selected ‘Location: Volume’.

Step 9

Move your time slider a little bit further (like 30th frame), place your camera like me (see the image below) and hit ‘Render’. I used VRay as my rendering engine but you can get similar results with almost any other engine.

Step 10

Move your render to the Photoshop and remove black background (you can use either its alpha mask or ‘Magic Wand Tool’ which works fine in this case). Duplicate your apple and go to ‘Filter -> Stylize -> Glowing Edges’ again. Use the same settings as previously and once you are done set this layer to ‘Color Dodge’. Your apple should look like the one below (I forgot about the leaf but it will be back in the final images ).

Step 11

Finally you can use ‘Pen Tool’ or ‘Brush Tool’ to draw a jaw shape and mask it. I’ve made some little changes to the background afterwards. There are two versions of this wallpaper. It’s also a good idea to remove the apple and replace it with something else or leave an empty space there. Take a look at two of my versions!

Conclusion

That is all for now and since it’s 31th December today I wish you happy and creative New Year! If it was useful for you please do us a favour and share it with the others!

Christmas Card Final Preview

Below is the card that we are going to create. Click on the last screenshot to see the larger version.

Step 1

Open up the Adobe Photoshop and create a new document with dimensions set to 1280 x 800px. Fill the background layer with black using “Paint Bucket Tool (G)”.

Step 2

Grab “Gradient Tool (G)” and create a gradient from top to bottom. Use #badbec color at the top and #cde7f1 at the bottom.

Step 3

Create another layer and fill it with any color you like. This layer will be used to brighten up the center part of the image. Go to ‘Layer Styles’ and decrease its ‘Fill’ to 0%. Then, turn on ‘Gradient Ramp’ and change its ‘Blend Mode’ to ‘Soft Light’. Use black and white for colors, change style to ‘Radial’ and increase scale to 150%. Don’t forget to adjust the opacity afterwards. 65% works well in my case. Below you can find the settings I used as well as the background after changes.

Step 4

Grab ‘Pen Tool (P)’ and draw a couple of rays coming from one point. Once you have all the necessary paths right-click on the canvas with ‘Pen Tool (P)’ still selected and choose ‘Make selection…’. Fill the selection with white on a new layer. Change layer’s ‘Blend Mode’ to ‘Soft Light’ and ‘Opacity’ to 50%.

Step 5

Grab your ‘Pen Tool (P)’ again and draw a few hills in the foreground and the background. This works the same like in the previous step but you don’t have to change their blending mode and decrease their opacity this time. When you are done grab ‘Brush Tool (B)’. Hold Ctrl/CMD and Click on the layer with one of your hills (in ‘Layers’ window). By doing this you will select the hill. Set your brush to soft, rounded one and use #e1f2ff as foreground color. Carefully paint a light blue coat on top of the hill. Repeat this process on the other hills.

Step 6

Switch back to ‘Pen Tool (P)’ and start drawing a Christmas tree to the right. Put all its ’segments’ on a separate layers.

Step 7

Continue drawing your Christmas tree but change the colors each time you draw a new segment…

Step 8

Once you have all of them your Christmas tree should look similarly to mine one.

Step 9

Hold Ctrl/CMD + Shift and click on every layer that creates your Christmas tree. Once you have all of them selected go to ‘Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Hue/Saturation…’ and pick a color for your tree that you like. Just play with the different settings until you get something cool.

Step 10

Duplicate the Christmas tree a few times and resize the copies. Place one in the bottom-left corner of your image and a few in the background on top of the hills.

Step 11

Now it’s time for another part of the card. You’ll need a pattern (available here: http://pattern8.com/free-repeat-patterns/free-repeat-pattern-with-a-hot-retro-feel/) to create the front side of the card. Just download it, open it using Adobe Photoshop and go to ‘Edit -> Define Pattern…’. Once you’ve done that create a new layer in your main Photoshop document and fill it with any color. Go to ‘Layer Styles’ and choose ‘Pattern Overlay’. Use newly created pattern here.

