I was experimenting the other night, making some new maps. Instead of mapping to sphere, or using the environment map script, I used this approach. Interesting results.

I took an image I found on the web:



Gave it a gaussian blur of 30, then cut out a circle, and saved it as a png:



This is the result of that map:



Here's some other results, using the same font.







It doesn't have to be a colorful image, it can be a simple photo:



















If you give it less of a blur, it will be more textured. Sometimes that works okay with a larger, more rounded font. Lots of possibilities with this technique. Let's see what you got.

Interesting results The Warrior; I'm partial to 3 & 5.

Thanks, appreciate it.

Very cool!
I've always found that by bluing an E-Map, it more often then not looks much better when used with BRL.

Thanks Wallace. This is the technique I used for the iridescent font the other night.

How clever. Love the results .

Thanks! It's fun to blur any old photo, and see what the results will be.

A few more results.

great job Warrior! I have to try

How nice is it! Warrior. Thank you so much for sharing it with us all.

What a simple and effective way to deal with emapped images.

You could skip the circular cutout step and just cut/set the pixel(s) in the upper left corner to transparent.

Rather than just blurring a pattern fill or image, you could use some form of smoothing (G'MIC?) to produce an interesting result, which is what I've done in the past.

By the way, there is a blur final emap option in BRL. It's used when the emap is generated from a gradient.

Eureka!!
map (from a fractal FE)

result

Cool results gang. Endless possibilities.

Yes this is what I do too Tux, I have a folder full of flat emaps with the corner cut out. I have some really nice shiny ones in there too.

another

Molly, so nice your too. Lovely maps!

Thanks Issabella, I didn't make the map, I just downloaded the one Tux posted from above and made it into a flat map and added a bit of SuperNova to it.

Here's some different ones I made that many will produce an iridescent effect. Some were ones I just found, and did nothing to.

Cool!
Thanks Warrior.