Final Product

Important: You’ll need Xbreaker plugin for this tutorial.

Step 1

Create a cube with dimensions set to 260 x 7.5 x 45 cm.

Step 2

Select this cube then open the “Xbreaker” plugin.

Step 3

Use the settings below for plugin. Then click the “Break Now” button.

Step 4

Create a “Cloner object” and make the new “Cube_XBreaker_15″ object, which was created by the plugin, child of cloner object.

Step 5

Change the settings which was highlighted in object tab of the cloner object.

Step 6

Copy that cloner object several times and reposition them to create a new cube like below

Step 7

Create a floor object and assign a “mograph” tag for it.

Step 8

Create a “Platonic object” then change the settings of that object under the object tab as 250cm / 3 / Dodeca , respectively.

Step 9

Make it editable (Shortcut “C”) then choose the polygon tool to select the faces and choose the live selection tool and change its mode to “soft selection”

Step 10

Choose some faces and manipulate them to create an irregular shape just like a rock.

Step 11

Click with right mouse button over the platonic object and add a “phong tag”

Step 12

Choose the subdivide tool and subdivide the rock object twice.

Step 13

Create a fracture object then make the rock child of it and add a mograph tag to fracture object.

Step 14

Select the mograph tag of “floor” object and change the Friction section under collision tab to “1″

Step 15

This time choose the mograph tag of the Fracture object, which contains the rock object we have created, and change the value of “Rotational mass” from 100% to 500%

Continue reading on the next page!

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!

Step 1

Like previously you can use your favourite 3D application for this tutorial. I’m using 3ds Max. Create a cube in the middle of the scene. My has 400mm x 400mm x 400mm.

Step 2

Duplicate the cube by holding Shift key and using ‘Select and Move’ tool. Place it like me. Make sure their edges are overlapping like on the image below (they should be in the same place).

Step 3

Duplicate your cube several times until you get something like on the image below. I just kept copying the cubes like in the second step and then duplicated entire row of them, moved it up, duplicated it again and so on.

Step 4

Establish your view like me and create a new camera (Ctrl/CMD + C). Switch it to ‘Ortographic Projection’. It’s necessary in order to make appropriate edges parallel. Otherwise we wouldn’t get this kind of effect.

Step 5

Render your scene with some basic rendering engine. You shouldn’t use GI here because you don’t want to have differentiated shades and shadows everywhere. Look at image below and you’ll notice that appropriate sides of each cube have the same color.

Step 6

There are also two bipeds. The one to the left is actually standing on the box. The second one was placed in the air and rotated a bit so that it makes an illusion he’s standing on a upside down box.

Conclusion

Again, here’s the final pattern. In the end I’d like to show you one interesting things about it. This pattern really consist of small hexagons. It could be splitted into lots of triangles as well that are identical and that’s why we don’t really know how to look at it. It’s two dimensional and each of these little triangles has just a different color which makes an illusion. I hope you enjoyed my tutorial. Thanks for reading!

Final Image Preview

Here is the image we are going to create:

Step 1

Open up your 3ds Max (or your favourite 3D application that you’re familiar with). Create lots of boxes like me by going to ‘Create -> Standard Primitives -> Box’. Their placement is random but they are quite close to each other. Each one has 154mm length and 10mm width. Their height is different for each box but they are all high.

Step 2

Now you place some cameras around. It’s hard to exactly specify where to put them. I created several ones around the boxes. Below are some examples. I believe all of them would work well but I decided to choose third camera (Camera02) for final render so try to position one of your cameras like Camera02.

Step 3

I used V-Ray to render this scene with resolution set to 1280×800px. In its settings I only turned on GI (Irradiance Map + Light Cache with standard settings) and skylight (with pure white color) as well as ‘Reflection/refraction environment override’ under ‘V-Ray:: Environment’. Below are the settings for material. Once you’ve got everything set up hit render.

Step 4

Open up the Photoshop and create a new document with dimensions set to 1280×800px. Fill the background layer with black using Paint Bucket Tool (G). Paste your render and rotate it by 180 degrees.

Step 5

Paste a desaturated texture of sheet of paper below the layer with render and lower its opacity to about 25%.

Step 6

Duplicate your render and go to ‘Filters -> Blur -> Box Blur…’ to blur it. You should obtain this kind of effect:

Step 7

Now create a new layer and paint some huge colorful dots like on the image below.

Step 8

Again, use ‘Box Blur…’ with fairly high radius to blur these dots. Then duplicate blurred layers and set them to ‘Color’ and ‘Overlay’.

Step 9

Now turn on the layer with the original render and set it to ‘Linear Dodge (Add)’. Move it beneath the layers with colors but above paper layer. Also, add in some little dots on a new layer using Brush Tool (B).