Step 12

It’s a bit dull actually so let’s use a ‘Brush Tool (B)’ to create some huge black and white dots on a new layers. Set these layers to ‘Soft Light’ and decrease their opacity if necessary. Create two big black dots at the top of the image, one white in the middle and a few black ones at the bottom. I suggest to make each dot on separate layer.

Step 13

Create a new brush with the following settings. Use it to paint some stars (see the screenshot in the next step).

Step 14

It’s a bit harder step. Basically, you need to add in some decoration to your Christmas tree. There are only a few simple shapes on my illustration. I’m leaving it up to you how you place them and what colors you choose. They can be drawn using ‘Pen Tool (P)’, ‘Ellipse Tool (U)’ etc.

Step 15

Finally, add a text to your Christmas card. I used font called ‘Victorian LET’. There are also a few Christmas icons that can be found here http://www.clevericons.com/icon/christmas06/

Step 16

Let’s merge both images…

Final Touches

You can make your image darker and add a moon like I did. I have also added some snow using ‘Custom Shape Tool (U)’. Stars were painted using ‘Brush Tool (B)’. Colors were changed by adding ‘Hue/Saturation’ layer on top of appropriate layers.

Conclusion

You can actually use only a snow scene to create your Christmas card or only the one with the red background. Try to experiment yourself and I’m sure you’ll come up with something interesting! You can post your work below to show it to the other people! I hope you enjoyed my tutorial!

I wish Merry Christmas and Creative New Year to all of you!

Final Image Preview

Halloween Card Tutorial

Open up the Photoshop. Create a new document that has 1000×707px. I chose these values because the standard A4 sheet of paper has the same ratio (210×297mm). I have just decreased the height and width to 707px and 1000px and then rotated entire canvas by 90 degrees to make it horizontal.

Step 2

Go to ‘View -> New Guide…’ and create a new vertical guideline in the middle of the image (type in 50% and hit ‘OK’). We’ll create front side of the card on one half and the back side on the other half. It doesn’t matter which half will you choose for each side because you can easily swap them later and print as you like.

Step 3

Before creating anything 3D let’s just draw everything that we’ll need later. I’m talking here about a shape that will be used to create pumpkin’s face. It’s quite simple. Just grab you pen tool and draw some scary face. Then click right mouse button and choose ‘Make Selection…’. Afterwards create a new layer and fill the selection with black. Save your face as an separate *.jpg file.

Step 4

Open up the Adobe Illustrator and paste there the image you’ve just created. Go to ‘Object -> Live Trace -> Tracing Options…’ and hit ‘Trace’. Once you do it your drawing will become a vector shape. Save it as *.ai file (choose the oldest version of an Illustrator because 3ds Max usually has some problems with the newer ones).

Step 5

Open up 3ds Max. Go to ‘File -> Import…’ and import your vector shape from the previous step. Delete everything that you don’t need (borders for instance) and extrude your shape by choosing ‘Extrude’ from the modifiers list.

Step 6

Now it’s time for a pumpkin. It’s a very simple model so I’m not going to post here detailed step-by-step instructions on how to create it. Just use a sphere with 64 segments, flatten it a bit and use ‘Edit Poly’ modifier (select some edges around to scale them inwards) with ‘Scale Tool’ to make it look like a pumpkin. The upper part of the pumpkin can be created using ‘Extrude’ and some basic tools like ‘Move Tool’, ‘Rotate Tool’ and ‘Scale Tool’. Add it a couple of modifiers like on the image below to make it differentiated. Once you have your pumpkin done scale it down to 97% holding shift key and go to ‘Create panel -> Compound Objects -> Boolean’ to cut it out of the bigger pumpkin.

Step 7

Hit ‘M’ and choose the first material slot. Now follow the screenshots below to create two materials. Don’t forget to assign it to your pumpkin. Also, remember that you have to give apropriate polygons material IDs in order to use Multi/Sub-Object.

