The five shades

Above about the five shades.

To change a totally flat circle into a solid looking sphere using our blending method I start by lightly drawing in the outline and the highlight, which I need to reserve as white paper. Remember, try not to get pencil in the highlight, as once blended into the paper, it's almost impossible to remove completely. I've drawn in the shadow below the circle to represent the cast shadow. Where the object meets the surface is going to be our darkest tone and as it moves away it gradually gets lighter. Placing one of your darkest tones quite early also helps to establish the required tonal values. Following the shape of the object, I've shaded in a fairly narrow section to represent the darker side of our sphere. This will be the first of a number of layers which I will build up to the required tone. Using the tortillon, I'm now going to blend and pull the colour. By the way, If the tortillon squeaks, or drags on the paper, apply more pencil... This is the shaded area after blending and spreading the pencil with the paper tortillon. I pull the colour towards the lighter area but stop short of the reserved highlight, I use a clean tortillon to blend the lightest grey towards the white. I then apply another layer of pencil, & repeat. And this is the finished sphere after three layers of shading and blending, using all five shades: 1. The Highlight, where the light strikes the object. 2. The reflected light at the bottom of the object. 3. The actual colour of the object. 4. The dark side of the object. 5. The cast shadow directly below the object, our darkest tone.

Shading trees technique

Here's technique on how to shade trees.

The classification, "shade trees" is rather self-explanatory. Shade trees are generally defined simply as being specimens grown specifically to shield a yard from the sun's rays, thus providing welcome cool in summer. Shade trees with spreading canopies will be most successful in blocking out the sunshine across wide areas.

Fast-Growing Shade Trees
This resource provides links to information on fast-growing shade trees. Selecting fast-growing shade trees enables you to receive quicker, albeit not immediate gratification.

American Elms: Queen of the Shade Trees
The streets of eastern North America once looked drastically different than they do now -- and not just because of technological advances and changes in tastes. American elms once lined Main Street USA, as the shade trees of choice. Then Dutch elm disease came and wiped out most American elms. But they're making a comeback, thanks to science.

Five basics of shading

Above about five basics of shading. You can work with a basic palette of only 5 shades.
	1. This is the lightest part of an object where the light falls directly on to it. This is the actual paper and must not be drawn on, lighter greys should be blended gently towards it using a clean tortillon.
	2. This is our reflected light and is seen around the edge of an object as light reflects from surrounding surfaces such as clothing. It makes an object appear solid as it informs us that there is another, darker side to it.
	3. Mid grey, the tone that represents the actual colour of the object without the effects of either direct light or shadow. Remember, although this is a basic five tone system, the gentle gradation between shades will actually be producing millions.
	4. This represents the shadowed side of an object as it recedes from the light. For example, if light is from the right... the left side of the object would be this shade. It would lighten gently towards the light and darken as it moved away.
	5. The darkest tone is as near to black as you can get, this is your darkest shade and represents the cast shadows. This shadow is darkest where objects meet surfaces and lightens as it moves away from the object. Don't try to achieve this tone in one application, build it up in layers.

How to do a plastic bucket

Here's about how to make a plastic bucket with adobe photoshop.

[1]-First of all Open New Document of Custom size,Height & Width 500×500 pxl,Resolution 72 & Mode RGB Color

[2]-Now Open New Layer & then create the following shape with the help of ‘Pen Tool’ right click select ‘Make Selection’

[3]-In Make Selection ‘Feather Radius’ should 0 pixel,Tick on New Selection & then ok & your image should look like as shown below

[4]-Now fill the selection with ‘0074e7′ color & then select ‘Burn Tool’ & create the following shading

[5]-Now select ‘Dodge Tool’ & Highlight the some parts like as shown below

[6]-Now create the following selection with the help of ‘Pen Tool’ & then create the shading with the help of ‘Burn Tool’

[7]-Now Open New Layer[this layer should below previous layer] & then create the following selection with the help of ‘Elliptical Marquee Tool’

[8]-Now fill the selection with ‘00033d’ color & then Open New Layer & create the following selection with the help of ‘Pen Tool’

[9]-Now fill the selection with ‘0074e7′ color & create the following shading with the help of ‘Burn & Dodge Tool’

[10]-Now Open New Layer & then create the following selection with the help of ‘Pen Tool’

[11]-Now fill the selection with ‘fae300′ color & then create the following shading with the help of ‘Burn & Dodge Tool’ & after that create the following selection with the help of ‘Elliptical Marquee Tool’

[12]-Now Open New Layer & then fill the selection with ‘0074e7′ color & then go to Blending Options,select Inner Shadow & use the following settings
Photoshop Technique-How to use the Inner Shadow feature

[13]-Now your image should look like as shown below

[14]-Now go to Blending Options,select Drop Shadow & use the following settings
Photoshop Technique-How to use the Drop Shadow feature

[15]-Now fill the Background with ‘a6a6a6′ color & then Highlight the some parts with the help of ‘Dodge Tool’ like as shown below

[16]-Now select Layer-1 & then Make the Duplicate Layer with the help of Ctrl+J & then reduce the Opacity of this Layer

[17]-Now press Ctrl+T right click select ‘Flip Vertical’ & then press ENTER & adjust with the help of ‘Move Tool’

[18]-Thanks for read this Photoshop Tutorial.I hope you have enjoyed & learnt some Photoshop Techniques & the Final Image should look like as shown below

pencil draw

Workshops and multi-week courses

Above about workshops and multi-week courses.

