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Originally posted by Dr. Trowel:
**So what are these "cheap photoshop tricks?" I've been trying to think of an efficient way to do this for all the three-quarters-view ship sprites from Cold Fusion. I haven't tried this yet, but I could import a sprite to PS, select engine areas by color, and then paste that to a new layer for modification. However, I can't see how to add glowing exhaust (that trails the ship) except perhaps by converting the engine glow sprites to movies and adding a radial blur or some such thing -- but Photoshop can't work on movies, can it?
**
<<DISCLAIMER: This is written for everyone's benefit, and to not leave anyone out I am only assuming that you have Photoshop and ResEdit and have messed around with them before. If the level of this tutorial insults you, it most certainly was not written with such intent.>>
Well, you're kind of close to what I was imagining. I should mention that Photoshop cannot work on movies, and the process by which you can obtain a Photoshop-friendly version of your sprites is thus:
1. EnRLE your movie file, I'm assuming people can read its documentation and figure it out.
2. DeRLE the result, for static sprites.
3. Copy the resulting PICT resource to the clipboard, paste it into Photoshop.
Now you should have something that looks like this:
I've chosen the "ringtail" of my own collection. Its canopy color is similar to its engine glow, which is a common problem you'll run in to.
Now, we need to isolate the blue of the engine, so we'll perform a selection of a specific color range by choosing Select > Color Range..., click upon the additive eyedropper in the dialogue box, and click around in the blue of the engines. Adjust the fuzziness so that all the engine blue is selected. You'll end up with a selection somewhat like this:
Now, you'll notice the canopy is also selected. Enter quickmask mode by hitting the "q" key, and paint out the canopy selections. You should be left with just the engine glow selected now. You might want to do a very slight guassian blur to this selection while in quick mask mode, just to make things blend better.
From here, there are many routes we might take. I am using Photoshop 7, and with the tool of Adjustment Layers I can far more easily do the tasks I am about to describe. I don't want to be too prohibitive, though, so I'm going to assume you at least have a new enough version to perform layers (3 and up, shouldn't be too much to expect). If you do have 7 or later, I suggest playing around with Adjustment Layers if you haven't already. Anyhow, onward!
From now on, if we hated the blue of the engines we can change their color if we so choose, or if you want the original appearance to be the "active" state and a darker, desaturated version to be inactive, we can do it all using the same technique.
Copy the selection to the clipboard, create a new layer, and paste. This ensures precise alignment with the main sprite layer. From here, you can modify these pixels however you like. Here are some examples:
Now, that may be enough for some. If so, you're going to want to create a solid black layer between the base sprite layer and your engine effect layer, flatten your image, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it back into the ResEdit file that DeRLE generated. If you wanted the darkened version to replace the idle graphics set, do the same procedure minus the black layer. You want the engine glow sprites to be just the engines, and to exclude the base ship (this may go without saying, but you never know). Also, don't forget to make masks for the engine effect sprites, while I'm on the "things you should know by now" route.
For those of you seeking to further the glow effect with some "overglow", there are a couple things you can do. The first option is to expand our engine glow layer (select transparency of the layer by command-clicking it in the layer palette), re-paint the enlarged selection area with whatever color you desire, deselect, and guassian blur the thing a little bit, get that Nova-ish fuzzy feeling. The problem with this is that, where there was no source glow, there will be no "overglow". That is, when the ship is facing straight left or right, the effect will be nonexistant for these retrofitted sprites, whereas the Nova ships display evidence of engine thrust quite noticably at similar angles. A slight visual discontinuity will result, but if you're okay with that, by all means go for it. Your other option is to hand-paint the glows where they should exist but don't, which would take a bit of time to be sure. Personally, I don't want to put that kind of effort in when it might be quite superficial. Here's what I got out of the first method, adding a second, smaller layer on top to add whiteness to the middle of each glow:
And here is a download link for the Nova-ized version of this one ship, the only one I will do for you. (url="http://"http://www.pacifier.com/~kkey/ringtail-nova.sit")http://www.pacifier....ngtail-nova.sit(/url)
For the others, you're on your own.
I hope this gives a strong enough hint.
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- o n y x -
"I dn't type. I'm a kybard artist "
(url="http://"http://www.pacifier.com/~kkey/shipyard/index.html")Onyx's EV Shipyard(/url)