Step 8

Place your extruded face shape as I did inside of the pumpkin. Go to ‘Create panel -> Compound Objects -> Boolean’ again with pumpkin selected and choose your extruded shape to cut out the hole. You should now have

Step 9

Once you have your pumpkin completed create a ground plane and a wall behind it. For lighting create a spot light above the pumpkin and turn its shadows on (I suggest to use VRayShadow). Also, put one omni light inside of the pumpkin. Use VRay as your rendering engine. I turned global illumination on as well as environments. You may also try to render it using HDRIs.

Step 10

Paste the render into the Photoshop. It’s a bit empty around so I suggest to use a paper texture for the background. I’ve downloaded mine here: http://www.bittbox.com/freebies/free-high-res-grungy-paper-textures. Paste it into the Photoshop and desature it as well as make it darker by going to ‘Image -> Adjustments -> Brightness/Contrast…’. Now place it on top of your render but you’ll have to use an alpha map for you pumpkin in order to cut it out and paste it on top of your previous render and the paper texture. This way the texture will make entire scene more diversified except disturbing the pumpkin.

Step 11

Once you’ve done it all it’s time for details. Create a huge circle using ‘Elipse Tool (U)’. Open up layer styles and turn on ‘Outer Glow’. Give it a fairly high size and a white color.

Step 12

Create a new layer and draw lots of small white dots on it. Go to ‘Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur’ and blur it with angle set to around 78 degrees and distance to 999 pixels. These dots are going to simulate volumetric lights. I’ve also added a text sating ‘Have a Scary Halloween’ at this point.

Final Touches

Finally, I’ve added some spider webs. I found that free vector shape on the Internet.

Conclusion

That is all for now. I hope you like it. Happy Halloween!

3D Magic Tutorial – Final Effect

Magic Stars

Let’s create a star with five sides and an arc by going to ‘Create Panel -> Shapes -> Splines -> Arc/Star’.

Magic Stars – Loft

Now select the arc and go to ‘Create Panel -> Compound Objects’ and choose a ‘Loft’. Pick your star as a shape. Duplicate them and group as on the image below.

Magic Top-hat

Use ‘Line’ again to create curve similar to mine one.

Magic Top-hat – Lathe

We have to rotate this curve about an Y axis to create a 3D object. Use a ‘Loft’ modifier to achieve that with ‘Direction’ set to Y and ‘Align’ set to ‘Max’.

Magic Top-hat – Final Touches

Our top-hat looks quite nice but it has no thickness, it’s a bit rough and indifferent. To fix that and make it smoother and less linear simply add it a couple of modifiers as follows:

• Shell with outer amount set to 0.0254m
• Turbosmooth with iterations set to one
• Noise – X=1.4m, Y=1.4m, Z=-1.9m

Settings above work for me but you may need to change them so feel free to do it.

Magic Stick

The last thing wee need is a magic stick. Create a cylinder. Use 0.015m for radius and one meter for height. You may also increate the number of sides to 18 or so to make it smoother.

Composition

The next step is to put everyting inside of near the top hat. Also try to create some magic shapes around like stars, moons etc.

Particle Flow Stars

I used particle flow to create my stars faster. Simply create something similar to what I got. Don’t forget to change particle emitter’s direction to make your particles go upwards. Create a star shape, extrude it and pick your newly created 3D star as a ‘Shape Instance’ inside of particle flow view. All the particles should become stars now. You may also add a wind and a drag as forces.

Rendering Your Scene

I basically used standard lights on this scene with sharp shadows (VRayShadow should work fine here). I’ve also created a ground plane with color set to dark grey. Output size was set to 1680×1050px and it was rendered with VRay.

Post-processing

Paste your scene into Adobe Photoshop. It should look like on the image below but I recommend to improve your render as much as you can before going to the Photoshop.

Colorful Background

Draw something like that using your brush tool (B).

Go to Filter -> Gaussian Blur and set the radius farily high like to the 80 pixels. Afterwards set this layer to ‘Vivid Light’.

