Fell behind in writing my 3DS Max tutorials. The mood hasn't struck me yet. But when I get to them, I'll be a maniac of a different colour.
Yesterday I was playing with Cel Edman's little thing. I got to thinking about what I was seeing, and it occurred to me that a lot of the tricks that I know were certaintly applicable. So, this morning, I hacked a PSD for a sculptie table.
It's a dinky little thing with only a handful of layers, but it is chuck full of little tidbits.
I also did it because I think it's funny. Doing 3d modeling in a 2d package with only a small selection of tricks - too funny. It makes me giddy.
Then again, I do have a weird sense of humour.
Just wanted to do a little table in a lathe fashion. Toss in a few cross-leg dohickies at the bottom and call it good.
First, B/Z.
B/Z is largley a simple up/down gradient. The top of the table being white and the bottom being black. Now, some of it has to be flat, so some areas of B will have the exact same value. While the up/down parts will be gradient.
RG/XY is a little more complicated to visualize. If you are familiar with XY values in a cylinder or remember your trigonemtry lessons, figuring this out shouldn't be too hard. Or just run around in a circle.
First, need a gradient that goes grey <> black <> grey <> white <> grey. I put this initial gradient in R. However, and this is the trick, G needs to be at a 90 degree angle to R. So, have the same in G, and then offset it by 1/4 or 1/8 or whatever it is.
I made sure that the RG gradients were absolutely linear, which means make sure that Smoothness is set to 0%. I did this so I could use Curves to add the roundess to the table in a tweakable manner (did not want B-Spine interpolation in Gradients will not be a funky factor). If left linear, then the table will be square. With Curves, I can control how square or roundish it becomes.
Now, in the Curves adjustment layer, I did the curve in RGB. If done in seperate R and G, then you can make ovals, eggs, and other funky round or not-round things. Well, within the limits of making a Curves curve.
Doing so in RGB is fine because of one of the channel tricks I had pulled. If you go to Blending Options in the various layers, some of the channels are turned off. In the main RG layer, B is turned off. Same for the B/Z layer, but RG is turned off.
This is why I have 50% grey at the bottom and a layer mask for the one layer. By controlling how much RG shows through, I can move things in/out from the central Z axis. The more that shows, the wider it is; the less that shows, the narrower it is. So, the rim of the table top has more RG showing while the central leg has less showing.
Don't forget to Alt + Left-Click a Layer Mask to see the raw mask. If you do this on the RG layer, then the correlation should become apparent. Or you can just copy it in the Alpha palette. Whichever flow works for you.
And I left the Guides in there. Turn them on and you should be able to see the horizontal landmarks used for solid fills and gradients. Between the two Guides just above the center is the outer rim of the table. Not only did these help with hacking the sculpt map, but will also help in making a texture.
Open it up, poke it, prode it, and hopefully learn something. Save it out, upload it, and be amazed.
Man, that is too funny.