PoconoArts Council announces the following courses in the Summer 2009 Studio Program. Workshops and multi-week courses are available and are held at the PoconoArts Community Cultural Center.

One-Day Workshops:

• "The Falls, A Waterscape in Acrylics" with instructor Jean Perry from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday, July 7. Pennsylvania's waterfalls will be the subject of a completed work of art in acrylics on canvas. Learn basic concepts behind the media and the method of producing action in your water scenes. Materials will be provided. Bring a snack and wear old clothes. Tuition: members, $35; non-members, $55. Materials fee is $12.
• "Introduction to Silk Painting" with instructor Suzanne Werfelman from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, July 27. This workshop will teach the fine art of silk painting. Various techniques will be explored and all supplies needed to complete 8-inch round silk paintings will be provided. Tuition: members, $40; non-members, $60. Materials fee is $20.

Adult classes:

• "Figure Drawing" with instructor Alex Castro. Four-week course from 6 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays, July 14, to Tuesday, Aug. 4. Course examines the importance of seeing things as an artist, structure and perspective, light and shadow. Students will use pen and pencils, charcoals and other materials. Work will consist of quick sketches as well as complete drawings. Subjects will vary from everyday objects, the figure and reproductions. The concept of building a drawing, understanding native spaces, contours, gestures, shading and composition will be covered as well as creating space and form. Tuition: members, $110; non-members, $130. Model's fee is $30.
• "Fusionist Animation "(Dynamic Integrated Art/Fine Arts Animation) with instructor Mike Schneider. Six-week course from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays, July 8 to Wednesday, Aug. 12. Fusionist animation is the process in which the artist employs his/her chosen image making techniques (drawing, painting, etching, photography, etc.) to create a series of images which once sequenced into an animation give the illusion of movement or time passing. The movement can be as subtle as a figure drawing breathing or as dynamic as getting up, gathering his things and leaving. Things like the quality of light changing over the course of a day or a still life slowly wilting over a month long show can make return viewers question what they have seen. Fusionist Animation is not making cartoons; it is a way to bring life and movement into fine art work. Learn how to breakdown any movement into a series of images; document work in a way that is conducive to animation; organize, align and sequence still images into animations; and display these animations in an art gallery and/or on the web. Tuition: members, $110; non-members, $130. Materials list will be provided.
• "Intermediate Watercolor" with instructor Joan Raushi. 6 week course from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesdays, July 8 to Aug. 12. This course will cover composition, how to avoid making "mud", rules of portraiture, using a photograph, and various textures, along with other techniques. Tuition: members, $165; non-members, $185. Materials list will be provided.
• "Oil Painting" with instructor John McAllister. Six-week course from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursdays, July 9 to Aug. 13. Explore the expression of ideas while developing your own technique in the use of the oil medium. This ongoing workshop starts with the basics, drawing and composition, and continues through the preparation of materials and application of paint. Working at your own pace, you pick your subject while the instructor guides you through the process of producing a work of art. Tuition: members, $110; non-members, $130. Materials list will be provided.
• "Basic Drawing" with instructor Alex Castro. Four-week course from 6 to 9 p.m. Mondays, July 13 to Aug. 3. This course discusses the importance of seeing things as an artist, examines structure and perspective and light and shadow. Students will use pen and pencils, charcoals and other materials. Work will consist of quick sketches as well as complete drawings. Subjects will vary from everyday objects, the figure and reproduction. The concept of building a drawing, understanding native spaces, contours, gestures, shading and composition will be covered as well as creating space and form. Tuition: members, $110; non-members, $130. Materials list will be provided.
• "Watercolor Plus Series" with instructor Jean Perry. Three-week course for ages 12 and up from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays, July 14 to July 28. Experiment with textures, highlight with pastels, accent with collage effects in this 3 session series incorporating watercolors on paper with other materials. Bring photos of landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes. More photos will be supplied with some materials. Artist to supply their own watercolors, brushes and watercolor paper. Bring a snack and wear old clothes. Tuition: members, $110; non-members, $130. Materials fee is $5.
• "Oil Painting with Jill" with instructor Jill Sandt Swersie. Four-week course from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursdays, Aug. 6 to 27. Whether a beginner, an oil painting hobbyist, or a more experienced artist, this class will guide you through all of the essential steps necessary to create a beautiful oil on canvas. Choose your own subject, work at your own pace and with your own hands-on experience learn about color, shadows and technique as you create your work of art. Tuition: members, $110; non-members, $130. Materials list will be provided.
• "Advanced Art Techniques" with Erin Miele. Four-week course from 6 to 8 p.m. Mondays, Aug. 10 to 31. This course will involve the exploration of a variety of advanced art techniques. Classic techniques like glazing and scumbling will be visited. There will be a session focusing on palette knife painting and another on ways to jump start a looser, less inhibited painting style. Tuition: members, $80; non-members, $100.
• "Advertising with Photoshop" with Richard Spezzano for three consecutive evenings from 6 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 18; Wednesday, Aug. 19; and Thursday, Aug. 20. Small businesses must advertise in order to attract customers. This workshop will teach how to create quality ads for newspapers, magazines, postcards or the web. The class will begin with design basics, proceeding to show how to enhance the ads in different ways depending on where it will be shown. The class will also teach how to size an ad correctly, explain bleed, color models and how to format the ad for publications. The techniques shown in Photoshop will also work with most graphic software. Tuition: members, $55; non-members, $75.

