[jfrancis]

How would you go about making this pattern?

I know it's a matter of getting the anisotropic reflections right, but - layering aside - for one simple curved stroke on an otherwise unpolished surface, what kind of grad would drive the anisotropy?

[Half Life]

Well, it's best to start with a single scratch -- in this instance each scratch is a rounded patch.

Apply an black to white "angle gradient" to a selection in the shape of the scratch -- using a process like the image below (but with a better selection):



How I would proceed from there is to make the selection a "brush" in Photoshop (or similar program) and simply paint the image you want.

If you want to be really clever when you are making your anisotropy brush can you can make a bump brush from the same selections. and If you are working in a program like Corel Painter that lets you record and playback your brush strokes (with a different brush) you can paint the exact same image with the 2 custom brushes and they will align perfectly.

Best,
Jason.

[jfrancis]

If you want to be really clever when you are making your anisotropy brush can you can make a bump brush from the same selections. and If you are working in a program like Corel Painter that lets you record and playback your brush strokes (with a different brush) you can paint the exact same image with the 2 custom brushes and they will align perfectly.

Best,
Jason.

This is an interesting idea. I had sort of come up with a Photoshop version of the rest overnight in my mind by looking at the 'cafe table' overlapping circle pattern, but a randomized brush - even one that was stroking a pen path - wouldn't align from anisotropic pass to bump pass.

I think painter would even let me shuffle more than one 'brush' at a time for each pass, so that the 'grinder' could hit the surface differently from place to place. Is that the case? I have to look into that.

If not then maybe I could do something with shuffled Maya sprites emitted from a long, looping slightly overlapped 3D space curve.

[Half Life]

I did a quick test using a simple half arc of the grad which I made into a nozzle in Painter -- as you can see with about 20 min invested it came back with decent results... a bit more time and care invested in better shapes and I think you could nail it.



The map made from a quick painter nozzel (could be MUCH better):


The nice thing with nozzles in Painter is you can have many different images that you can switch between based on several methods (rotation being one if your wacom has the right pen) which could be just what the doctor ordered for this pic. I use Painter alot in grungy map creation -- but be aware you don't have 16-bit in Painter.

Best,
Jason.

[jfrancis]

very cool; thank you

[jfrancis]

I actually have a Wacom 6D Art Pen (virtually unused) and an Intuos 3, and CS5.

I set the rotation jitter to pen 'rotation' but I can't seem to get the art pen to work. From what I read online this is a widespread source of frustration.

I don't need the art pen rotation effect, but I would like to try and make it work.

Apparently in Painter it works fine.

[Half Life]

Yep, I have one as well and I don't bother trying to use it in Photoshop... which despite improvements is still a very poor painting app. I suppose the focus in Photoshop (photo editing) really doesn't require a sophisticated painting engine but they still try.

Best,
Jason.

[jfrancis]

Mine (came out with Intuos 3 but barely used) is failing and re-enabling mid stroke.

I guess I'd have to have another one to test whether the problem is the pen or PS - or get it to fail in another app.

---

edit:

The pen is reliable in Illustrator, so it must be a Photoshop issue

[polynurb]

yeah.. i also use intuos 3 and the pen somtimes works strange with some brushes. pressure usually works, but tilt often fails for no apparent reason.

to get the effect of the "sanding-trail" you don't need wacom features.. in the brush settings go to shape dynamics and set angle Jitter control to "direction"

this will always align your brush in the direction you draw!

daniel

[polynurb]

to get the effect of the "sanding-trail" you don't need wacom features.. in the brush settings go to shape dynamics and set angle Jitter control to "direction"

that's for photoshop btw.

[Half Life]

Odd that... I noticed it works well in Illustrator as well -- you'd think they would port whatever works over

I bought mine exclusively for Painter -- Painter is an app I've been using a long time and I'm looking forward to getting to do some Painter specific video series. If you haven't checked it out yet there is a nifty little time-saver under the pattern selector (on the toolbar), in the flyout menu try the fractal pattern maker -- set "height for luminance" and go to town... seamlessly tileable Perlin noise plus a couple other filters basically built right in.

Painter is strange because it is filled with "throw-away" tools like that that are really powerful but get lost in the UI unless you know what to look for... personally I think that is an ideal "paper" maker for Painter but it doubles as a really quick and flexible bump/displacement map generator.

If they ever got their act together over at Corel they could be dangerous.

Best,
Jason.

[jfrancis]

yeah.. i also use intuos 3 and the pen somtimes works strange with some brushes. pressure usually works, but tilt often fails for no apparent reason.

to get the effect of the "sanding-trail" you don't need wacom features.. in the brush settings go to shape dynamics and set angle Jitter control to "direction"

this will always align your brush in the direction you draw!

daniel

Yes, but people don't always do that with their grinder. Sometimes they hold it north and tip it north and sometimes forget to rotate it as they wave it around. (No direction needed). Sometimes they do a more direction-correlated thing.

With the art pen I could get a nice mix going within a single stroke.

[jfrancis]

Odd that... I noticed it works well in Illustrator as well -- you'd think they would port whatever works over

I bought mine exclusively for Painter -- Painter is an app I've been using a long time and I'm looking forward to getting to do some Painter specific video series. If you haven't checked it out yet there is a nifty little time-saver under the pattern selector (on the toolbar), in the flyout menu try the fractal pattern maker -- set "height for luminance" and go to town... seamlessly tileable Perlin noise plus a couple other filters basically built right in.

Painter is strange because it is filled with "throw-away" tools like that that are really powerful but get lost in the UI unless you know what to look for... personally I think that is an ideal "paper" maker for Painter but it doubles as a really quick and flexible bump/displacement map generator.

If they ever got their act together over at Corel they could be dangerous.

Best,
Jason.

I have Painter X on my older machine. I should bring it to my new one. I never warmed up to it. For actual 'painting' I like ArtRage.

I wish the Painter canvas worked like the Painter mixer palette. The brushes never quite do what I want, for all their sliders.

I like the idea of the image nozle and the recordable strokes for this.

[jfrancis]

If I use Photoshop I may stroke multiple brushes over a single path to get the variety I want.

[Half Life]

You might have to do a 2-pass deal, where you work up a alpha using a pressure sensitive brush and a good paper texture -- then load the alpha as a selection and do the gradient based nozzle for the actual anisotropy map.

If you do a few you could easily overlap them using layers so the marks would flow more easily in different orientations... lots of possibilities for good texture here.

Best,
Jason.