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@Citizensmith: Love your image, especially the colors are spot on! I like it so much I'm going to shamelessly use it to show a little trick for making fast shadows. (no offense of course)

Look at where the light is coming from, at the direction of the shadows of the trees, and compare with where the sentinel's right foot is.



A very fast way to make a shadow is to make a selection containing your model (or if you've already cut it out in a separate layer, you can just CTRL-click this layer), then make a new layer and fill the selection with black, like this.



Then select Edit->Transform->Distort and pull at the corners of your selection until the shape aligns (more or less) with the shadows of the background image.



Remove any parts of the shadow that should be "behind the background image", and apply a very light gaussian blur to soften the shadow up.



Bring the opacity down until the shadow color matches the shadows in the background image (I used about 20%). If the shadows are colored (here they are slightly tinted in blue) you can double click the layer to bring up the Layer Styles menu, then add a Color Overlay and play around with the color and opacity until you get it right.



There, I hope this was useful for someone, and again, sorry for hijacking your awesome image

Love the immolators, the sentinel... all the pictures on this thread.

How much does photoshop cost?

A bit. But you can download GIMP - I've used it to create my photo. PS is better but GIMP is free

Boogie wrote:A bit. But you can download GIMP - I've used it to create my photo. PS is better but GIMP is free

Seconded on GIMP; and the price is right.

If you like GIMP, get GIMPSHOP. It changes the UI a bit to make it a bit more like Photoshop. Works great!

Jim

Coldsnap wrote:

There, I hope this was useful for someone, and again, sorry for hijacking your awesome image

Thanks for the info on doing shadows.

Those are some damn good pics. Keep it up.

And subscribed.

DISCIPLE_SoC wrote:If you like GIMP, get GIMPSHOP. It changes the UI a bit to make it a bit more like Photoshop. Works great!

Jim

Thanks for the heads-up Jim! I love the GIMP but that makes it 100x better.

Coldsnap wrote:@Citizensmith: Love your image, especially the colors are spot on! I like it so much I'm going to shamelessly use it to show a little trick for making fast shadows. (no offense of course)

Look at where the light is coming from, at the direction of the shadows of the trees, and compare with where the sentinel's right foot is.

A very fast way to make a shadow is to make a selection containing your model (or if you've already cut it out in a separate layer, you can just CTRL-click this layer), then make a new layer and fill the selection with black, like this.

Then select Edit->Transform->Distort and pull at the corners of your selection until the shape aligns (more or less) with the shadows of the background image.

Remove any parts of the shadow that should be "behind the background image", and apply a very light gaussian blur to soften the shadow up.

Bring the opacity down until the shadow color matches the shadows in the background image (I used about 20%). If the shadows are colored (here they are slightly tinted in blue) you can double click the layer to bring up the Layer Styles menu, then add a Color Overlay and play around with the color and opacity until you get it right.

There, I hope this was useful for someone, and again, sorry for hijacking your awesome image

Hey, no problem at all. I'd completely missed correcting for the shadows, and great tip on how to do it for this type of photo. It took a long time to get the lighting even half right. The model photo was taken outside in bright sun. The city photo is of Pripyat (seemed suitable) so the weather probably isn't as nice. Lots of playing with levels and saturation to try and blend it in. Scale still bugs me a bit, the Sentinel feels too big.

Next time I'll be finding a photo I really like and then taking a model shot at an angle suitable for it. Rather than the other way round that this one was, basically thrown together in a lunch hour in reaction to this thread.

Nice

Fought the Traitors again the other day, lost miserably but managed to get a few good photos!

Wuwz! great to see this topic is still up and running!

Just had to contribute some more work here.

Also, just have to say thanks to Coldsnap for the shadow tutorial! Gave me some great help!

Anyhow, please share more!

Hey guys new here, I saw your first images coldsnap and loved them , although I thought the world eaters dreadnought image needed to be a bit more dramatic
so I played around with it, hope you like.

Absolutely awesome work you've got there!

Awsome

Stu Phoenix wrote:Hey guys new here, I saw your first images coldsnap and loved them , although I thought the world eaters dreadnought image needed to be a bit more dramatic so I played around with it, hope you like.

If only everyone's first posts were as good as yours. Nice shot.

Stu Phoenix wrote:Hey guys new here, I saw your first images coldsnap and loved them , although I thought the world eaters dreadnought image needed to be a bit more dramatic
so I played around with it, hope you like.

I like it, makes the image pop a bit more

Ok I just couldnt leave it alone, it's just to cool a pic so heres another of it at midnight!

God rays ftw!

Another wee one as seen from cockpit of Valkyrie 1


P.S sorry for hijacking your thread coldsnap .

Stu Phoenix wrote:P.S sorry for hijacking your thread coldsnap .

NP at all, it's great to see so many people posting stuff here! Keep'em coming!

Awesome pic btw, the foreground metal bar really helped sell the sense of realism there!

My friend, one day forge world will hire you. EXCELLENT work.

love this thread the smurf dreadnought is my fave by far might have to steall it for my wallpaper if you dont mind?

those deffkoptas are my favorite
it looks like they are actually flying

LunaHound wrote:
Wood Elves :3

Lookes like something out of Robin Hood.

Amazing work. Keep it up!

My try at it:
The image consists of :
2 layers for the Land Raider (one blurred and partially masked to create the illusion of movement
1 sky layer
1 background layer
2 weapon fire layers
3 smoke layers

Wow! This thread is just amazing! I must get to work on by blood angels now!

A most worthy effort indeed, it is perhaps, alas, a wee bit late with regards to this thread.

Feel free to start a new one to carry it on and display what you've done though


Thread is being locked due to thread necromancy.