This
tutorial is based on a Dan Ritchie
Quick tutorial - Space
Tutorial - it should work the same way or similarly with the free
version of PD 1.2, PD Artist, PD Pro and even PD Particles
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Here's
a 3D animation which was created in Carrara.
The background was painted in PD Artist.
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Some
post work was added in PD Pro
after
the Carrara 3D rendering.
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The
first step in creating space art, is to create or select a brush
containing a star image.
PD Pro has several tools to produce star-like images. One way is the FX
(effects) brush creator tool:
- open the Brush settings (e.g. keyboard 'o' for
options or click
the brush image thumbnail in upper-left corner of the Tools panel)
- Select the "Custom" tab
- click the small "FX" icon (along left or bottom
of the panel, depending on which version you have)
- Scroll through the many pre-defined FX brushes
shuch as Explode or BlueGreen.
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Alternatively
you could also use the "Starry" brushes in the internal Organic Effects
brushes. These are available in PD 1.2 (freeware version) as well as PD
Artist, and PD Particles.
In the tools panel, right-click the brush tool icon.
Select Organic Effects.
Select Starry.
In PD Particles, click the Presets button, then Organic Effects menu,
and select Starry.
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Near the bottom of the internal Brushset (default brush images) you'll
find two starry images.
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Or,
you could also find other images with starry appearance.
Right-click the brush image thumbnail in the upper-left corner of the
Tools panel. This opens the Brushes panel, which contains built-in
(internal) brush images.
With PD 2.1 or PD Pro you can even load your own, alternate image
collections. See some examples
here. These are brushsets by Cybersign's Martin Duerr. Danke schoen
Martin!
There are also some great starry
images amongst those from Manuel Zander of Trionix.
In fact, one of Manuel's tools is a free plugin for Dogwaffle, which is
called CopyShape and which can create new images for use in brushes
with Dogwaffle, TVPaint (formerly Mirage) or other tools (copy to
Clipboard). See CopyShape
here.
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Or in PD Particles, select the menu:
Window > Brush Images
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This
creates or selects a star image or similarly interesting shape for use
in our project.
If you now erase the main buffer image to black, you can then place a
few stamped down dabs of your star here or there.
You could also add some random size from the Brush settings (options)
panel so they don't all appear the same size. Dito for random hue,
brightness (value) and angle.
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What
we really
want to do though is add some random postioning and size. This will
make sure that it's less boring, more diverse and realistic looking.
If it's a custom brush (as opposed to an internal brush from the
brushsets), you'll need to enable the transforming, for scale and
rotation. Random position doesn't take much time, but random size or
angle does (on slow computers or large custom images), so it's an
option which is not enabled by default.
Click the checkbox for "Allow
custom brush transforms"
In PD Artist you can not transform custom brushes by way of random size
or angle. So you'll be limited to random position. But that's not realy
a big deal, since the most important element here is random postion.
You can easily resample the brush image when you need a diffrent size
and aint with that new size a while before changing it again to yet
another size.
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Here's
a look at some of the Brush settings.
Your mileage may vary, it depends on exactly which version you have.
But most have similar features.
Apply a little randomness to hue, saturation and value, but don't go
overboard unless you really want to create a very colorful effect.
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| Also,
get the Steps to a
high value. That will spread the stars apart
so they're not too close to eachother. Otherwise you'll get an awful
lot of stars. Of course, if you're going for something like a dwarf
galaxy or a globular star cluster with tens of thousands of stars,
that's what you want. But for nebular with open star clusters, usually
containing a few hundred to lower thousands of stars, have the steps
high, and just paint a little longer to accumulate more stars over time. |
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You can now freely paint your
space scene.
Be sure to leave some areas more dense with many stars than others.
This will allow for dark matter effects. Feel free to switch between
various brush images.
If you use PD Pro you might want to use an animated brush contaning
several starry images of different styles and sizes that it cycles
through as you paint, so it essentially does the switching on-the-fly
for you.
