Diversifying is good for investments, not for blogs…
I have been absent in my blogging of progression of SL building, but because I have been actually making stuff!!! I will get back to blogging more of the things I learn, but for now, you can see more of the stuff I have been making at the Bittersweet blog here -> http://bittersweetslove.wordpress.com/
Here’s the new collection!
A big TY to Takeshi and Ana Lutetia for the lovely blog and review!!
Gosh, I am so very happy and humbled at how sweet Takeshi and Ana Lutetia were to blog my convo cookies!!!
See their lovely blogs here:
Ana Lutetia – BeBeDoLL review
Takeshi Kiama – Have a Cookie, Have Two!
I’ve also received lots of kind words on the cookies and stuff I’ve been making, and its a HUGE confidence builder, so ty ty ty for loving my crazy funny ideas :)
Today I finished off my new sculpty boyfriend (and passed a few copies off to some friends). This is mah new luv, who luvs me and only me!
My First Sculpty Prims!!
Ya, I got a tad bit sleepy reading the Blender manual (another symptom of my short attention span), and saw another program on the sl wiki page that looked like fun! PloppSL is another free program that uses a child-friendly interface to create sculptie maps. You basically color a one dimensional object and the program poofs up the object like a mylar balloon, creating fun organic shapes. The cool part is that it also creates the texture to color your prim once you create you map that you can upload and use inworld. Very basic drawing pad, so most of the shapes from this are very organic but I think they are kinda cute.
Vlad Bjornsson created a this good tutorial on how to use plopp: http://www.shiny-life.com/2007/10/06/tutorial-create-sculpted-prims-with-ploppsl/
So I made some pretty noob sculpties, yay!!
Creative Short Attention Span
Back from holidays which were lovely and warm and needed RL and SL break. Now back with the January motivation to start new things and better oneself, I have decided to improve my building skills. When I started SL, the best thing I found were the free courses offered on how to live a second life. My preference for courses went towards building, then my short attention span got me looking at clothes-making, scripting, eventually signing up to teach courses (best way to learn). Then when I walked my noob looking self into ICING, I started this buying fashion frenzy that has taken me to the modeling world I know today! While exciting and fun, I decided after break to further expand my knowledge sharing on this site to building.
So today, I am learning about sculpted prims. In SL, lots of products and clothes are now using sculpties as a building block, making complex and more life-like designs. While it is always fun to see my sculptie prim lashes look like big globs of ectoplasm planted mid-face, the use of sculpties has many benefits to a builder.
The official sl wiki page pointed me to Blender. Blender is free software that creates 3D maps for sculpties. From what I can tell the user interface looks more confusing than photoshop! Its probably not the easiest to use, but probably the most used tool for creating sculpties in sl. In order to use Blender, you will also need to install Python.
Once I figure out how to do anything other than create a sphere (Add>Mesh>IcoSphere), I will blog more!
Still Not Around…
Been lurking and plurking, but RL has taken over on account of the season! Off to a beach holiday for a few weeks and thinking PS on the beach is prolly not on the agenda. Who knows, possibly a drunken coconut flavoured one here and there?
Here’s my fave song as of late and see ya soon!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nTSU-mFWGs
Happy Holidays!!!
(Unwanted) SL and PS Break…
I am on a business trip in Croatia for the week, Mexico City next week and Sweden the week after. I have brought along PS to install on my work laptop, but have this feeling I will be stuck in a lot of business dinners for awhile. Sigh. And just when I thought I was getting somewhere…
Have a bunch of pics from Kay and Aris’ wedding yesterday to process too….in any case, a very big congrats to the happy vamp couple!!!
Blurring the Edges
Woke up to a little bit of yayness this morning :D
The pic will be up in the Fishy Strawberry main shop for a month, ty Fae and Johnny!
I have seen other pics altered in photoshop with various highlighting and blurring tools, to be able to draw the focus on the subject. Here I used a the blur brush to darken the (amazing) items in the shop in the foreground. Ya thinking about it now, usually the background is blurred, but it’s technique in any case to be discussed here ;-)
1. To Blur
- Make a layer with a copy of the background by selecting the layer and dragging it to the copy layer er button (second from the right on the bottom of the layer window). BTW, if you click that button you get a new alpha layer (ya I just learned that…I said I was a newb)
- Select the blur tool from the tool menu (in the same section as the brush tool, looks like a teardrop)
- Change the brush size and effects on the top of the window. In this pic I used a darkening effect with 50% strength to blur the left side of the pic
- Swipe over areas you want blurred. You can probably use a selection tool to be more accurate…I just get selection lazy :)
2. To Darken Edges of a Pic (the pic uploaded above does not have this effect)
***You use the Burn tool to darken, Dodge tool to lighten***
- Select the burn tool from the tools menu (same section as the brushes and blur, looks like a little pin)
- Change the brush size and effects on the top of the window
- Brush over the edges and areas to darken. I just practiced on the pic after I uploaded to change some of the shading to the right of the pic, to draw more attention to the ad
Oh…Brushes
So, yesterday I decided I wanted to learn how to make cool smoke curls in PS. Google, being my PS mentor, gave me this link to create some pretty smoke curls.
