Stargate

[Xenmas]

I put these together for the campaign that I'm currently running. I'm relatively happy with how they turned out, but wondered if anyone could give some advice on how to shade and texture them to make them look a little less "cartoony"

[ravells]

What applications are you using and do you have at your disposal, Xenmas?

[Xenmas]

Those drawings were put together in Fireworks. I have Photoshop CS2 available, but have not done anything more than install the program and mess with a couple of the options in it. I got it for the website at the office, but haven't really needed it, yet.

[ravells]

Ah. I know nothing about fireworks. But if you have PS handy and can import the file into ps as a native file (which I presume you can do) Then you can add some filter effects. But a quick start to make them less cartoony would be to desaturate the colours. Maybe add some drop shadows or interesting fill textures (noise is a good one) to the objects too.

[ravells]

Sorry, this is a real quick and dirty, but what makes an image cartoony is lack of texture. Here is a very quick example of texturing it...I've overlaid a large shadowy type texture on the water and a finer noise texture on the stone...it's just to give you the idea, not a da vinci or anything. Colours also desaturated.

Ravs

[pyrandon]

Here are some ideas I put together in about 10 minutes.

First, in PS I copied the layer with the pic about 4 times:

1. Select the stone area with select>color range, then select>inverse & delete all, so the stone is all that remains. Then Filter>Texture>Texturizer on the sandstone settings. Play with it until it looks like stone. Set the opacity of this layer down to about 30%

2. In the next layer do the same as above so only stone remains, then Layer>Layer Style>Bevel and Emboss. Do the bevel & emboss with an inner bevel (play with settings). Also click the Contour box & play with those settings.

3. Create one last stone ring layer--place it on top of all others--and run Filter>Texture>Grain on the enlarged type, & play with settings. Put layer blending mode to overlay & play with opacity.

4. Select>color range on the water now, then inverse that & delete, so only water remains. Then inverse & add a shadow with a hard-edged black brush set at about 10 % opacity. Finally, Filter>Distort>Ocean Ripple (play with settings).

Now, when it all looks good to you, Layer>Merge Visible. Then Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur to about 4 px or so--just to take the hard edge off.

You can also play with Image>Adjustment settings like Hue & Saturation, Brightness, etc.

I copied the layer one last time, set the layer on top to Overlay blending mode and 50% opacity, and ran the Filter>Render>Emboss on it & played with the settings.

I also played with the Filter>Render>Lighting Effects to put a spotlight on it & played with settings.

That's it! If I were to mess with it more, I'd eliminate the black surrounding and add a floor with more shadow & depth, and maybe some details like rock on the floor, etc. I'd also add some sort of bottom or depth to the water so it's not plain blue---but good enough for now! I hope this at least sparks ideas!

[Gamerprinter]

Here's a quick water texture I created using both a 3D app and Xara with a PS plug-in "Water Ripples" and a plasma transparency filter. You could use it to fill your Stargate.

Its a large image so you won't need to repeat the fill.