basics of postwork

8/8/2019 Basics of Postwork

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Contents

1.

Forewords

Contents

1.1.1.1.2.

2.

3.3.1.3.2.3.3.

4.4.1.4.2.4.3.4.4.

5.5.1.5.2.5.3.5.4.5.5.5.6.

6.7.8.

1. Forewords

Hi there, and welcome to studying the basic concepts, of postwork that I personally use in my art.

I intend to keep this book(let) as easy to follow as possible, but since some of the concepts dealtwith would take more time and be much harder to explain than the others, I'll just pass themthrough by giving some directions with which way to go with this technique of mine.

I've included all the imaginary as the separate files to this package as well (/tutorial_images/chapter_X/section), so feel free to check out how the image changes during the postworkprocess. Most of the rendering was done at 1200*1600 in 300 dpi's, so the images are scaleddown to keep the file sizes somewhat bearable though.

Anyway, I hope you find this book(let) useful and I hope it'll help you to achieve better resultsin your postwork.

Yours,

Janne Pitknen / ToxiCAngeL

.........Credits

.........Forewords

.........Assumptions for this tutorial

.........Starting your postwork

.........Lights

.........Hair

.........From scratch, making decisions

.........Curls or straight?

.........Highlights and shades

.........Clothes

.........Basic clothing

.........Creating the folds

.........Different materials

.........Additional decorations

.........Other neat effects

.........Blinding light

.........Overshoot

.........Unified colors of...

.........The Pouring Rain, and dripping water

.........Fog and mist

.........Blurred vision

.........Conclusions

.........Links and resources


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1.1.

Assumptions

forthistutoria

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1.2.

Startingyourpostwork

1.1. Assumptions for this tutorial

The things that we'll go through in this book(let) requires some basic knowledge of your graphicseditor software.

I assume that you are using Photoshop 5.5 or later and have the basic skills of standard filters,drawing and some other features of the software, and how they work in practice.

Also some additional equipment - such as Wacom(tm) tablet is preferred, but not necessary.

So, all you need from here on is good nerves, time, and patience - and of course - images topostwork !

NOTE!!!During these few pages, I speak a lot of multiplying, screening, and overlaying -layers andtheir opacites, same goes for the airbrush settings as well. If you are happy Wacom user,remember to use the airbrush -tool with stylus pressure setting checked all the time. That way you

can acchieve stunning effects really easy, since you don't have to mess around with pressuresettings so much. You just simply press harder to when you want darker lines. The pressuresettings set with Wacom are just the top-most values that the pen produceseven when you press it as hard as you could.

If you on the otherhand are using mouse as your drawing tool, you need to change opacitesand pressures much more often that I state. So please take some time to test around thosesettings with your mouse, and see how the things starts to look different.

I haven't been using mouse for a long time now, so easily forget to mention all the littlenyances that mouse and pen differs, sorry...

1.2. Starting your postwork

Let's take a quick start to the intriguing world of postwork.

Load up your graphics software (in my situation it would be Photoshop 5.5) and load yourimage to be processed into it.

I'll start out with the image like this :

...now you'll have to decide what you want to do with the image.

I usually start with creating the hair and clothes and then build up the image with some variouseffects which would be easy to create with 3D rendering software, but since it would take too muchtime I usually do things this way.

(image is rendered by Gina aka RavnHeart from Renderosity)


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2.

Lights

3.

Hair

2. Lights

Why I start talking about lights in my first postwork phase?

There is a simple reason to it. You can create various lights with your 3D rendering software, but you couldeasily get lost with all those shadows and light sources etc. when you are doing your postwork. So it's reallyimportant to deal with this subject first.

I usually render my images only with 2 lights. When you are using only 2 light sources - you probablywon't lose track so easily. Before you do the final render to your image, spend some time fooling aroundwith different sets of lights to figure out what would be the easiest way to create postwork.

We all have our own unique style of creating lights and there are plenty of marvelous preset lights availablein both purchasable and for free. One of the greatest light sets available for Poser are the

by at store.

Anyway, the method that I use is a humble modification from the Luis Royo's typical style.

There is always a overshooting light at the back of the main character which give it an extra focus, and thenthere are the main light that light up the character and the surroundings.

Pro-LumaProfessional Light Presets Gabriel aka Blackhearted Renderosity.com

NOTE!In poser I use 2 lights. Both of them are ambient lights, one in front with about 75% luminance and thesecond light is in the back of the character, overshooting with ambience of about 140-180%In Bryce I use only sunlight and one additional light, if necessary, to light up the surroundings and/or object(s)that needs to be lit up!

When you are happy with your lights setup, render your image and off you go ... to the postwork !!!

3. Hair

The first thing that we are going to deal with here is the hair, and how to paint it in postwork.

And as for all things - we'll start it out from the scratch...

3.1 From the scratch, making decisions

As I began to develop my style, I was using some poser figure hairs as the base so that could getthe lights and shades done correctly but after a while I managed to get the hang of how things aredone, and dumped that concept.

If you want to learn more about that concept - there is an older tutorial available at my site at :http://www.toxicangel.com, called : Hair painting - download it from there and see how things

were done way back then...

Anyway, let's get to the point here.

Load the rendered image, and create a new empty layer to itand set the opacity to 100% and mode to normal.

