Actually did this one several days ago but waited for permission or confirmation that it would be alright to share on other forums. Ken gave us a cool picture to play with at Innographx that I thought this result really came out nice. Used LqR to squeeze the marbles closer together (mentioned that before). Anyway, this one's from O since she likes marble mosaics.

ref: http://www.innographx.com/forum/viewtop ... f=3&t=9708



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Your technique is amazing Lyle for creating this effect. Do you think this is something that can be automated, in a script for instance ?

very nice Lyle. the marbles all look to be embedded into a stone base, That would be very pretty as a center tile for a foyer or patio.

Appreciate the comments David/Molly. Not a programmer as you know David. The flow I use is first to dup and run Grain Extract on the top layer and lower the opacity to 70%. I then flatten and run G'MIC's Pen preset (just pushes the contrast just right for what I use it for) and feed it into the Voronoi Stipple script to create the marble mask. Now I open the voronoi result and copy the original target on top and set it to Lighten. Merge down, and do Alpha to Selection (under Layers>Transparency) and run motion blur at default value but at an angle of 235º. I then create a black fill layer with white fill the circles on the selection and then deselect and then run Dilate 2 times (use this result later). I disable the view of this mask and go to the base layer and then run Shellout>Inkscape to use the cool gel (or marble or other cool filters depending on my mood; gives similar result for the end) since Inkscapes bitmap filters have no equal and do wish someone would port these filters inside GIMP inself. Of course you have to export the bitmap (make sure you choose the page option) and then close Inkscape without saving of course. Then copy that result into your GIMP session and then set the result to Overlay dup burn etc. (do a lot of layer blends to taste depending on my mood) to get the marbles look. I then merge visable and then run LqR using a rigid protection setting using the mask that I created earlier. This prevents the marbles from getting distorted when I squeeze them closer together. Then I delete the mask and dup what I have. To get the drop shadow and caustic effect, I use Shellout to call Toadies What are you? filter set to 2 (base layer). Sort of gives you a motion blur in both vertical and horizontal directions but more ridged. I blend this (multiple copies of this result) above a new base layer (forgot to mention that you need to create a new base layer with either material or color fill; I like using a blend of Grain Merge for the caustic part and then run motion blur on the other layer thats' below the cautic layer and set it to burn to get the drop shadow).

I warned you that it was a convoluted flow, but in actual execution, it only takes a few minutes. Something tells me that it would be a challenge to automate this flow, but now that you see my flow maybe you can get a good approximation or better result (learned long ago that life's an approximation and you will never achieve exact; lol) that can be automated.