I'm having entirely too much fun doing this.

Make a new image and fill the background layer with a pattern. I'm playing with stripe patterns and this one I used a yellow and red one which I've attached below.

Any pattern will do though - or image or gradient - the sky's the limit.

Make a new, transparent layer and change the layer mode to Difference.

Fill the layer with color, pattern, gradient (try different gradient shapes while you're at it); try inverting the colors.

You will see a variety of different patterns as you change the top layer to different fills.

Also, invert the colors on the background layer for even more differences.

Here's one of countless possibilities that I made.



After merging the two layers, I put a pirate image on a new layer set to Difference mode and inverted the colors.

Cool stuff, O!

I use that technique when making chameleon textures. Hours of fun to be had.

That is really nifty O!
I wonder if that's how the text effect with the man coming out of the text was created?

Good thought there, Rod! Hmmm ....

Way cool sig you have there. Is that Xara?

All I have to say is I hope so, that looks like a lot of work in GIMP

Yeah i created the animation in the new Xara 3-D Maker 7.
Then i opened the GIF in Gimp and cropped the image.
So i did do some of the design in Gimp.

You probably could do most of it in Gimp, but i am not so sure about the lighting effects.
I just love the shadow effect.

I would love to see the Shadow a bit more affected by the distance though, and if you look at certain times when GIMP Chat turns, there are little Orange dots on it.
Very Cool though Rod

Maybe a topic for this would be smart, or a split

Cool effect, O!

Speaking of Xara 3D, too bad the open source version died: xaraxtreme.org. Since the Xara Group wouldn't release their proprietary (and very fast) rendering engine, all that remained was the UI and various other routines offered up by the application. That's nice and all, but without a fast rendering engine, the project never took off.

That's one of the problems with open source, I guess. It takes time and resources to build and maintain open source projects, with little or no expectation of monetary rewards for those involved.

I actually tried to do this a while back, and couldn't get the layering right. For a human shape, you need a very good (high quality) depth map, duplicated into a few different colors, but the trick is offsetting the depth bands to mimic realistic human contours so that when you apply the differences, they'll blend. With blocks, diagonals, swirlies, etc., it's easy to get them to blend.

I'll post an example of my attempt, when I get back. Maybe one of you can take off with it and get it to work.

I used to have a lot of fun with X3D. It seemed to go out of style, maybe it's coming back in.

One of the many things i love about Xara products are the very, very fast live effects.Hands down way ahead of Adobe.You change the shape of an object and if it has a shadow, that shadow changes with it.
And you can not beat Xara pricing for the quality results.As it is ten times less than Adobe pricing.
GEGL should give this capability to Gimp in the future.I heard they may try and implement it in 2.8 (on layers), just to see what it does.Non-destructive effects on layers that is to say.You add a blur then a bevel - you can then go back and get rid of the blur and not effecting the bevel settings.Should be pretty cool.Something like layer styles in Photo-Shop.Except way faster.
GEGL should also bring about many new changes to Gimp other than effects.Like smart objects i hear through the grape vine.


I know what you mean though Tux. It is too bad they won't share their rendering engine which compared to Adobe is so much faster it's off the scale.I love the way their feathering works on bitmaps (photos).
You feather down to your selection then everything except the feathering is visible.
But the entire image is actually still there.It's actually pretty amazing software.

Still trying to find my xcf attempt, and not having much luck. Oh I really hate it when I can't find images I know I have, but I've forgotten what I named them or where I placed them. And because of that, I created a new folder to store my xcf files. Which I should have done a long time ago.

That is what i do also.All my XCF files go into a separate folder named Gimp-xcf
Unless they are part of a tutorial then they go into Gimp-tutorials folder.
I have folders for everything