Step 10

Finally, you may create a layer like the one below and set it to ‘Screen’. It was created from the same render but I blurred it slightly and changed its color to red using ‘Hue/Saturation…’.

Conclusion

That’s all for now! I hope you enjoyed my tutorial!

Sweet Style Text Effect

Here is a preview of the text effect we’re going to create.

Step 1

First of all open up your Adobe Photoshop. My document’s dimensions are 1280 by 800 pixels. Fill the background layer with white color.

Step 2

Grab a ‘Gradient Tool (G)’. Set your colors to #ffffff and #fefefe. Set gradient’s mode to ‘Radial Gradient’ and create a white circle in the middle of the image with light grey borders.

Step 3

Grab ‘Type Tool (T)’ and create some kind of text in the middle of your image. I used ‘Arial Rounded MT Bold’ as a font with size set to 144 pt. Add the following style to this layer:

Step 4

Duplicate the text layer. Apply it the following style. Gradient colors are set to #0076a3 and #00bff3 although I changed them at the end anyway.

Step 5

Duplicate it again and place the duplicated layer above other layers. Use this style for it:

Step 6

Then create another copy and again use the following style for this layer:

Step 7

At this point I took an old paper texture and a waterfall texture. It doesn’t really matter what textures you will take here because they are used only to add in some soft noise to the letters. At first, desaturate old paper texture and set it to ‘Overlay’. Then select waterfall layer. Go to ‘Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur…’. Use 90 degrees for angle and 10px for radius. Set this layer to ‘Lighten’ and decrease its opacity a bit. Hold Ctrl/CMD and click on one of your text layers. Once it’s selected select waterfall layer one more time and hit ‘Add Vector Mask’ button at the bottom of the layers palette.

Step 8

Finally, go to Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Hue/Saturation…’ and use the settings below for this layer. Once you create it add it a mask like in the previous step.

Conclusion

The text is ready but obviously you can improve it even more or add in some background and details! I hope that it was helpful for you. Please, comment it below and let me know what do you think!

Optical Illusions

Here are some examples of optical illusions. We’re going to create all of them. To begin with I’d like to tell you that it’s impossible to create an impossible object using 3D application (well, unless you’re working using real world settings and real perspectives, otherwise you can create anything). They doesn’t exist in real world, too. You can only fake the perspective and create a 2D illusion of a three-dimensional object. So, let’s see how it’s done on a few examples.

Step 1 – First Impossible Object

You can use your favourite 3D application for this tutorial. I believe that all of them will work well here. I used 3ds Max. First, create a three long boxes. Each one should have 1000×200mm. Place them like on the image below.

Step 2

Move your view like me and create a camera (Ctrl/CMD + C).

Step 3

Select your newly created camera and go to its settings. We have to turn on ‘Orthographic Projection’. Original perspective won’t work because it’s close to real one. It’s just hard to create an impossible object using standard perspective. Of course, it’s possible to use it but it would require cubes in different sizes and different distances between them. It’s much easier to use orthographic projection.

Step 4

Select the target of your camera and change your view to Camera01 (press C on your keyboard). Now you’ll have to move your target very precisely until you get something like on the image below.

Step 5 – Impossible Object Render

Render your scene twice. First with everything like on the first image above and then delete a part of the cuboid that’s the closest to the camera (see the second image). Afterwards move both your renders to the Photoshop. Put each render and alpha map on top of each other and use an inverted alpha map (image below shows normal alpha map) to get rid of a part of SECOND render. Once you do it you’re done with this object!

Step 5 – Second Impossible Object

It works pretty much the same for the second optical illusion. It only seems that this one is a bit more complicated but in fact it’s not. The boxes are cubes with 200mm edge. Gaps in between them have 100mm. Once you create them establish your camera like me. Follow the previous step to render it and then create an illusion from two renders.

Step 6 – Third Impossible Object

This one is the most advanced although it works almost the same way with this exception that here you’ll have to use less stairs on two sides. If you used the same number everywhere you would have to place your camera over everything and that won’t create this kind of effect. Each stair has 300mm x 300mm x 50mm. This time you won’t have to render it twice.

Conclusion

Good luck with creating your own impossible shapes. Here are some other examples taken from Technion website. Can you recreate them?

And again here are my examples:

Magic Tree Illustration

Here is what you are going to create.

Step 1: 3ds Max Plug-in

First we will use 3ds Max and then Adobe Photoshop for this tutorial. In order to complete this tutorial you will need a plug-in for 3ds Max called Glu3D or similar plug-in. It has a demo version available on 3DAliens website so you may use it or you may create a mesh that looks like a fluid yourself. Open up 3ds Max. Go to ‘Create Tab -> Geometry -> glu3D pouring system’ and choose glu3D.