I use a custom brush palette, which is a variationfrom the one which ships with Photoshop 5.5.Additional brushes are called Natural brushes, andcan be found under /Goodies/Brushes -directoryin Photoshop CD. (see fig 1)

This is a good time to consider what you really want from

your hair. Things like straights or curled, wet or dry.

The most significant differences between these techniquesare that, i.e. curly hair is more complex to create than thestraight one, since it has about twenty times more highlightsand shadows than straight one.

figure1-

Brushpa

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3.1

Fromt

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decisions

3.2.

Curlsorstraights?

Then there is the question of how wet or dry the hair is.Wet hair has more sharper highlights and darker shadows thandry hair, while dry hair moves around and has many differentextra highlights (in the terms of loose hair) in it.Also the wet hair is more "heavier" than the dry one, sothis is a challenge too.

So let's move on and start out with the dry hair.

Select the AIRBRUSH -tool and select one of the Natural brushes(dithered ones) from your brushes palette (see figure 2), and set its opacity to 20%-80%, mode tonormal and start sketching the hair style you want. Select the base color for your hair now. I uselight brown, since it's going to get darker from now on - and I wish to create dark brown/reddish hair.

Don't worry about drawing over the face or ears etc. since you are on a separate layer and you canalways remove those unwanted pixels with your eraser!

After a while I came up with this sort of idea.

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hes 3.2. Curls or straights ?

I've decided to do the curly thing and with dry hair, but you can follow the images found withthis package for how the straight hair is done.

Now, after you've sketched the first outlines for the style of your hair (see phase 1 image), we'regoing to add the first shadows to it.

Add a new layer and set it's mode to multiply and opacity to 100%. Set the brush mode to multiplyand opacity to 20% - 100% You can set your painting color for a bit darker from your base color,but as you paint this layer in multiply mode,it makes the color darker by every strokepainted anyway.

Start creating darker patches of hair and addthose curly details to it.

NOTE!First of all notice that I tend to change colors for my brush all the time - varying the base color selected.In this case - the painting color varies f rom white to dark brown.

But as for the ba sic knowledge; even if you draw with a single color, Screen -mode for brush and layermakes the color brighten up all the way to the brightest white, and Multiply - makes thecolor darker - all the way to the black.

image - phase 1

image - phase 2


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3.2.

Curlsorstraights?

3.3.

Highlig

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This might look and feel somewhat odd, that you paint the darker patches first, but eventually you'll noticethe advantage that it brings.

As you draw those darker patches you can increase or decrease the pressure for the brush to get thedarker/lighter shadows to the hair. Remember to follow the lights rendered to the image, since human eyeeasily picks out falsely created highlights or shadows, and makes the image look kind of funny.

You can also add more layers with different opacities, and paint with different shades of base color to getmore vibrant hair.

I've used 3 separate layers with different brush opacities (10%-50%) and varying colors from the hair'sbase color, and different settings to get the first feel of the curliness. The multiply layer opacities, that youadded in this phase, can vary from (10%-100%). It's really up to you dark or light you want the imagelook like.

As you've added enough shading to the hair, erase all unwanted parts from those layersand save your image!

Now, drop down all the layers - WHY?! (I can hear you cry...) - it's not necessary, but Ive found out it'sthe for the best. You cannot achieve some of the effects without dropping your layers from time to time.

If you want to keep your image as layers, save the versions of it with different names, and you can thengo back to the previous stages at any time!!

3.3. Highlights and shades

Anyway, now, that you've dropped down those shade layers, it's time to move on to thefirst highlight layers.

Create a new layer(s) with different sets of opacities - varying from 10% - 100%.Same thing goes for your brushes as well - different variations of colors, with different opacities- varying from 10% - 60%. Set the brush and layer modes for Screen and start painting.

You can select a slightly brighter color from the base color you use to begin with. Remember to usedifferent sizes and opacities (on different layers) as you draw your highlights, it makes your hairlook more natural and gives that "airy and clean" look to it.

image - phase 3

Now those after those things are done, repeat the save & drop layer procedure described above andmove on actual hair shaping.


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3.3.

Highlig

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3.3.

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Now, things can be done with many different ways, but as in this case there are many things that needsto be taken care of. As I mentioned earlier, the curly hair has many highlights and shades than thestraight one. And this is why we'll need to create yet another set of shading to our hair.

Add few more layers (I used 2 separate layers) and set their mode to multiply. Notice the colors andopacities here - basically they are the same, but since this a second pass, you can set the opacity for brushto 20% - 70%. The point here is to make the curls more visible, and give them more depth and makethe hair look more flexible.

image - phase 4

image - phase 5

After you're satisfied with the things done, save again and drop down!

Now it's time to do the first neat trick for the image!

Create one additional layer to your image and set it's mode to colorand pick up the base color for your brush. Set the brush's mode tocolor as well, and paint using those soft edged airbrush brushes,a coloring layer for your hair - this way you can make the hair toget that similarity in colors. (see figure 3)

After you've painted the layer - you can adjust the layer's opacity to satisfy your needs. Now, you can

erase out the unwanted parts from that layer and you can save and drop down that layer.

It's also a good time to make the whole imagelook more like it's using the same palette. Togain that effect, just use the Color Balance -tool(Image -> Adjust -> Color balance in Photoshop).Remember that to gain the full advantage of thisfeature is that you'll have to drop down allyour layers.

figure 3 - Soft Edged Brushes

figure4-

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Having done that - it's time to move on for the last things - adding the brightest highlights and darkestshadows for your hair.