Create a new layer and press D to reset you colors to black and withe. Go to ‘Filter -> Render -> Clouds’. Use ‘Overlay’ for the blending mode and decrease layer’s opacity to 25%.

Paint some light rays over the top hat. Use your brush tool or rectangle tool to do it.

Final Touches

Finally, add some particles everywhere using brush tool or a star photo. There is one more thing I haven’t mentioned about before. You can add some more 3D objects to your work and paint on them in Photoshop. I used here some shapes that I’ve created half an year ago because they looked nice in this particular case. They are not necessary so I leave it up to you!

Conclusion

Below you can find the final work. Click to enlarge! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Next tutorial is coming next week! Don’t miss it!

One more thing: I will refine this image soon and add in some more details to it! Check back soon for the newer version!

Concept

There are many different ways of creating space scenes and I’ll show you how do I usually do it. First of all, we should imagine how should the final image look like. In other words what we are going to create? My scene isn’t going to show anything special. There will be only some planets and a galaxy visible from top view in the background but obviously you can think of something different.

Creating Space Background

First let’s create a 1920×1200px Photoshop document and fill it with black with Paint Bucket Tool (G).

Background

Now let’s create another layer. Use your Brush Tool (B) with color set to dark blue (#172a3a in my case) and radius set to something between 300 and 1000 pixels to colorize your background. Use lighter blue (such as #162a3f or #27475f) to create some lighter areas at the bottom corners. When you are done I suggest to go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur… and blur your layer a bit to make it look softer. For the radius type in 60px and it should be enough. At this point our background doesn’t look very interesting. We need to add some depth to it so I suggest to download any clouds image (I took stormy one from http://www.cgtextures.com/ website), paste it, set it to Overlay and decrease its opacity to 15%. If you don’t get anything similar to my background you can play with brightness and contrast (Image > Adjustments…) of your layer. Here’s what I got:

Setting Up Star Brush

It’s time to add some stars. Set your Brush Tool (B) to white color and use the following settings to create a new brush:

Painting Stars

Paint some stars on a different layers. Set them to Overlay and duplicate a few times by pressing Ctrl + J. You may also use a standard star brushes that comes with Photoshop or create some bigger ones somewhere. It’s a good idea to group each level of your stars as I did.

More Depth

Our background is already good for placing anything on it but I decided to add even more depth to it by placing dark galaxy at the center of my image and by darkening image corners a lot. You can download high resolution galaxy brushes made by thepixlpusher here: http://www.box.net/shared/hfqbplyosg. Choose one of the galaxies that is visible from top and paint it at the center of the image using black color. If necessary you can duplicate your layer to make the effect stronger. I’ve also created four more layers and placed there edges of the same galaxy to make corners of the image darker and more diversified. As for now we have a nice background to start with. It’s time for planets and other effects.

Planets

To create planets we can use any 3D application but I suggest to do it with Vue Infinite or Vue xStream. I’ve used Vue Infinite to do all the work because it has variety of presets that you can use and modify really quickly. The same effects can be achieved in 3ds Max or any other 3D application but Vue is created for rendering environments so it’s just a way easier. So, create a sphere and place it in front of your camera. Select both the camera and the sphere and in Side View grab the Z axis to move them up. After that rotate them counter clock wise until the camera doesn’t catch the ground.

Setting Up Atmosphere

Go Atmosphere -> Load Atmosphere… and choose Godrays that I found are great for this purpose. Select the last preset and find Atmosphere Editor under Atmosphere menu group and change the Lighting Model to Global radiosity which will make your renders a way better (well, not always better and that’s depending on your atmosphere – some of them are not conformed to be used with Global Radiosity – but it’s usually good to choose better lighting model anyway (at least I tend to choose GR often)).

Moving Sun

Afterwards move the sun a bit towards camera and back in the viewport because we want it to shine from the side of your render and not from behind the sphere.

Planet Materials

Click on the sphere and choose Get Material option from the menu to the right side of Vue Infinite. You can really choose anything from there or modify existing presets as you wish but I’ve first chosen clay material and then Chipped with Paths and both seem to work fine.

