Masques' layer masks pt21

So here it is. Not much has changed but I fixed that right knee which was buggin me forever. You could keep going forever on cleaning up, and ading details.. but you've gotta stop having fun sometime.

This is a significantly reduced version of the final. (A jpeg of the real one is still many megs.) You should be able to get the general idea from this though.

Take it easy, all.

~m

neutron wrote:

I wasn't too clear on the part where you said to use a colour-negative in one layer mask, to do the sunlit areas, I think can you elaborate on that?

Certainly. (I think). Perhaps a visual aid may be in order. Consider the attached spheres if you will:

Ball A is our 'ambient' shaded version (In this sense meaning that the areas most perpendicular to us are the lightest, those most oblique the darkest- a technique made popular by Byrne Hogarth- called 'modelling' by the classicists, as opposed to chiariscuro, which is a more literal interpretation of lighting).

Ball B is a version of A, which has been inverted (makes the light parts dark and visca versa, but also makes it blue in this case). So reversing the hue of that gets it back to the original coloring, but still tonally inverted.

A then gets made a little darker, a little bluer, and a little less contrasty, to give ball A2.

Ball A goes in the trash at this point.

B goes on top of A2, then has a mask applied so that only the hilight bit of B is left where we want it.This is the bit you 'rub out' in places, leaving areas of cast shadow (as they reveal the darker, 'ambient' layer underneath.)

Of course.. there are numerous ways you could do this better with a simple monochromatic sphere, but if you've invested a lot of time in the initial rendering, or have color/textural information you wish to retain, it makes it a whole lot easier. This is only one technique, mind, which I find useful when dealing with areas mostly in shadow, (my prior alternative being reflected or secondary lightsources, which give different results obviously, and are more work, mostly).

Hey, I never said they were particularly interesting visual aids..:) ~m