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Using
different Mode values
is also recommended.
There is an Additive mode which makes great brigh spots.
There's a screen mode and others which are useful too. Try the
Subtractive mode to makr darker areas re-appear and grow darker and
larger.
Use the Opacity if the effect is too fast. To reduce the effect, reduce
opacity.
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We'll now switch to
Smear mode, without otherwise changing the brush,
i.e. still with large step and similar brush image, random position
etc...
This lets us spread out the stars and get a great diffuse nebulae
effect going.
Once again, if the effect is too strong, reduce its impact by reducing
the Opacity.
The Bleed parameter in the Brush settings (options) can also be useful.
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As a final touch, go
back to the Additive mode, and add just a few bright stars.
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Adding a bright Nova
Right-click the Line or Linear tool and select "Nova" from the menu.
Set primary and secondary colors to dark purple and dark green or blue,
for example.
Add a few nova at same location with different angles for
no-overlapping stars. |
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Here's an example
created using the Nova tool in PD Artist.
Even more sophisticated light effects are possible with PD Pro 4.1's
lens flare engine. |
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One thing you'll be
tempted to try also is to make it look like this
bright star is pushing away the gas and interstellar dust. You might
start with a few darker regions, all around, and some entering to near
the center. Use the Subtractive mode again..
You can try reduced (very low) opacity but then counter act the effect
by reducing the step to a smaller value. And reduce the random position
offest. That way you can paint dark branches which somewhat follow your
brush strokes such as the one coming in from the mid-left.
Along the top-right there are also a few brush strokes that went from
mid upper left to mid lower right a few times. first near across the
middle bright spot, then more of them parallel but farther away and
then yet again farther away. The resulting effect would be to make it
appear to go in different stages. Perhaps this can convey the
impression of shockwaves of stellar solar wind. |
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Copy to Swap from
the Buffer menu (Image menu in PD Pro)
This is a quick way to keep a snapshot of the current image and have it
ready in the alternate 'swap' buffer, where it can be used for various
compositing effects with the front main image buffer. |
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| For example, apply a
Blur filter next to the main image buffer. |
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This is the Zoom
blur - specify the location of the zoom hotspot.
You could also first create a selection mask so that the blur is
contained near and inside the nebula and won't affect faraway stars. |
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| If the blur effect
is too strong, too intense, reduce the effect by blending it back to
the prior image: Fade Last action |
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| Adjust the fade
slider to get the right amount. You can see some of the
non-blurred image and the blurred image at the same time. This keeps
the dark globules and dark matter crisper. |
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Now click the
upper-right thumbnail, to enable Swap mixing (blending the main and
swap buffer images)
The orange tringle in upper left corner of the thumbnail indicates that
blending is enabled. |
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| Right-click the same
icon in upper right of the Tools panel and select various modes. Try
Multiply. |
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| Add a few Nova
strokes. It may create the ritgh desired amoiunt of
bright saturation inside the nebular, and some added blueish haze on
the outer skirts of the center. |
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Another neat effect
is the effect brushes 'Smear', 'Smudge' or Modeling Clay
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| In either case try
first with reduced opacity so the effect is not too intense. |
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Draw some brush
strkes from the center to the outer areas. Draw a few in various
directions, all starting from the center.
Especially try a few strokes across the dark mass globules to make it
look like solar wind is hacking away at them. |
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Go back to the
paint brush, subtractive mode, and add more dark matter
around and perhaps even some across the equatorial plane. PErhaps this
belongs to the remnants of a super nova?
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Hm,.. this went so
fast, I don't recall which tool I used here.
Oh well, it looks great.
The top of the nebulae's rim, check it out.
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Now we're going into
more cosmological effects: gravitational hotspots, lenses, anomalies...
Perhaps a black hole in front of it all? Or a worm hole travelling
across the region?
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You can paint a few
at low bias. Great local smearing effects, non-linear distortions too.
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And here's one which
Albert Einstein would probably have liked.
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