Steve wrote:
Thanks Sasquatch
, I followed your instructions and got some interesting results which will come in useful for future projects.
Sasquatch wrote:
I do not understand why my sphere looks more elliptical in this picture.
I got the same, then realised to get a sphere the original image needs to be square.
So what "map to sphere" does then is map the original shape to an ellipse with the same aspect ratio as the original image. That's very handy to know. It means you aren't stuck with spheres. You can create different curves to mimic regular hand-held shields or ship deflector shields. That makes this much more useful to me. Thanks for solving the mystery.
I didn't cover it in the tutorial, but if you use Colors>Map>Gradient Map you can get very nice colors in your dome. The bird cage picture above was colored that way with the "Deep Sea" gradient. I do the gradient map before I do the color-to-alpha to get rid of the black. That way there are still shades of gray for the gradient to map to.
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Just a short while ago I was a complete idiot when it comes to GIMP. Today, after many hours of practice, reading, and watching tutorials, I am proud to say I am an incomplete idiot.