Technical Slop

Donut I: Building Base

Okay, this first part is specific to making a donut D-Map. Just so happens that there are things going on that we can take advantage of.

Already did a quick rough draft with some quick painting. Let's tear apart the rough draft.

Here is the rough draft with some Gaussian Blur tossed onto it to blend it up a little bit.

Let's take a peek at the individual Red and Green channels.

Look at that. Two things immediately come to mind. The first thing is that they look an awful lot like Emboss. The second thing is that they are the same except for one being at 90° degrees of the other. That means we can build only have to build one channel, cut-n-paste it into the other, then rotate appropriately.

Normally I would stop exploring right there because I now have more then enough information to make it. However, I want to take the long way of using Polar Coords. Why? Because it's a learning experience. Not only that, but Polar Coords is the route that I originally took.

After running Polar Coords, another pattern kind of emerges. Can you see it?

Also, notice that in this "mode", one of the channels is an offset of the other. We could take advantage of this instead of rotating.

Time to start building.

New document with some Guides tossed in. These Guides are based on the Polar Coorded channels.

So, using the Guides, the selection mask is made.

Make a big, fat horizontal bar, copy it, and run Polar Coords to make it a big, fat circle.

Now for the height map.

A mirrored gradient like so. However, it's linear. It's got to have some curvature. Now, you could use Curves, but I used Spherize with Vertical only. Might want to see Cannify for some details.

Copy it and Polar Coord it.

Now that the height map is built, could very well use Emboss or Lighting Effects. But like I said, I'm going to use Polar Coords. Feel free to deviate to your liking.

I've built this particular D-Map several times. I prefer to use the Diagonal Gradient tool. Also be doing this in the Layers palette. Using the Layers palette let's us do some things that can't be done in the Channels palette.

Set the Diagonal to White to Transparent. Lay it down. Get rid of the top part. Free Transform into place. Not too hard to do with the Guides.

In this particular document, I also have a Levels Ad-Layer at the top. When dealing with a 50% gray background, I find offsetting the gray helps me see what I'm doing. With out, I lose the tool in the 50% gray. Good tip, just remember to turn it off when done.

Copied Layer 1 a few times and moved them into place. Even Inverted (ctrl + i) a few of them.

Remember I used Spherize to give the height map some curving height? Did the same to this. The displacement contours really should match the height contours in the height map. Something like that.

Copy all that jazz and Polar Coord it to get this.

Is that beautiful or what?

Now, you can't just cut-n-paste into any of the individual Channels. Something has to already be in the composite. That is, you can't start a new Layer and paste into a blank Red channel.

New Layer, fill it with something, then cut-n-paste into the Red and Green channels. Personally, I like my Blue channel filled with 50% gray. Then it's a matter of rotating the Green channel to match the Green channel in the rough draft.

Tada. The beginnings of a very cool donut D-Map. Let's take it for a quick spin.

Here is what it does with a low percentage and Wrap Around turned on. Remember that distance problem that I mentioned? Well, it happened. You can clearly see how the top of the D-Map wrapped around and grabbed some of Biker Chic's neck. Other than that, it's all good.

Now, let's do something about that distance problem. After all, real reflections don't have wrap around like that, do they?

Page 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8