To create those use the similar methods described above, but this time as you set the layer's mode forscreen and choose your brush - make it as a single pixel (1 px -sized brush).( I know, I know - it's annoying, but hey - if you want the hair to look natural - you'll have to give some effort to it :) )

Set your brush's mode for screen and opacity between 10%-100%. Select the brightest white fromyour palette, and start drawing your finishing touches for your hair - this is to gain the loose hair and extra

sharp highlights...

...and finalize your hair with overshooting highlightsby selecting a airbrush -brush (between 30px - 100px,depending on how large your image is.), set the brushmode for screen and layer mode for Overlay.

Draw some outlines for your hair and duplicate thatlayer. Set the mode for screen for that just duplicatedlayer and erase those unwanted parts from those 2layers and that's it !

I'll get back to this subject of Overshooting andadding extra highlights, later in this book(let)in

Drop down and save - and this is what we've got :)

NOTE!Check out for the files supplied with this packageto follow the same steps for straigh hair.

Chapter 5.


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4.

Clothing

4.1.

Basicclothin

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4. Clothes

Clothes make the man or woman - at least that's what I've been told.Well, when it comes down to the images - and especially those created with Poser, I've noticed that thereare a lot of things that needs either to be retouched or completely redrawn afterwards.

Since Poser clothing are vertex -based objects, and they have limited number of vertices, the clothingusually seem like a stiff cardboard box wrapped around the character. They usually crack at joint points

or gets thrown through the objects, or are in other way hard to handle.

Once you've rendered your image, whether it contains poser clothing or not, you'll have to think aboutthe materials, and fabrics and how they react to the light - and how they would behave when i.e.

when it's windy, rainy, cold or warm etc.

Once you know how the fabric behaves, you can actually do wonders with post work.

NOTE!Please note - that there is a way of making your clothes to fit and act perfectly, but it requires thousandsof magnets or knowledge of morphing. And then there's the fact that I'm too lazy to do so,and I'm talking about post work here :)

Anyway, the reason why, I keep doing most of the clothing in post work, is that I can make them lookmore natural than those, which are posed objects.

4.1. Basic clothing

Okay, in this image, I'm going to do a simple silk-based gown, with some extras to it, and asimple leather strap sandals.

I'll include some other images to this part as well, and explain how those differ from this basic clothing.

So, let's get on with this one - here is the image that I've rendered:

(character is Stormi's Bella put up in a simple fast rendered balcony)


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4.2.

Creatingthe

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As you can see, this is a pretty basic image. It has two lights, one spot on her left, and one ambient-representing the sunlight - on her right.

Now, let's start sketching the outlines for the clothes.Create an empty layer, set its mode to normal, select airbrush tool,and set its opacity to 100% and mode to normal. Select whateverbrush you find easy to work with. I used 35px-60px -round, hard-edgedbrushes here (see figure 5)

It's also a good time to consider the basic color for your clothinghere - you can decide about the materials as you work further on.

I ended up to bluish basic color, and I thought that I'd usesilk as my main material. Silk is fairly easy, because it doesn't haveany hard-to-figure-out fabric constructions or "ultra sharp" highlightssuch as latex.

After skething around for a while, I managed to put up somethinglike this :

After outlines are done, you might want to clean up the imageand remove all the parts that (are) either falsely drawn, or goes over theimage in wrong places, such as arms, hands, etc.

Once you are happy with the result, save the imagewith layers on it before getting any further - it's always easierto go back to the previous version of the image, once you've completelymessed up the perfectly good idea :)(believe me - I know what I'm talking about :)).

Once you've saved, you can drop down all the layers if you want, butthat's not necessary. I do that to gain more depth to the effectsthat I'm creating, since all the different layer settings manipulatethe colors of the image differently.

Now as you've gotten the outlines for your clothing done, and you'vedecided about the material, you can start thinking about howthe fabric and cloth acts.

figure 5 - Hard Edged Round Brushes

4.2. Creating the folds

Okay, as you know - the silk is light, and it flows smoothly over whatever surface it's laid on - it tendsto create folds. And folds are the thing that makes our 2d outfit to look more natural and 3d!I'd like to split the folds, painting into the shadows and highlights.

After you've done shadows (the basic folds), you just add the highlights around and top those areas tobring up the fold's uppermost parts that reflects light.

So - we're going to start out with the shadows here.

Create an empty layer, and set its mode to multiply. Select airbrush -tool, and set its opacity to 20%-40%and mode to multiply. Select a round, soft-edged brush between 10px-30px.Use the same base color as you used when you created those outlines. That way you can easily createfolds, which color matches the base color of your cloth.

Start painting the folds to the most obvious points, such as joints in elbows, knees, hip etc.Think about how light the material is, and how it flows. Remember to keep the emphasis on how thebody of your character looks like, and how the cloth will wrap around it. It's also good to keep in mindthat there are the laws of gravity and atmosphere to deal with here too.

This may sound complicated, but it actually isn't - just look at the mirror, and you'll figure out whatI mean by gravity and atmosphere.