Step 2: Calculating the Scene

Don’t change anything and calculate the scene (select ‘glu3D text’ and hit ‘GO!’).

Step 3: Surface

Afterwards turn on glu3D toolbar and hit ‘Build surface’ and then ‘Hide/Show mesh surface in viewport and render’. Delete the bowl.

Step 4

Take a look at the glu3D settings for your mesh. Increase level of detail, drop size and decrease your drop size. Add a modifier called ‘TurboSmooth’ to your mesh. It should instantly start to resemble a branch of my tree from the final image.

Step 5

Go to material editor (M) and select a standard material. Use ‘Swirl’ for diffuse channel. Apply this material to your fluid and try to render it. Most likely it won’t look like mine one so try to play with the settings visible on screenshot below inside ‘Swirl’.

Step 6

Take a look at my examples. Your goal is to make it look like the second one. It’s all about playing with the settings I mentioned about above. I’m unable to specify them exactly because you’ll simulation will be different anyway. I used quite high level of detail (like 14) and 3 or 4 iretations for TurboSmooth. Then I was moving time slider back and forth to capture a good moment. I didn’t have to change anything inside ‘Swirl’ for most renders because it looked fine already.

Step 7: Moving to Photoshop

Go to Photoshop and create a new document with dimensions set to 1680 x 1050px. Fill the background layer with black using ‘Paint Bucket Tool (G)’. Move your renders to the Photoshop and use their alpha masks to get rid of their background. If you have some photo of a tree then you may use here. Otherwise go to any stock website and download one. My comes from cgtextures.com (browse their nature category). Place your tree in the middle of the image and get rid of its background if it has it. Also descrease its size a bit (Ctrl/CMD + T).

Step 8

Start placing your renders beneath the crown of a tree. Again, also here I can’t provide you a good solution on how to do it because your renders are different than mine ones. Just use your imagination.

Step 9

To recolor your objects simply go to ‘Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Hue/Saturation…’ and use any colors you like.

Step 10

Use your brush tool with colors set to light yellow and dark green or blue to paint something like on the image below. I also used some grunge textures in the background with very low opacity. Paint each part of your background on a separate layer and use gaussian blur to make them smoother.

Step 11

After that paint a few little dots near the tree and try to adjust your image using adjustment layers if you consider it necessary. You may also add in some other elements that I didn’t mention about like clouds or fruits on a tree.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial! Please comment it below.

IPhone version is available. Download all the files below.

Light Effects

Here is a final image preview.

Step 1 – Light Paths

First of all open up your 3ds Max (or any other 3D application) and create a few paths like on the image below. Their placement is random. I’ve created around 20 of them. These will be our light strokes.

Step 2

Select each one and make each renderable. In order to make them visible in renders go to their propetries (to the right in your sidebar) and select “Enable in Render” as well as “Enable in Viewport”. You may also change “steps” under “Interpolation” to something like 16. This will make each light stroke smoother.

Step 3

Hit ‘M’ on your keyboard to get to the ‘Material Editor’ and select the first material. Use the setting below for this material and apply it to your light strokes. You may also modify it a bit if it doesn’t look alright.

Step 4

Scale your light strokes in one direction (like on the image below). Move your camera around and find it a good placement (see my example).

Step 5

Once you’ve done everything render your scene. I used VRay here with Global Illumination turned on. Other rendering engines should work fine here, too. Here is what I got (originally I used 1680×1050px resolution).

Step 6

Once all that is done save your render as Targa or Tiff image (*.tga or *.tiff – I used .tga) in order to have your alpha channel baked into the file. Use Adobe Photoshop to open it. Desaturate your render and use its alpha channel to remove black bacground. To begin with fill the background layer with pure black color.

Step 7

Use ‘Type Tool (T)’ to create a ‘light effects‘ text. Go to its ‘layer styles’ and decrease its ‘Fill opacity’ to 0%.

Step 8

Duplicate this layer and go to ‘Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur’. Use 0 degrees for angle and around 40 pixels for distance.

Step 9

I’ve pasted a star field image in the background and used a ‘Hue/Saturation…’ layer with hue set to 87, saturation to 58 and lightness to 0. Alternatively you can use your ‘Brush Tool (B)’ to paint some lighter areas in the center.

Step 10

The image is ready but you can improve it even more by adding there some light strokes created with brushes like these available on ColorBurned – 46 Stunning High Resolution Photoshop Light Effect Brushes.

Conclusion

I hope you like it. Click on the preview image to get the full size image.

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!