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

Here’s what we are going to create:

Step 1

Create a cube that has dimensions set to 135 x 327 x 68.

Step 2

Press F3 and go to Right view. Here choose B-Spline and draw a spline around the cube just like below.

Step 3

Create a Rectangle spline (Width: 4cm, Height: 130cm).

Step 4

Create Sweep NURBS then drag and drop both Rectangle and previous spline, we have just drawn, over the Sweep NURBS.

Step 5

Now resize the main cube object to fit in the border line. Here is the final result of main part of arm.

Step 6

Now create a sphere with 30 cm radius, over that arm.

Step 7

Press F3 to jump the right view. Here draw a shape with “Linear” spline tool like below.

Step 8

Now create a “Extrude NURBS” and make that spline the child of it then use the 9.5 value for movement of Extrude NURBS

Step 9

Copy that part and let them to hold the sphere object between them.

Step 10

Create another cube object as body (145 x 355 x 210)

Step 11

Now with rotate tool (R) turn the arm and connect it with body. Then copy that arm to create left arm. Here is the final result so far.

Step 12

Select the body cube and make it editable (C). Select the bottom face and apply extrude inner action with 6 cm offset.

Step 13

Now select the outer face of the bottom and extrude it just like below. Repeat that action for other 3 parts.

Step 14

Now right click over body and choose “Knife” tool, then choose the “loop” mode in the options tab.

Step 15

Here slice the bottom part of body twice as below.

Step 16

Press “U” on your keyboard then “L” to activate the “Loop selection” tool. and select the middle line, then squeeze it with “scale tool”.

Step 17

Now copy and resize the main part of the arm to use as leg. Here is the wireframe view.

Step 18

Create a new cube object as head (260×295x490)

Step 19

Make that cube editable (C) then select the face bottom of the cube and with “Extrude inner” tool create a new face (8cm offset).

Step 20

Now extrude it to inside.

Step 21

Select knife tool and change mode section to “loop” to make slices on corners. Do this for every corners which exist on top side. Every corner should look like below.

Step 22

Now create a “HyperNURBS” and make the cube object child of it. Then under the settings of hypernurbs give “3″ as value to “Subdivision editor” section.

Step 23

Create two cylinder and a triangle geometry like below to use on face.

Step 24

Now create a “Boole”object then drug these geometries and the cube object, which we created as cube and make child of the hypernurbs, but be sure that cube object comes first and other geometries stay together in a group file. Objects tree should looks like below.

Step 25

Copy these geometries and paste them same place but this time they should be thinner.

Continue to next page below!

15 Excellent Particle Flow Animations

If you’d like to learn how to create such particle flow animations you may start learning right away with particle flow tutorials we’ve already published! Below I’ve listed some of them. They are perfect for beginners and moderate particle flow users! Check them out!

• Create an Awesome Sci-fi 3D Tunnel Effect in 3ds Max
• Create a Retro Rainbow Waterfall Using 3DS Max and Particle Flow
• Create Audio Sensitive Animation
• Create a Colorful Apple Wallpaper
• How to Create a Stylish Retro Illustration
• Particle Dispersion Effect Using 3DS Max and Particle Flow
• Create an Exploding 3D Fluid Text Effect

By following the links above you’ll find some useful and creative ways of using particle system. Go ahead and try them now!

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!

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:

Business Card Preview

Here’s the business card that we’re going to create. It’s simple and readable. I prefer pure black business cards with white text (and maybe a logo in color as well as some simple patterns or ornaments in the background to diversify it) but here I’m going to show you how to create a grunge style business card.

Business Card Dimensions

A standard business card measurement is 3.5 x 2 inches (8.9cm x 5.1cm). There are also some other sizes for different countries but this one is probably the most common one. We will use a bit larger canvas to create it because we need a bleed. The bleed is some extra pixels beyond the original size of the card. We’ll need it because when card is cut it will have exactly 89mm x 51mm. Its edges may remain colored differently (due to imperfect cutting) so to avoid that we’re adding the bleed. The bleed has usually 0.0625 inches.

Step 1

Open up the Photoshop and create a new document with dimensions set to 3.625 x 2.125 inches (3.5 x 2 inches + 0.0625 inches bleed for each edge) and 300 dpi (since it’s for print).

Step 2

Fill the background layer with black using Paint Bucket Tool (G). Go to ‘View -> New Guide…’ and create two guides in the middle of the image (type in 50%). Click in the middle of the image using ‘Horizontal Type Tool (T)’ and type in your name, name of your company or your website address. I used ‘Chubby Cheeks’ as the font. I made it 12 pt. Tagline was created using ‘Myriad Pro’ font and grey color (#888888). Select each layer from this step and group them together. Hide the group.

Business Card Information

Now, it’s time for the front side. The most common information to include here are:

• Name and surname
• Who are you?
• Your email address
• Your telephone number
• Your website address (optional)
• Your address (optional)
• Short information about you or about your company (optional)

Step 3

So, create a new layer and use ‘Horizontal Type Tool (T)’ to type in any information you consider necessary for your business card. I used five information for this example. I used free font called ‘Eras Light ITC’ for the details and ‘Trebuchet MS’ for my name. I also placed a small ForCG logo in the top-right corner of the card.

Step 4

Add some really soft grey gradient beneath the text layers using ‘Gradient Tool (G)’. I used #e0e0e0 and #f6f6f6 for colors.

Step 5

Finally download some free brushes from Bittbox:

• Free Hi-Res Watercolor Photoshop Brushes
• Free Hi-Res Splatter Photoshop Brushes
• Free Hi-Res Watercolor Photoshop Brushes Set II

I used them on separate layers with color set to black. After that I changed layer blending modes to ‘Soft Light’ or ‘Overlay’. There are also three brush marks in color. They have ‘Fill’ set to 0% and ‘Color Overlay’ turned on inside layer styles. I ended up with this:

Conclusion

That’s all for now. I hope you learned something new and useful about business cards and I hope you like your newly created one!