The Harvest Moon Consortium

[Tybae]

Ah, it's the OCD in me that wants everything to be as perfect as possible, which is why I have a hard time looking at my work after it's finished. I always want to go back and tweak a thing or two.

You know, you could just do the entire sky from scratch instead of pasting things around. That would make it so there are no seams at all, if you can let your laziness slide. :p

If you need a hand, just let me know and I can help out, although you might want to think about procuring a copy of Photoshop CS1 or CS2. It makes things a whole lot easier than using 6. It can let your laziness shine through.

[Izk The Mad]

@Tybae: I'm quite familiar with OCD myself. That's what makes some of this frustrating, occasionally. Honestly, I can draw, paint, sculpt, even carve things with chainsaws, but I can't really do freehand drawing on the computer too well. I even bought a decent USB tablet, but somehow the hand/eye coordination just isn't quite there. Makes stuff like the Lasso tool a real pain to use. It would help if I practiced more, but I do so many other things. And unfortunately, due to budget constraints, I'm probably stuck with PS6.

I may have to take you up on that offer to help, once I get a handle on this. I could probably use some help with those seams in that first one, for starters. This idea is starting to blossom, and I'd gladly give credit for anything you do. I'm working on one now that's seems promising. Very Lovecraftian. Another black sky, filled all around with smaller "human-ish" eyes. I've started collecting different eye images to play with. And no seams necessary.

This all started out as some random effort on my part because of an idea chaos_theocrat gave me on the Vault. Now he's given me the idea to make a whole pack of these. There's plenty of landscapes, but very few "surreal/planar" skies. And I'm having a lot of fun making them.

[Tybae]

Guess I'll have to dust off that old copy of PSD 6. Actually, I'm not sure if I have one. I'll have to look. If I do it in CS2, you won't be able to use it. You'll be able to open it, but it will be flattened.

Things are really easier than you think they are. You can make wispy clouds using a cloud filter in a selected area, then use Filter-Stylize-Wind to make it wispy, rotate the image, then us a slight motion blur to mask the hard lines. The Lighting effects filter can be your best friend when working with clouds, although it can only add light from 1 source, so you have to do it multiple times on multiple areas to give that 3d effect.

[Izk The Mad]

@Tybae, this is unrelated to skyboxes, but this image from my album was made with Photoshop, just to give you some idea of what I've been able to (accidentally) learn. My world map. I figured out how to use layer styles to create different effects. There's several layers to it, a few for the water, and the rest are the different topography, forests, mountains, snow caps, etc. I actually erased to make the rivers. The map itself was all done freehand, except the desert at the top, which I used custom brushes for. It's not really done (damn OCD), and it's much smaller than actual size. I thought since we were discussing Photoshop I'd share that. I was considering using it for custom loadscreens without the border, and having different zoomed-in versions that are updated with new placemarks as the player moves through the world.

[Tybae]

That's a great idea.

I'm seeing 4 layers for the water, 5 if you count the red map pins. Is that right?

That's a pretty good map. Far better than I've seen in most mods.

[Izk The Mad]

Thanks. There's many layers, I lost count. Each mapnote name is a layer so I can make the different versions, with a bubble under it for easy reading. And they have additional layers with styles applied, to give depth to the colors. No flat "windows bitmap" colors. I seem to use a lot of extra layers and layer copies when I do things. Prevents any permanent mistakes, and I can easily delete them if I don't like what I'm doing.

Also, I just learned what the cloning tool does while reading my book. Doh! I could've been using that all this time! Family photos, custom BG and NWN portraits, wallpapers... That's what I get for being lazy. I'll have to show you my DBZ wallpapers, sometime, btw (noticed your avatar). Big Vegeta fan. As for the cloning tool, I think my life just got a lot easier. Being able to "paint" an image directly to another is great.

[Tybae]

Heh. That's actually Goku and the avatar is actually animated, although the animated version is too large for this site. I'm a huge Gir fan too. I was looking at Gir for an avatar until I saw you had it already..... .............. I love Invader Zim and have every episode on my Ipod for the ride to/from work on BART (that's our subway).

The cloning stamp is nice, but the Healing Brush is light years better. Far less bluring needed. When you use the clone stamp, make sure to use a soft brush, instead of a hard one. Makes it easier to blend later.

I had a Wacom tablet before. It's only really good for abstract drawing, or when you create your own brushes (a blending feature between multiple brushes was added with CS2.) It was really good for light shading. The uneveness of the lines made the clouds look more real. Other than that, I use a mouse.

[Izk The Mad]

I knew it was Goku. I just like bad guys turned good.

I'm experimenting with the clone tool right now. Interesting. Just made a sky with the eye from the Tool album "aenima", as an experiment. Have to try that one out. Found this image:

[IMG]http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/ ... rd_eye.jpg[/IMG]

[Izk The Mad]

Don't know how serious I am about this one, but the effect in-game is positively creepy. Had to share.

[IMG]http://www.rpgmodding.com/forums/pictur ... tureid=100[/IMG]

[Tybae]

Here's a little bit of a smash and grab job with the seam from page 1 using the healing brush. It's definately not blended properly, but it gives you an idea of what the healing brush can do with very little time (about 2 minutes).