You may want to use smudge -tool as well to createthe folds look more natural. By using smudge toolyou can create an impression of the folds gentlylowering down to straight fabric. Select the smudgetool, set its mode to normal, and opacity to 40%-50% (and if you are using wacom tablet, you might

want to set the pressure stylus on too).Smudge the ends of every fold towards the groundor the next joint point where the fabric of the clothtakes another turn. This gives the viewer's brainthe idea of proper gravity :)

After you are happy with results - we'll move on toThe highlight parts of the folds. Create new layer, andSet its mode to screen. Select airbrush tool, set itsmode to screen, opacity to 20%-50% and select thebrush with suitable diameters (10px-30px) and setthe drawing color just few steps brighter


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4.2.

Creatingthe

folds

4.2.

Creatingthe

folds

from your base color, and start creating highlights of the folds.

The method used to paint highlights is basically the same as it was with the dark folds, but this time, thereare much fewer things to worry about. All you have to do here, is to put your emphasis to thetopmost areas of each fold.

Start drawing the highlights to the most obvious places, such as top of forearms, knee bends (where kneetouches the cloth) and so on.

You can use the similar method with smudge tool as you did with the shadow folds to gain smoothhighlight areas to each fold.

Remember, that when you are using the screen mode - either on layer or brush, it brightens up the colorsin that layer each time the brush passes the previously painted area. You might alter the brush-sizeto smaller from time to time, to create sharper hi-lights or sharper shadows for that matter.And vice versa when you want smoother and bigger highlights or shadows.

Okay, after a few moments with this image, it began to look like this.

Now, I was fairly happy with the result, so I saved it up, and dropped down the layers, and started toretouch it - added more shades, smudged it a little more, added sharper highlights- exactly the same

way, as I described above.

The reason, as I explained earlier, of dropping down layers from time to time is that, when I addhighlights or shadows, I can use them as a reference for the new layers, and I actually don't have toswitch colors, from dark to bright anymore. I'm just using layers set up for multiply or screen, and usingthe reference colors from the layers dropped down. By doing that you always get the feeling that clothactually has the same fabric and color all the way!!

So, after fooling around bit more - I ended up with a thing like this:Happy? - Yes I am, saving and moving on to materials ...

NOTE!!!This image now includes some extra highlights on the characters skin, which I added by accident - notremembering that this was one of the tutorial images :) Anyway, those are done really easily - and I'll talkabout them later on chapter 5, but you can see them here as well. And you can also see here,that it doesn't matter inwhich order you performeach separate sequence!


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4.3.

Differentmateria

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4.3.

Differentmateria

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4.3. Different materials

All right, now that we've done some neat folds to our clothing, it's reallygood time to think about the materials in general.

As you might have noticed, silk is really simple material to practice with.Now I'm going to show you one neat trick to how to alter your fabric frome.g. silk to terry towel - just like the one in this image (figure 6).

How to achieve that towel effect goes more or less likethis (see figure 7):

Create a new layer and set the basic color of the fabric.Create folds to it - drawn the way I described earlier- and set the layer's mode to multiply.

Duplicate the background and apply an Emboss Filterwith these settings:Angle:135deg.,Height:1,

Amount:100%,and set the layer's mode to color burnand opacity to 88%.

Create a duplicate the background and apply aNoise Filter approximately with these settings:Amount:33,Distribution: Gaussian, monochromatic,and set this layer's mode to luminosity 38%

Now, all you have to do from that point on, is to add more highlights, or shades to it and there you have it!

When you are rendering the images in sizes like 3400*4800*300dpi, you can always use a simpletrick to scale an image down, apply a sharpen filter to image, and you'll see how it affects to the whole image.Every highlight and every shade becomes more visible, and that's exactly the effect you wished for,

when you wanted to create terry-looking-materials :)

figure6

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figure 7 - Creating a Towel

Okay, we just got a little off the track here, so let's bounce back to what we were talking about inthe previous chapter.

Let's add some neat leather-strap-sandals to this image.

Now, the leather is fairly simple material too, (count out latex), since it don't have sharp highlights(except in stitches at the edges of the straps etc.) and it usually don't have visible surface material -just the basic color of it (depending of the viewing distance of course...).

So - this is how the sandals were done.

Add a new layer. Set its mode to normal andopacity to 100%. Select airbrush -tool, set itsopacity to 100% and mode to normal, and start

painting the straps or what-ever things youwish to paint with brush of your selection.I used 10px-30px, hard-edged round brush.

After you've done the outlines (just as you didin the clothing part), and removed the unwanted- or falsely drawn lines, you are ready to addthe highlights and additional shades.(At this point you can either drop the layerdown or keep on doing like it is.)

Add a new layer. Set it's mode to screen, and

opacity to 100%. Select airbrush -tool, set itsopacity to 20%-40%, mode to screen, andselect the desired brush (1px-30px) and startadding the highlights.

Use the method described in clothing to add highlights to the straps. Just keep in mind that the material isslightly different, and it doesn't have so high reflectance as silk clothing does, and the highlights aresharper than those in silk.

NOTE!!!Now, as you notice the image had changed dramatically from the basic clothing part, since I've added hair anddid the first color-balancing for this image, the way I described it in the hair-painting chapter.


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4.3.

Differentm

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4.4.

Additiona

ld

ecorations

As you have noticed, the procedures are really simple and they follow the same guidelines with all theclothing in general. The only thing hard in this, is to trust your eyes, and think about how the materiallooks in the nature!

