Will this award be credited toward my MENSA score? LOL. Anything to help me look smarter, hahaha.

Automatically doubles your score.

I got lost somewhere along the line. I could never get the displacement map to work similar to Saul's post. I did get some interesting-looking output by using GMICs twirl and petals filters multiple times (beyond what I had before). Once you folks come up with a method, how about sharing a simple tut?

I named the layer that I stretched, spikes.

When bringing up the Displace dialog, find the spikes layer in the two dropdown buttons.

Also, I set the X displacement to zero and the Y displacement to 50 (you can make it more or less as desired) to make the vertical spikes longer.



This is my displacement result.

Bob: At what point did it not pan out for you?

I'm guessing it might be at the same point I got stuck. After I ran my spiral gradient (you cannot center it on your image) I ran Filters- Distorts - Polar Coordinates, and only checked map backwards, with Circle Depth at 100. Then ran displace (as shown by Oregonian).

HTH

Maybe I'm not doing the steps in the right order or not on the right layer. The attempt I did earlier (see page 1 of this topic) I made all on one layer using a rendered Plasma, wind & GMIC. Now, I can put a off-center spiral on a square image , but I'm not sure where to go from here. If I use polar coordinates, I get some fairly smooth curves, but displacement has almost no effect on this. It definitely doesn't look like the examples Saul posted.

After you crop the first layer from the plasma render and scale it back to original height, then you create a new layer for the spiral, and use the previous layer (plasma render) as your displacement map.

Something like this, then?

Bingo! You got it.

My problems were I was trying to do it all on one layer as before, and I thought that Saul was demonstrating two different methods as there were two sets of intermediate images - no workee! Also, I cranked up the displacement quite a bit on the final.

Now I need a drink...of coffee.

I ran my displacement result in G'MIC using sphere, and really like the way it turned out. I am still looking for a better way to feather out the round edges to fill the entire square.

Try Filters > Distorts > Lens Distortion. Set main to around -65.

AAA Good Vibrations filter and Wind Distortion after Reverse Polar Coordinates the ran Polar Coordinates. Also did some G'MIC PhotoComix Smoothing.

That looks like the example I put in the first post Lyle.

I did try O. Cheated (help with Good Vibrations ) though. Did get a good result using GIMP's Ripple filter too.

I have tried this dam thing 20 times now at least. I can't get it. First of all, my distorts > displace doesn't have the same settings so I can't make the displacement x and Y settings.


Why is something so easy, so hard?

nothing is going according to Hoyle, but this is as close as I can get. everything is working the opposite to what it should.

That's pretty molly. It sort of does the "pulsing-thing" when you look at it, too.

Now that I've got the "knack", this is a pretty cool effect!

I want mine to end up with the spikes like yours. that is beautiful... Bob