It took me quite some time to get these curls looking halfway decent. Thinking, there must be an easier way, I found quite a few links for smoke brushes, and I figured it was time to get working with brushes. In the blink of an eye I was making smoke curls like there was no tomorrow hehe. Most of the night yesterday was learning the manual technique, and finding an outfit, leaving little time to snap a very fast pick. Luckily the magical brushes got my lil wand all purdy like without much effort at all!
I said “oh…duh” in my head quite a bit yesterday, seeing how easy brushes are to use!
1. Creating Smoke Manually
- Create a image and fill the background with a dark contrasting colour
- Create a new layer and with the brush tool, create lighter lines, using a fairly large thickness, approx 60. Experiment with vertical lines and loopy swirls
- Now with your smoke layer, select Filter > Distort > Wave
- In the Wave gui, select the Randomize button
- Then select Edit > Fade Wave. In this gui, select an opacity of 50%
- Continue with the Wave and Fade wave until you get a smokey image you like
- Use liquify to shape your smoke as needed
2. Oh….Duh….Brushes
- You can find a lot of free and great brushes on the web…some links below
- Upload the .abr file to your computer. I store in one easy to find folder on my desktop
- To use a brush, select the brush tool in the tool menu
- On the top menu you will see a drop down select where you can change the size of the brush. You can expand this menu by selecting the arrow on the top right corner. Select Load Brushes
- Find the name of your file and select Load
- Now in the drop down menu, you will be able to find the brushes you loaded. Change the size and color as appropriate
- You can change additional brush presets by selecting F5, bringing up an additional gui
Here are some links I found for free brushes:
http://www.rykerbeck.com/rykers-faves/
http://best-photoshop-tutorials.blogspot.com/2008/10/25-most-wanted-swirl-and-curl-brushes.html
http://www.brushesdownload.com/gfile.asp?id=136
Managing Color and Fishy Strawberries
The physical act of opening my PS for Dummies book makes me sleepy. So decided today to work on an entry for the Fishy Strawberry Flickr contest!
I used this cool color scheme website that helped me plan the pic (loosely). I wanted to pic colors that matched the mood and style of Fishy Strawberry…something fun and lively!
Won’t go through all I did to make this pic, but a technique used is described below…
1. Replacing Colors in a Pic
- Use the select tool to make marching ants around the area you are working with in the pic
- Select Image > Adjustment > Replace Color
- You will get a eyedropper tool in the pic, use to select the color you want to replace
- In the bottom of the Replace Color gui, you can select the color you want to change to. In this pic, I wanted my selections to be black, so I just reduced the lightness
- You can replace more than one color in a pic by holding down the shift key while selecting the color you want to change with the eyedropper
Gritty Kitteh Pic
I found this tutorial on youtube.com on how to create a “gritty, high-contrast” pic and thought I would give it a try. To fit in with the theme, I decided to go Neko with my newly discovered Magika neko set (which distracted me and my linden wallet for quite some time during Sabina’s recent hunt, and ty Sabina!).
1. Make Image Mode Changes
- Select Image > Mode > Greyscale (select discard color)
- Select Image > Mode > Index Color
- Select Image > Mode > Color Table (choose black body)
2. Make a new layer (oh blessed keystrokes, you don’t scare me)
- Select ctrl+a (this selects everything….yay marching ants)
- Select ctrl+c (this copies everything)
- Select F12 (this brings back the original image)
- Select ctrl+v (this pastes what you copied into a new layer)
Add Luminosity
- In the far right of the layer menu box thingy (I will learn proper terms eventually), you can exand the menu by clicking on the 3 lines on the side of the top of the bar
- Select Blending Options
- In the Blending Options drop down menu, select Luminosity
3. Add Noise
- Select Filter > Noise > Add Noise
- Select a percentage, in this pic I used 3%
Some other things to add…
1. Fixing Horizon (I remember this from class many moons ago)
- Select Analysis > Ruler Tool
- Draw a path along the horizon you want to match, in this pic it was the back wall
- Select Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary
- Crop as needed
2. Creating a border (another tutorialfrom Ryker Beck)
- Here I created another image and created the canvas to fit both pics and copied both pics as layers
- Fill the background, in this pic I used black
- In the background layer, select Blending Options and select Stroke