After some time spend, I get something like this done

...happy? - Yes - save...

4.4. Additional decorations

Adding additional decorations to the clothing is really the easiest thing to do, when it comes downhow to paint clothes in post work.

In this chapter, I'll demonstrate one of the easiest decorations that I use all the time in my images.It's just a simple combination of overlay, screen and multiply layers - and this is how it goes.

We'll start out by drawing some neat decoration to the "abdomen" part of the cloth.

Create an entirely new image or a new layer to start with. Decide the base color for your decoration.I ended up with natural-gold looking color. Select the drawing tool you wish to use (I still preferairbrush -tool the best), and set it's opacities and modes the way you want.I used mode as normal, and opacity as 100%, and sketched up a thing like this.


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4.4.

Additiona

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4.4.

Additiona

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ecorations

Now, the next thing you need to do for this neat decoration is to tilt, scale, and rotate it - in other words -distort it into the right place. So, select distort from edit menu and twist the decoration into the right shapeand place. Once you are happy with the place, remove all unwanted/needed parts from it and set its layermode to Multiply and opacity to 100%

Duplicate the decoration layer and set its mode to Overlay and opacity to 100%. Now keep on duplicatingthe layers as the figure shows you and - suddenly you notice that WOW... a neat decoration really fitsyour suit like a glove. You might also want to alter the layer opacities, and stuff like that to see whatreally effects what, but this is just to give you an idea of what's going on - and how easy this thing

really is.

This is a good time to drop down the layers to a single image. It's not necessary, but helps a lot withhighlights and shades.

The last thing we'll do to this one is add some highlights and shades to it. Just create 2 separate layers,1 for shades and the other for highlights. Set the shadow layer to Multiply, opacity to 100%, andthe highlight layer to Overlay, and opacity to 100%.

Select the airbrush -tool, and set its mode to multiply, opacity to 30% and pick the darkest color fromyour cloth with color picker. Draw shadows over the decoration by following the folds you've createdearlier. After having done that, switch to the highlight layer, set the brush mode to screen, select thebrightest color from your decoration and draw the highlights to top-most folds of the cloth - and that's it.

And that's all there really is to know on how to paint clothing in post work. I'm using many othertechniques as well, but I'll explain them later, maybe in some other tutorial :)


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Oh, I almost forgot - a quick glance to the image itself, and how it looks like after all the stuff learned :)

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4.4.

Additiona

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5.

Otherneatef

fects

5. Other neat effects

Light related effects are the ones that I tend to use all the time in my images, but then there are a widevariety of different effects too, that I'd like to introduce you to.

In this particular chapter, I'll talk more about those different effects, which are easy to create,but helps to give your image more depth and realism (or surrealism...).

Okay, let's get started here and let's make some...

5.1. Blinding light

The light effects that you've learned in hair tutorial, works most of the time in almost every image, so Iwill talk more about atmospheric lights and other things related to that matter.

First of all, Photoshop (as well as other image processing software) has a neat thingcalled lens flare. It is the easiest way to add atmospheric lights to the image.

When you got the image done to the point when it's almost ready to be published, you just selectthe lens-flare from the filter menu, set the dials, and click the place where you wish to putsun - and that's it.

I usually don't use this, because we seldom get exposed to the effect with our own eyes.The only times that human eye sees lens-flares are the cases when your own glasses are dirtyand they bend the light exactly like camera's lenses do :)

Anyway, what I do, a thing like this.

Add a new layer, set its mode to normal and its opacity to 100%. Draw segments withPolygonal Lasso -tool, and fill those segments with bright white. Now, select magic wand -tool,and click on anywhere on the transparent areas on that layer and press CTRL+SHIFT+Ito make the selection inverted.


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Set the desired drawing colors you wish to use (I used white on primary, and black on secondary color),and select Filter->Render-Render clouds, and this is what you get

5.1.

Blin

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5.1.

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Switch the layer's mode to screen, and start to remove the outer edges from the segments you just draw.Select eraser - tool, and set its mode, brush, and other settings to whatever you feel comfortableto work with. I used semi-large (30px-120px), smooth-edged brush with opacity of 20%-80%,and got something like this.

Now, this is a very basic set. You can amplify the light rays by duplicating the "segment" layer youjust draw. Then all you have to do, is keep its mode either in screen or overlay and always erase someareas out from the duplicated layer.

Now we're going to add some extra highlights to the atmospheric effect we've just created.Create a new layer, set it's mode to screen and opacity to 100%. Select airbrush -tool, and set its modeto screen opacity to 20%-40%, and drawing color to solid white (use pen pressures if you are using

Wacom - helps a lot). Draw some lines according to the segments you just draw earlier. Don't makethose lines too visible at this point, you can always duplicate the layers to gain more depth!!!

After you've happy with the result, duplicate the layer, and set the original layer to overlay (just like

you did in the hair part!!!). Make sure that the just duplicated layer is set to screen mode.Now all you have to do is to erase the parts which seems unnatural, and that's it!


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Just drop down the layers, color them up if you want and there you have it - atmospheric light effect(without 20hrs of rendering :))

5.1.

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5.2. Overshoot

The term overshoot, has slightly different meaning in post work, than most of you are used to.In post work, I use this term to simply state the backlighting, and how it affects to the image andthe characters in it.

