Wires -
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Designing realistic wires and wire effects in Gimp-2.6.11.
Here are examples of what you will be creating.
Coming soon after
All brushes and gradients needed for this tutorial will be included in the attached zip package.
Attachment:
wiretut_RD.zip [4.21 KiB]
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wiretut_RD.zip
First off we will need to create a wire to apply our effects to.So let's get started!
1) Open Gimp. I will be using the latest and greatest stable version Gimp-2.6.11 for this tutorial.
2) Create a new document by going to File>New - a dialog will open copy these values to it.
Go to Windows>Dockable Dialogs>Layers to open the layers dialog.
3) Next we need to create a new layer - Go to Layer>New Layer put in these values - name the layer insulation
4) The next thing we need to do is create a new path. Click the paths tool icon in your toolbox.
Following the directions from the image below create a new path on the insulation layer.
NOTE - Y is just a point or location on any open document. There are 4 we will be using just 2, X and Y
Think of Y as up or down and X as left or right. If you look at the gimp image window bottom left you will see
the X and Y locations changing as you move your mouse. X is the number on the left and Y is the number on the right.
Try and keep the Y location of all your anchor points the same so our wire looks more uniform in the end result.
ANCHOR POINT INSTRUCTIONS-
5) Now we need to stroke this path. To do this we first need to tell Gimp what to stroke it with and give Gimp some
values to work with. So open your Brush dialog window. Windows>Dockable Dialogs>Brushes, and select the hard round brush.
Set the size to 1.00. You will need to select the paint brush tool in the toolbox to see brush options. make sure the
scale is set to 1.00.
Select the foreground color box on the toolbox and type in this color hex code -
Select the paths tool in the toolbox and open the Paths dialog window Windows>Dockable Dialogs>Paths
Make sure the path is visible by clicking the far left box to show the eye icon.
Now use these values for stroke path
This is what you should see
Select any other tool in the toolbox except the paths tool and click the eye icon in the paths dialog to make the path invisible again.
Okay we have our stroked wire looking path but we need to add some 3-D looks to it. We will do that with a bump map lighting effects layer. Press the d on your keyboard - this changes the foreground color back to black , and the background color to white which is what we need for the next step.
6) Creating the Bump Map Layer
Go to Layer>New Layer and name it bump map keep everything else default.
Right click the insulation layer and select Alpha to Selection - This selects our stroked path.
Select the bump map layer and go to Edit>Fill with FG color. Keep the selection selected.
Go to Select>Shrink and put in these values
Go to Edit>Fill with BG color. Go to Select>None
Now we need to Blur this layer a bit - Go to Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur and use the following values
Go ahead and select ok and blur the layer.
7) Making the wire 3-D
Move the insulation layer above the bump map layer and keep it selected. Go to Filters>Light and Shadow>Lighting Effects
to bring up our lighting effects dialog window - put in these values for each tab
When you are done setting the above values for each tab select ok and let Gimp go to work.When finished you should have this.
This is still pretty harsh looking and we need to fix that. Select the insulation layer and go to Edit>Fade Lighting Effects
wire17.png
Click on Fade to apply the effects.
Make the background layer invisible (click the eye icon next to the layer).
8) Now right click the insulation layer and select Alpha to Selection.Go to select invert - Go to Select>feather feather by 5.
That should be the default for feather and that's fine. Select the bump map layer Go to Edit>Clear this gets rid of that
shadow above and below our wire.
9) Make sure our background layer is still invisible. Right click any layer and select Merge Visible Layers.
10) Duplicate our top layer - Right click any layer and select Merge visible layers again.Rename our top layer wire.
Now make our background layer visible again by clicking the eye icon next to the layer.
11) Select the free select tool from the toolbox
Make selections at each end of the wire to create straight cutoff edges.Select the area go to edit>clear
You should have this now
12) Select the wire layer and go to Colors>Brightness and Contrast. Enter these settings.
At this point you can also go to Colors>Colorize and color your wire any color you want it to be.
13) Now our wire needs some copper ends.
Make sure you have installed the copper gradient i included in the file.Just place it in your gradients folder and refresh
your gradients.
Create a new layer above our wire layer - Layer>New layer name it copper end.
Select the magnification tool
Zoom in quite a bit on one end of the wire by making a rectangle selection at the end of the wire in the image.
Be sure the copper end layer is selected.
Select the rectangle selection tool from the toolbox. Create a rectangle 25 pixels long by 10 pixels wide
Select the gradient tool in the toolbox
Go to Select>None
Duplicate the copper end layer.
14) We need to rotate and place our copper ends so they are under the wire and look correct.
Select each copper end layer and go to Layer>Autocrop layer.This makes it much easier to rotate each end.
Select the rotate tool in the toolbox
Move each end after rotating it to the wire insulation like so.
Do this with the other end also
Now go to View>Zoom>Fit Image to Window - Move the 2 copper end layers below the wire layer
15) Next we add some depth to our 2 copper ends.
Select the Paint Brush Tool in the toolbox and in the tool options window select a soft brush about size 9.
Right click a copper end layer any will do and select Alpha to Selection.
Zoom in again on the selection. Paint in the areas shown below
Select the wire layer
Go to Filters>Enhance>Unsharp Mask
Go to View>Zoom>Select the 1:1 (100%) option.This is View actual pixels for Gimp.
Make our background layer invisible - select any layer and select new from visible.
Make the background layer visible again and make everything else but the top layer and the background layer invisible.IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU KEEP ALL THE LAYERS! You will need them for the next tutorial.
Select our top layer
Now go to Filters>Light and Shadow>Drop Shadow - use the default values.
Our wire is done.
Wire effects will be next! Again be sure you kept the wire layer separate from the 2 copper end layers and made a new from visible instead of merging all layers.See you in the next tutorial!
Stay tuned.
Hope you enjoyed the tutorial.