Fibre Optics

[Steven Collier]

Thanks for the tutorial Gary, this goes someway to helping me with a method for drawing realistic fibre optic cables.

Attached is what I attempted so far, I started with a freehand line which I contoured to create a closed bath for the bevel to use. The biggest problem is with the hightlight, applying a linear transparency means I get nothing on the lower part of the image, do you have any advice that will help ?

Even better if one of the resident brush fanatics could suggest something, I tried and failed miserably.

Steven

[Steven Collier]

Thanks for the tutorial Gary, this goes someway to helping me with a method for drawing realistic fibre optic cables.

Attached is what I attempted so far, I started with a freehand line which I contoured to create a closed bath for the bevel to use. The biggest problem is with the hightlight, applying a linear transparency means I get nothing on the lower part of the image, do you have any advice that will help ?

Even better if one of the resident brush fanatics could suggest something, I tried and failed miserably.

Steven

[gwpriester]

Steven

This sounds like a problem for Brush Man.

Ivan? Are you out there?

We need a fiber optic cable [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Even So Humble...

[gwpriester]

I don't know if this works or not.

I created a line, applied rounded joins in the Line Gallery, made two duplicates of deminishing size, and applied a blend of the lines.

I made a bitmap copy (as in the gel text mini-tutorial) and applied a blur and sent it to the back.

Fiber optic cable is in essence clear and only the ends of the cable display a rainbow spectrum of light, I believe.

Anyway, this is my attempt.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Even So Humble...

[Steven Collier]

Thanks Gary,

Using the blend between lines works ok but I would really like to get a transparent effect like in the gel and geltext tutorials.

I've tried contouring a line to create a thin shape then contoring that thicker then blending between them. This give an effect like your example.

What I had hoped to do next was blend from a high transparency in the middle to less transparent at the edges (TIR makes the edges look darker). My problem is that the blend process leaves me with all the transparencies piled up in the middle, so I get them all combined, where I wanted them thinnest !!

So I read up on brushes and gave it a go. I created a brush from a series of small rectangles of progressive transparency, lighter in the middle than the edges. I'm pretty pleased with the result as attached. I would still love to know if there is a way to stop 2 transparencies adding when they overlap, my brush gets a jaggy look from the slight overlaps on corners.

[Steven Collier]

How do you get your shadows to be transparent ? are they part of the background ? When I take a bitmap copy I can only apply blur when it is true colour, and then it doesn't have a transparent background.

[gwpriester]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> How do you get your shadows to be transparent ? are they part of the background ? When I take a bitmap copy I can only apply blur when it is true colour, and then it doesn't have a transparent background. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Steven

If you apply a Stained Glass Transparency to the blurred bitmap, the white becomes transparent.

As far as trying to apply transparency to a Contour, you'd be better off faking it by making the sides darker and the top, or highlight portion lighter.

What makes the Gel Text look transparent is the soft colored shadow. This gives the brain a visual cue that the object must be transparent because it is casting a colored shadow.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Even So Humble...

[Soquili]

Hi Steven,

Thought I'd have a go at creating a brush while we wait for Ivan. Instead of rectangles, I used an ellipse for the primary shape in creating the brush.

http://eighthfire.dreamwater.com/Fiber.jpg

I'm attaching the .xar file for you to disect. The yellow rectangle to the left in the file contains the ellipse used to create the brush.

Soquili [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]