So, the backlighting is done in the same way as I usually create lighting effects. The only differenceto the normal lighting effect is, that you simply paint the darkest areas of the image to reflect

bright light so that the viewer gets the idea of strong backlight which causes ultra sharp highlights.

As I described earlier in , I usually use 2 lights in the scene, and I usually place them in theback (with strong overshoot effect), and in the front of the character so that it illuminates thecharacter properly.

The use of strong backlight gives us the advantage to clarify the shape and give focus to the characters.The downside to this is that it's not suitable for all types of images. If you want something donephoto realistically; you probably don't want to use this technique, since it's rarely seen in photosand is really hard to produce with cameras without any additional filters etc. But, in the event you

wish to create Fantasy styled images, this is the most common technique that is used among widevariety of artists.

NEAT TIP!!!You can add a radiosity type of effect to this particular effect by adding some noise done withPhotoshop's Add Noise -filter to go with it. Try it out with settings like (Amount: 4, Type: Gaussian, Monochromatic),add some Gaussian blur to the noise layer if it seems to be too sharp. Alter the opacities and modes of this layer andyou'll notice how easily the radiosity -like effect can be achieved!

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5.2.

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The thing I usually do to gain this effect goes like this.

Add a new layer, set its mode to screen and opacity to 100%. Select airbrush -tool, and set its mode toscreen, opacity to 100% and select the brightest white as your drawing color.

Now, you should pay attention to where the lights are coming from. In this particular image thereare strong spotlights -styles of light coming from the torch above the character, so you need to be careful

where to place the highlights. Nevertheless, at this point we are concentrating more to the window at thebackground and make that overshooting light come from there.

Start sketching the highlights to the outer most edges of your character, to the places where the backlightis coming from.

Once you are happy with the outlines, duplicate that layer. Set the layer mode for the original layer tooverlay, and the mode for the duplicated layer to screen. Set opacity to 100% for both layers.

Select the brush of your choice for the eraser -tool, I used 20px-100px soft-edged round brushes, andstart erasing the unwanted parts form the both layers. It'll help if you first disable the topmost screenlayer, and start erasing the stuff from the overlay layer.

The point of doing this in multiple layers is, that the overlay layer works as an glow -layer, while screenlayer is the main highlight layer. So remember to leave some outer edges visible to overlay layer to get

that glow -look and feel to it.

Now, do the same thing for the screen layer too. You can also use the smudge tool to get the highlightsdrawn much more precisely over the character. You can also add some extra sharp highlights thispoint. I did some extra sharp highlights to the characters right hands elbow to bring out theshape of the armor.

After you are happy with the image, save it with the layersenabled, and when the save is done, drop the layers down.

The glow - and strong backlight works now pretty good inthis image - though the colors of the highlights are wrong andthey doesn't match to the rest of the image at all.

Which leads us to the next stage - we are going to fix thatby unifying the colors with color balance -tool.


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5.3.

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5.3. Unified colors of...

Well, I've described something about this process way back in the clothing section as well as in hair paintingpart too, but let's get it done here quickly again, since it's really important part of the whole post work.

Every time you've added something new into the image, the colors are slightly different than thosethat was actually rendered to the image.

So, the basic rule here is: Always paint all the highlights, additional objects etc. into the image and then unifythe colors. It doesn't always go like this, but if you have chance to do so - do it that way, and you'll getbetter results!

The whole idea of this unifying thing is to make the image look like those additional post worked items,such as hair, cloths, clouds, scenery etc., would have actually been there all along !

The process of unifying is really simple:

Once you are happy with things you've added. Select Color Balance -tool (Image menu in Photoshop),and start to alter the sliders to gain the overall color scheme the way you wanted.You can change shadows, mid-tones, and highlights separately (see figure 8), and that's where

this tool shows all its powers. You can practically create a completely different color scheme to yourimage with this one tool.

Compare the two images in the next page, andyou'll see why I put emphasis to the use ofthis tool in post work. You can clearlysee the difference between the images.And as you can see, the highlights we just drawn,fits now more naturally to the image thanthose before the color balance.

Now, when you are happy with the results you canadd more highlights to the image as described earlier, or save the image and move ahead.

NOTE!This image has exaggerated the use of highlights, but it gives you an idea how to paint the strong backlights,and how to make the adjustments to the colors so that the image looks as if the post worked items were actually there !

Before the Color Balance tool...

After the Color Balance tool...

figure 8 - Color Balance Tool

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5.4.

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5.4. The Pouring Rain, and dripping water

Another neat effect - or a combination of two actually - I'm going to introduce you to, are howto make rain, and how to create dripping and splashing -water effects easily in post work!

Now, select Motion Blur, from Photoshop's the filter menu andset the direction and blurring amount for your rain.I used the settings like this:Angle: 70Distance: 64 pixels...and Ok.

Then select Brightness and Contrast tool from Photoshop'simage menu, to bring out the rain more. I used thefollowing settings:Brightness: -3Contrast: +89...and there it is...

Okay, let's dance a bit to make the dark clouds gather around and then hit the ground with ourstick to start the pouring rain... :)

(Note, that the image used here is 1200px*2000px so you may want toalter the settings differently to make them match to yourimage size better...)

Anyway, load up the image, and create a new layer to it. Set the layer mode to normal, set its opacityto 100% and fill it with solid black color.

