I was tooling around in the tutorials over at GT (now that it's back up) and found an interesting tut. I had a bit of trouble understanding a part or two but then the light finally came on. I may rework it so it's a bit easier to understand and include more screenshots to help explain some of the steps. All in all, it's still a great tut and I had fun with it and some of the other metal work I've been doing lately.

I never did find the section entitled "Tutorials for Dummies"....probably spend most of my time there if I did.

Here's the link.....(sorry for the pun)

http://www.gimp-tutorials.com/tutorial/ ... p-127.html

and here's what I did with it.....

very good result

I like it!
If you add a slight lump in the link (where it is actually welded together), you would have something that looked more realistic i think.

Thanks PC.

I like your idea Rod but it may be hard to do with the gradients and the way the lnks are made. I may play with a separate layer and either mask or fuzzy brush the edges to blend it in. There goes another afternoon.

A suggestion: The ends of the chain link are more oval than square, almost a circle segment. Of course it depends on the size of the chain and its load rating.

You are correct. It is a circle segment but he takes a small slice out (1 pixel) of the center and uses the scale tool to make the straight segment, then puts the circle segments at each end. Check out the tut to see how he did it. I just followed the tut.