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The Extended version of Adobe Photoshop is: 1.) too expensive for most people, and 2.) capable of importing and exporting 3D objects, which is fairly mind-blowing for a "paint program"! Our friend Welles Goodrich showed Gary the results of experimenting with some preset shapes in PS CS5 Extended along with custom depth maps he created, and it was just too amazing and far too much fun not to share with our members. Here’s the scoop, tutorial-style:
Depth Maps and “Pushing” a Surface
If you use and have a moderate understanding of the features in many modeling programs (such as 3D Studio, Poser, C4D, Lightwave, or others), you’ll have hit upon the displacement map function. Adobe calls this a depth map in Photoshop’s 3D features, different term, same effect. A displacement map changes the surface of a model’s mesh at rendering time.
You paint or otherwise create a grayscale bitmap image, and then tell your modeling program to use this bitmap as the surface material of your model’s mesh. Based on the brightness value (usually on a scale from black=0 to white=255), under any given pixel in the bitmap, the underlying geometry of the mesh is pulled (white pulls) a distance away from the true surface, or it’s pushed into the surface (black pushes). Here’s a visual example of the depth map (displacement map) when applied to a cylinder, a sphere, and to a plane:
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Patterns abound in both nature and architecture, and therefore it’s important that you know how to create— and occasionally recreate — patterns as replacement areas for images, for background on Web pages, and even for Fine Art. Digital media has redefined the term “pattern” to include natural textures, exotic surfaces, basically any object that has a fill can look more handsome and lifelike with a little mottling and detail work; in essence, a pattern. Read on to learn the procedures in Photoshop for creating patterns that are both realistic and fanciful, with obvious repeats of geometry and carefully disguised repeating tiles. I’ll show you how to create, save, and apply custom textures, that can help you realize the patterns of your dreams.
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Cartoons are an American icon; no artistic medium of expression has captured the past two centuries of life in the United States with as much poignance, elegant simplicity, or charm as the hand-rendered cartoon. The cartoon is perhaps one of the most difficult styles of drawing because an economy of line is required to express an idea; when a cartoon becomes too elaborate in its definition, it ceases to be a cartoon.
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Learning
Understanding digital color can be more complicated than your favorite box of colors! First, there's no sharpener in the back of your monitor...read on to gain the wisdom to grasp and leverage the power of digital color.