Now, select the Add Noise, from Photoshop's filter menu.

Set the dials more or less like thisAmount: 46,Distribution: Gaussian, Monochromaticand press Ok.

Now, all you have to do, is to switch the layer's mode from normal to Screen andits raining cat's and dogs!!

To make the rain look more realistic, just simply duplicate the original rain layer, and keep it'smode as screen. Apply a Gaussian blur -filter to it, with radius of 1.3 pixels, remove the unnecessarypixels from the main focus area (the area where your main character is) of your image.

The Gaussian blur makes our rain to look fuzzier on the background and gives more depth toour image. Erase the areas where your main focus is (i.e. over your character) from this blurred layer.

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Set the opacity for this layer to about 70%, and erase the some parts of the original rain layer with largeeraser brush (200px-900px) with brush opacity set to about 20% to gain the sharper and moredetailed rain in the foreground of your image.

NOTE!You can always amplify the effect b y duplicating the layers, and altering their opacities, and you can bring alsomore complexity and realism to it by creating additional layers the same way as described, but changing the directionof motion blur by few degrees.

NEAT TIP!You can also produce the snowing effectsimilar way. The snowing in the image besideis done using a technique adapted from thebasic rain and goes like this.

All you have to change to basic rain, is thatyou don't blur the created layer. After you'vecreated the noise layer, jump to the brightnessand contrast part and set the contrast to themax and brightness so, that there are simplyjust few white pixels scattered all around theimage.

Then select the magic wand -tool and clickon the black area of the layer. Press CTRL+SHIFT+I (Photoshop) and hit the Delete-key to remove the inversed maskarea from the layer.

Now, duplicate that layer, and hide it. Addsome Gaussian blur to the original layer, a ndset the layer's mode to screen. Make theduplicated layer visible and set its mode toscreen, and select Layers -> Effects ->

Outer glow and add some glowing it to this layer.And there you have it - fast created snowing :)

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The next thing we're going to add to this image is the dripping water and splashes of falling raindrops.

Once again, this effect really easy to create.

Add a new layer, set its mode to normal, opacity to 100%. Select the airbrush tool, and set itsmode to screen, pressure to 20-80%, and select the most neutral color from your character's skinto be the main drawing color. Set the brush to 1px and up soft-edged brush to sketch the dripping.

When you start sketching the dripping water, remember the gravitational laws discussed earlier in clothing.

Water comes down the most obvious routes it can find. So, pay attention to the pose of your character,make sure that the water actually falls directly down (unless you want to imitate wind) to the ground.

So, within few minutes I got something like this sketched out

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Once you are happy with the sketches, duplicate the just created layer, and hide it (we'll need that later on).

Select smudge tool, set its mode to normal, pressure to 100% and use the pressure setting if you want(and use Wacom), and smudge all the edges and pixilated areas of your sketch layer, and set thelayers mode to screen, and drop its opacity to about 50%, and this is what you get.

Now it's time to make our duplicated layer visible, and set it mode to screen with 100% opacity.

Select the eraser tool with brush sizes and opacities of your desire, and start removing some parts of thelayer so that you can bring up some highlights to our dripping water.

After fooling around with this for a moment the image looked like this.

Now there are only few more things left to do.

Create a new layer, with mode of screen, opacity to 100%.Select the airbrush -tool with 1px-10px brush, set mode tooverlay, pressure to 100%, and start adding the glows tothe water.

Those extra sharp highlights give the viewerthe idea of reflection of the water towards the

light (the sun).

This is a really fast technique of adding reflections inpost work, but it gives our image more depth and realism.

So, after few strokes painted the image looked like this

NEAT TIP!You can also create a drooling effect, like in thisimage, the same way as you just p ainted thedripping water!

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5.4.

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You might want to save your image at this point, and drop down the layers, before we start addingthose splashes, which are really fast to create!!!

Create a new layer, with mode set toscreen, and opacity to 100%.Select airbrush -tool, set its mode toscreen and opacity to 50%-100%.Select one of the dithered brushes,

and sketch the splashes by clickinghere and there in the image whereyou wish to add the splashes.

The more you switch the opacity (orif you have Wacom, the more youchange the way you press the pen)you can add more complexity andrealism into this.

Once you are happy with the placesand opacities, drop the opacity of

the layer down to 40%-60%.

And this is what you see...

Now, you have to blur some of theinner areas of each splash, to givethe viewer the idea of movement.

Select the smudge tool, with the samebrush as which you draw the splashesin the first place.

Smudge the inner areas (or the areas closest to the skin of your character) from just sketched layer, andadd some 1px wide brush strokes with airbrush -tool to point out some highlighted splashes.Erase all unwanted or too hi-lighted areas, and there you have it - splashing water!


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5.5.

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5.5. Fog and mist

The next thing, I'm going to talk little about, is fog and mist. Those effects can be done with renderingsoftware too, but as I'm talking about post work here, I'll just get down to the point where the imageactually doesn't have a mist or fog at all.

Since I assume, that all of you know how to create some neat misty effects, I'll go through with thisreally quickly and show you how I create some of those effects.

Once you got the image rendered, and you are almost done with your post work, but still want to addsome atmospheric effect to it, easiest way is to use the Render Clouds -filter found in Photoshop.

This is how I do breathing effect, as well as fog and haze -effects, to the images like the one on theprevious page.

