Create a Colorful Apple Wallpaper
on Dec 31 in Drawing, Effects by Paul
This tutorial will show you how to create an awesome apple wallpaper using 3ds Max and Photoshop! There are a few versions available! Check it out!
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!
Nice wallpaper. I like the idea =)
Nice one! can this be replicated with a simple scatter too?
Thanks!
At first I tried to locate particles only on the surface but they were overlapping too much. I don’t know how would it work with scatter but I guess scatter would work well here too!
Beautiful output. However, you should spend more time on the walk through (procedure) as most experts would already know how this is done… especially if you don’t plan on responding to Q’s on the forum.
Thank you Bob! Don’t worry, I’m going to answer all the questions so feel free to ask them
I’ll try to explain everything a little bit better next time but I consider it clear enough (at least for me).
Love it! Wish you’d do more =) (consider it my new years wish
)
Thank you Primi
I’m really happy to hear all that! I’ll do my best to write frequently and keep the quality high
very nice and good tutorial and my visit this blog thru digg
Hello, please tell me, How I can hide my ‘Position object’ (in your way it is apple)?? Cubes appear into my ‘Position object’ and they invisible!!!((
P.S. Pardon for my english. I’m from Ukraine (Kiev)
Don’t hide it. Use transparent material for it (opacity=0%).
Hoh!!!))) Thanks!!! )) Cool tutorial!!!))
Thanks!
I’m really happy to hear that you like it!
Hey Paul, nice tut. thanks
do you think you could give me some settings for rendering in mental ray? i cant get mine to look even close to yours, its dark regaurdless of how many lights i use. thanks in advance
Hey Ryan, thanks. I’m not a Mental Ray expert but I’d suggest to use some kind of global lighting (like sky, HDRI). I used HDRI map in Vray (everything with standard settings) and that worked just fine. I turned on GI which causes ‘photons’ to bounce and light up even darker areas inside apple a bit.
If that doesn’t solve your problem, let me know and I’ll look for particular solution for you.
Thanks a lot Paul, it looks much better now! Not nearly as good as your render quality wise though. Cubes have very hard/sharp edges, anything i can do to fix that? Or was that just V-ray’s quality?
My image from 9th step is exactly what I got after rendering this apple (with V-ray’s default settings).
You could try to replace your cubes with cubes that has rounded edges (use ‘Shape Instance’ for that instead of ‘Shape’ in 8th step).
If that unusual method won’t do the trick then you’ll have to play with photons/shadows inside Mental Ray (try decreasing contrast at first). Alternatively, you could try to fix that in Photoshop by rendering different passes and compositing them together.
Unfortunately, I don’t know Mental Ray so I’m sorry but I can’t provide you exact solution. Maybe some other reader will answer your question more precisely.
ok, i’ll give it a try. thanks for your help.
Can you send me the apple…I dont have 3dsmax, and i cant make a apple etc..
So could you send me the apple so i can make this wallpaper, i need a new wallpaper
Beautiful result. What a creative way of combining 3d and 2d graphics!