Mother of pearl effect

[toograffic]

I want to create the effect of mother-of-pearl; that beautiful, shimmering, multi-hued luminescence found in the inside of an oyster. I have tried several things, but can't get that realistic look. It must be similar to making a pearl, but I can't seem to get it right. If anyone can give me a few hints or pointers, it would be much appreciated.

[toograffic]

I want to create the effect of mother-of-pearl; that beautiful, shimmering, multi-hued luminescence found in the inside of an oyster. I have tried several things, but can't get that realistic look. It must be similar to making a pearl, but I can't seem to get it right. If anyone can give me a few hints or pointers, it would be much appreciated.

[ivan louette]

Hello,

here is a first tutorial on that subject:

Xara Tips and Tricks

Enjoy it

ivan

[ivan louette]

And here is another one:

Xara X main forum

ivan

[ivan louette]

And here is another technique again which may be adapted:

Blobby techniques on Xara X forum

ivan

[toograffic]

I had tried the one tute in Tips and Tricks about the pearl, but it never looked just right. I believe the second one you posted, about the metallic look, will work great. I can't wait to get home and try it! When I get a satisfactory sample, I'll post it for your inspection.

[IKraus]

Not sure how well these follow any tutorials mentioned, as I did this one on my own some time back. I call it an opal texture, as I based it on the glints of color seen in opal stones. (My birthstone!)

Push yourself to notice the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Irene M. Kraus
www.design-comp.com

[IKraus]

Going to add this in case anyone's interested...

I did that one using several layers filled either with plasma or cloud texture fills in the different colors I wanted. Made each layer transparent, and played around with the fill size & positioning until I got something that looked like I wanted. Then, I made a bitmap copy of all layers. At the time I was doing this, I wasn't sure how to make a seamless tile in Xara, so I had to finish it up outside of Xara.

Micrografx's Picture Publisher 8 has a neat wizard for making seamless tiles. However, your image file has got to be an exact square. So, I made a perfect square shape, and cut that out of my bitmap. That was exported to a TIF image, and then turned into a seamless tile in PP8.

Would love some tips on doing seamless tiles for textures all in Xara. Anyone?

Push yourself to notice the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Irene M. Kraus
www.design-comp.com

[gwpriester]

I knew there was a tutorial for this.

Eric Williams's Pearls tutorial

A great tutorial on creating a pearl effect.

Gary

Gary Priester

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