FF = Force Fields
more painting with particles
under the influenceHow to "use the Force":
1. change your name to Luke
2. click FF
2. click FF
| One of the strangest effects within
the particle brush system of Project Dogwaffle Professional (PD Pro)
has to be the use of force fields. First included with PD Pro 3.5, a forcefield
is defined by the currently loaded image in the main buffer. You simply
click "FF" in the particle
panel to activate the field, which is derived from the gradient in the
image. If you have high-contrast elemnts in the image, such as sharp
black lines on white, or other distinct 'features' in a photograph,
those will work wonders to affect the trajectory of your brush's
particles. It may take a short second or two for PD Pro to calculate the forcefield from the image's greyscale gradient, depending on how big the image is. Soon, you'll see a control panel for the forcefield's effect. Once you have activated the forcefield, you can adjust how strong it is, and which way it is affecting those particles you're about to paint over it. You can let it follow the contrours (shapes), the color (Hue) or the value (brightness) of the pixels found in the image. Furthermore, you can clear the image buffer after the forcefield has been activated, i.e. you can paint over something different, even a plain white background, while the original forcefield remains in effect. You could also open a new layer, and paint in the clear layer, while seeing the underlying layered image as a visual reference of the forcefield image, perhaps with diminished intensity, just as a hint and soft visual guide. This is particularly useful when you want to paint things that must appear to be 'tied' through the forcefield to the underlying image. For example, when you want to add some mold and frost or garland or other organic growing things along some of the visible features, like grout on a tiled floor or in the corners of a poorly ventilated bathroom, or the deep ridges on tree bark in a lush amazon forest. Finally, there are also some weird modes and just plain wacky effects you can obtain, especially when further combining it with other effects. For example, it can be fun to see what happens when you re-use a created image as a new forcefield, almost in an iteratively recursive way, again and again, and see where the force takes you. So here we go, and let's remember the mission: just use the force and have fun exploring the universe (of crazy shapes and colors)! Here's a first step-by-step tutorial which assumes you already are somewhat familiar with particle brushes, as well as using Shift-a to redraw the most recent brush stroke. The examples below were created just a single brush stroke, that was re-rendered a few times, mixed with various changes in forcefield settings, brush settings, and applying filters and such. Step 1 - the basics |
| FF Resources |
| Intro |
| Step1: Basics |
| Examples |
| PD Pro 3.5 |
| Erratic animated fire |
| Portrait |
| Weed |
| Skull |
| what's cool |