Setting Up Render

Render your scene with the setting shown below.

Rendering Planets

Here are my examples of planets:

Saving Renders

Save each render with its alpha map because we’ll want to cut it out of the background later.

Cutting These Things Out

Back to the Photoshop again. Open up one of your renders and paste its alpha map on a separate layer. Select white part of your alpha map with Magic Wand Tool (W) as shown below. After that select your planet layer and press Ctrl+J. This should cut your planet out of the render. Do the same with the other renders. Afterwards copy your planets and paste them into your main Photoshop document.

Asteroids

Your can create asteroids exactly the same way like you did with the planets but this time you should use rocks (you’ll find them in the left Vue’s sidebar) instead of spheres and obviously you should create some more of them. Place them as you wish. Below is my example. If you already render them follow previous steps to cut them and paste into main document.

Composition

Once you have all the necessary elements you can create a scene. I decided to simply place shiny star right next to the center of the galaxy and two planets on the opposite sides of the canvas. Maybe it’s not very imaginative but it was created for tutorial purposes only.

Things to keep in mind:

• You should rotate pasted images if the light goes in the wrong direction.
• It’s hard to blend those renders with your background perfectly and probably the best way to do that is to adjust each of RGB channels separately and change the overall color to make it look that it belongs to this image but I decided to adjust background instead of planet colors. I made it darker there where it should blend with asteroids and planets. Also I’ve darkened some parts of planets to match the image.

Main Star

To create big star at the center simply create a new layer. Fill it with black color and go to Filter -> Render -> Lens Flare… Use 100% for Brightness, 105mm Prime. Hit Ctrl/CMD+T to scale down your newly created star. You can also erase edges of your rendered image with soft eraser to make it blend better. Set layer’s blend mode to Color Dodge and duplicate it if necessary to make effect stronger. Rays coming from the center were made by using brush created in the second step of this tutorial. Frist draw some dots. Make sure your dots are at the center of the image. Use radial blur by going to Filters -> Blur -> Radial Blur… with the Amount set to 25, Blur Method set to Zoom, Quality set to Best.

Placing planets and asteroids

Paste all the planets and asteroids into the main document. I’ve simply rotated the first planet and placed it in the top right corner. I’ve also resized the moon-like planet and placed it next to the first one. In the other side I’ve placed the second planet and some debris near it.

Adjustments

If the planets don’t match the background you have to play with their brightness, contrast and color. I’ve selected everything that doesn’t match and made it darker using soft brush (paint on the new layer). Once you’ve painted some dark areas you will probably have to set your newly created layer(s) to Overlay, Soft Light or Color Dodge blend mode. You may also decrease layer’s opacity or duplicate the layer to make effect stronger. The area below was corrected by just placing black layer above asteroids layer with blend mode set to Overlay.

Space Explosion

The last thing is to add some fire and destroy a little part of one of the planets. First let’s make a selection using Lasso Tool (L) selecting the part of your planet that you want to get rid of. I suggest to make it a little bit jaggy. After that select a part of the area where you want to create your fire and go to Image -> Adjustments -> Variations…. You can play there with your fire as you like but I think you’ll only have to press “more red”, “more yellow” and “darker” a few times to make it look realistic. Select different parts of you planet and make it hotter. Once you are done you can use Smudge Tool, Dodge Tool, Burn Tool, Spoonge Tool or Sharpen Tool to adjust some parts of your explosion.

The hottest part of my planet is actually a third planet scaled down, with decreased size and variations applied. Just place it near the main planet and use your smudge tool to blend it if necessary although I didn’t do that because it seemed to be fine anyway. You may also want to duplicate this little asteroid and use motion blur on a duplicated layer. Make sure you’ve placed blurred layer below the main layer.

Conclusion

For the final image I’ve moved some elements in the better place and I’ve ended up with something like picture below. I hope you liked it and I hope this was useful for you. If so you can check my other tutorials or subscribe to an rss feed for more.