How to Make a Hammered Metal Effect
The Metal Wurx series continues as we explore yet another technique for making a hammered metal effect. You will need the Voronio Script to complete this tutorial which can be found here…
http://www.geocities.jp/gimproject/plug ... ronoi.html.
Go all the way down to the bottom of the page to the dark blue text where it says
“voronoi-2.2-win32.zip”
You will also need this metal image available for download at CG Textures.com.
Here is the link to the image on their site:
http://www.cgtextures.com/texview.php?i ... cjh055d732Step 1.
Open a new image 1000x1000 and use 300 ppi for resolution.
Step 2.
Download the metal image from the link above or you can use your own image. Go to File>Open as layers and navigate to where your image is saved to open it in Gimp. Right click on the image layer in the layers dialog and select Add Alpha Channel.
Step 3.
If you don’t already have it, download the Voronoi script from the link above and install it in your Gimp “user” scripts folder and refresh your scripts. Go to Filters>Render>
Pattern>Voronoi and enter the following settings in the first tab of the dialog called Grid Generator. Set the cell size to 50 and the Cell type to Hexagon (horizontal)
Now go to the second tab, Visualization, and set the Radial distance all the way up to 1. Make sure you check both boxes at the top of the dialog to make your image tillable.
When the filter is finished rendering the pattern, it should look something like this.
Name this layer Bump pattern, and rename the image layer to Metal.
Step 4.
Select the Bump pattern layer to make it active, and duplicate this layer one time. Go to Filters>G’MIC>Contours>Laplacian and enter the settings in the screenshot below, and click OK.
You should get a sort of white looking mosaic pattern like in the image window of the tool dialog above. Go to Colors>Invert to reverse the colors in the pattern. Next, go to Filters>Blur>Gaussian blur and use 10 for both settings. After inverting and blurring processes are completed, set the layer mode to Overlay and turn off the visibility of this layer and just for clarity, name this layer Laplaician.
Here’s what it looks like inverted and then blurred.
Step 5.
Let’s go back to our Bump pattern layer and select it to make it active, then go to Colors>
Invert to reverse the colors. We need to blur this layer as well so go to Filters>Blur>
Gaussian Blur, and this time set both values to 15 and then click OK. Here’s what your Bump pattern layer should look like now.
Step 6.
OK, time to work some magic. Turn off the visibility of the Bump pattern layer and select the Metal layer to make it active. Now go to Filters>Map>Bump Map and make sure you have the Bump pattern layer selected in the drop down at the top of the Bump Map dialog. You should make a habit of always checking this when using the Bump Map filter. Set the map type to Spherical, check the two boxes Compensate for darkening (should already be checked) and Invert bumpmap. Set the Depth to 12 and click OK.
Our image is now starting to take on that hammered look that we want.
Step 7.
Turn on the visibility of the Laplacian layer and either leave it like it is, or lower the Opacity to 50% or whatever you prefer.
Let’s look at some variations of this effect that can be achieved by making a few simple changes. Give that Edit/Undo a little workout and go all the way back to the bump map.
Variation #1.
Set the Map type to Sinusoidal and use the Laplaician layer for the bump map. Increase the Depth to 20 and you will get a Cobblestone effect. Granted, this would look better with something like a concrete texture but you get the idea.
Variation #2.
All I did here was use the same settings as in Variation #1 but I unchecked the box for Invert bumpmap so that it appears to have raised ridges.
Variation #3.
For this one, I went back and used the Bump pattern layer as is without the blur step, then did the bump map on the metal layer using Sinusoidal, checked the Invert box and used a depth of 20. You might also try it with a depth of 5 or 10 for little a different look.
You can use the Laplaician layer as well or leave it off like I did here for these three variations above. This technique will obviously work on any type of metal background you prefer to give it that hammered metal look like these samples I made using two different types of bronze metal.
This one uses a very shallow bump setting whereas the one below uses the settings used in the tutorial above.
You can see that there are again endless variations as you implement these methods for achieving that hammered metal look.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
Metal Wurx – Part XII is the next in our series and will explore making and using metallic gradients, as well as how to make gold, copper, bronze, titanium, nickel, aluminum, silver and brass from scratch without using G’MIC, like the ones below.
I will also show you several different methods for making chrome finishes so don’t miss this next segment.