Create an empty layer. Select the color of your choice to be the primary fog color - in my caseit was icy blue, and set the other color to black.

Go to the Filters menu in Photoshop, and select Render Clouds.

Now you have misty cloud layer.

Set the layers mode to screen and drop the layers opacity to50%-80%. Select the eraser tool and large (100px-600px)soft-edged brush.

Set the eraser pressure to 20%-60% and start erasing out the unnecessary parts of the misty layer.And before you know it you have a really nice looking fog in your image.

You can also combine this effect with the effect I showed you in the tocreate a spooky sunlight that comes through the tree branches, or direct sunlight thatcreates light rays through the mist.

Chapter 5.1 - Blinding light

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5.6. Blurred vision

This is the also an effect, that I use all the time in my images. By using a radial blur, I can easily create asense of motion to the main character, and give some more depth to the background as well.

The effect is really simple but makes wonders to your image!

Once you've done all the post work needed to the image and dropped down all the layers,

duplicate the background. Select Filter->Blur->Radial blur from Photoshop's filter menu.Set the dials how you wish, but select the Blur Method to Zoom instead of spin.

Now, the thing you have to consider here is, what your main focus area of the image is. I generally use theface or the chest of the character to be the main focus of my images almost always. So try to make the blurstart from there.

I'll use the image created for the clothing chapter to show you the idea and the power of what blur can do.

This is how the image looked afterI added a Radial blur to it.Settings used were:

Amount set to 25,the origin of the blur was placedto almost top-center of the imagearea, Method was set to zoom,and quality was set to Good.

Now, switch the mode of the blurred layer into screen and erase with your eraser -tool, with largeenough, soft-edges brushes (100px-600px) with different variety of opacities (20%-80%), theunwanted areas like the main focus area of your character etc. to get it to look like there's someadditional movement in this image.

This is also a good trick to addsome more volumetric light toour image without hours ofrender time.

What I did here is that Iduplicated the blurred layeronce before erasing anything,so I could make one of theblurred layers to be in mode ofscreen and the other (thetopmost layer) to be inOver layer to gain moreshadows to the image.

This is what those 2 layers

looked like without background.

NOTE!Keep in mind that you can alwaysduplicate the layers to gain moredepth and movement to the image,but be careful not to mess up yourimage, cause this is the easiest wayto ruin everything you just put up :)

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This is how the image looked like when I was happy with it!

As you can see, blurring is one of the essential things in post work, so try it without hesitation.This will save you a great deal in render times, and it will also help you to achieve betterdepth and movement to your images.

6. Conclusions

Okay, now that you've made your way this far, it's time to summarize the things written.

Most of the things dealt here were pretty basic, some of which you might already have known, butthese were written because people had asked me many times, How Do You Do Those tricks -so, I hope that this tutorial has given some answers to some of those questions :)

The things, like hair painting for instance, takes time to get used to. Good nerves and a lotof practice - at least for me it did - but once you get the hang of it - you can use it so many differentways. You can use it to things like; transparency maps for object based hair, grass or leaf transparenciesto be used with Bryce etc.

The more time you spend learning these simple tricks - the more you'll find them useful and timesaving in your future projects.

To make the long story short and summarize, the things you should now be able to do are:- paint hair, curls or straights- paint some simple clothing, and add some decorations to it- create some atmospheric light effects and most of all,

- combine these to create your images even more powerful and staggering.

I hope that you've enjoyed and learned something new while you were browsing through thistutorial. I hope you got some new inspirations, and furthermore, got what you wanted to learnand know about, how some of the things were done in my art.

I'd like to say thank you to everybody who had been involved, and helped me with this booklet,and those of you who had supported and kicked me into writing this.

See you in the next tutorial,

Cheers,Janne Pitknen aka ToxicAngel

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8. Credits

The author would like to thank the following people for their support, expertise and efforts as well astheir wonderful products that made this booklet possible.

RavnHeart,EmKay,Stormi,

Blackhearted,Dalinise,Kromekat,DarkWorld,Morris,Dglidden,Marforno,Debbie M.,

Wyrmmaster

and to all the rest of you who I forgot to mention, peace!!!

7. Links and resources

Places to visit for additional information of products and resources, and for great people

Companies that made things possible

Authors website

http://www.renderosity.comhttp://www.poserarcana.comhttp://www.runtimedna.comhttp://www.daz3d.comhttp://www.curiouslabs.comhttp://www.blackhearted.comhttp://www.stormi.comhttp://www.nevermoredesigns.com

http://www.corel.comhttp://www.adobe.comhttp://www.wacom.com

http://www.toxicangel.com
http://www.renderosity.com/http://www.poserarcana.com/http://www.runtimedna.com/http://www.daz3d.com/http://www.curiouslabs.com/http://www.blackhearted.com/http://www.stormi.com/http://www.nevermoredesigns.com/http://www.corel.com/http://www.adobe.com/http://www.wacom.com/http://www.toxicangel.com/http://www.toxicangel.com/http://www.wacom.com/http://www.adobe.com/http://www.corel.com/http://www.nevermoredesigns.com/http://www.stormi.com/http://www.blackhearted.com/http://www.curiouslabs.com/http://www.daz3d.com/http://www.runtimedna.com/http://www.poserarcana.com/http://www.renderosity.com/

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