Children's workshop

"Mommy and Me Animation Workshop" for ages 3 to 6 from 1 to 5 p.m. Thursday, July 23. Spend quality time with your child learning about the wonderful world of animation. The instructor will guide you both through a series of exercises that will enable you to actually create an animated piece. At the conclusion of the workshop, parent's e-mail addresses will be collected so that the animations made during class can be sent to you and your child. Please bring snack/drink for you and your child to enjoy (non-spill containers, please). Tuition: members, $35; non-members, $45. Materials fee is $10. $15 for DVD/S/H (Optional).

About flat vs smooth shading

Above about flat vs smooth shading

Flat shading is a lighting technique used in 3D computer graphics. It shades each polygon of an object based on the angle between the polygon's surface normal and the direction of the light source, their respective colors and the intensity of the light source. It was used for high speed rendering where more advanced shading techniques were too computationally expensive. But by the end of the 20th century affordable graphics cards were offering smooth shading that were also very fast, making flat shading for speed reasons unnecessary.

The disadvantage of flat shading is that it gives low-polygon models a faceted look. Sometimes this look can be advantageous though, such as in modeling boxy objects. Artists sometimes use flat shading to look at the polygons of a solid model they are creating.

Shading in computer graphics

Here's about shading in computer graphics.

In computer graphics, Shading refers to the process of altering a color based on its angle to lights and its distance from lights to create a photorealistic effect. Shading is performed during the rendering process.

Angle to light source

Shading alters the colors of faces in a 3D model based on the angle of the surface to the sun or other light sources.

The very first image below has the faces of the box rendered, but all in the same color. Edge lines have been rendered here as well which makes the image easier to see.

The second image is the same model rendered without edge lines. It is difficult to tell where one face of the box ends and the next begins.

The third image has shading enabled, which makes the image more realistic and makes it easier to see which face is which.

Rendered image of a box. This image has no shading on its faces, but uses edge lines to separate the faces.

This is the same image with the edge lines removed.

This is the same image rendered with shading of the faces to alter the colors of the 3 faces based on their angle to the light sources.

About water shading

Above about water shading.

Today’s update on Stok3d is perhaps not as useful as the previous post, but I certainly had fun working on it. Or as we say in Dutch with a word blatantly stolen from German: it’s “spielerei”.

Demos:

I’m going to post the demos first this time. Saves you some scrolling effort, because the explanations below are rather boring

• Parallax Mapping : Move and turn towards the edges of the screen to see the extrusion of the texture best. A PhongFilter is added as a second filter, making it slower but the effect becomes more obvious.
• Water Shading 1 - Ocean : Reflects or refracts light depending on the view angle and the surface relief. It animates a perlin noise filter to generate a water heightmap.
• Water Shading 2 - Ripples : Same thing, but with a simple drawn ripple effect. The difference between refracted and reflected light is more obvious here.

Edit: Even if you have Flash Player 10, you still might get an update request. That is because these demos require the version of 10.0.22 concerning recent Pixel Bender bugfixes.

The source code for these demos can also be found on Google Code.

Useful updates

Some updates I did involved some bugfixes and performance-related updates. I also added a NormalMapUtil class, which provides a basic API to generate and manipulate normal maps. The main features are the generateFromHeightmap and drawFromHeightmap methods. Since height maps (or bump maps) are generally easier to come by (and to make), these methods generate a normal map for you. generateFromHeightMap creates a new BitmapData, drawFromHeightMap uses an existing BitmapData that you provide (useful if you need to generate one on every frame). The NormalMapUtil class furthermore allows you to invert the components of the normals, in case a normal map reflects the light in the wrong directions.

Water Shading

A new shader filter that was added is the WaterShadingFilter. If you remember your high school physics, depending on the view angle, the surface either reflects the light or lets it pass through and refracts it (which is called the fresnel effect). To put it simply, when looking at water at a shallow angle, it seems like a very reflective surface, but when looking straight down into it, you can see through it but it’s a distorted view. The reflection uses a combination of environment mapping and phong shading, while the refraction is a simple displacement mapping technique. The DisplayObject to which the filter is applied is used as what’s underneath the surface, ie: the refracted light. The ripples seen in the demo are not made by the filter, but are custom written to manipulate the normal map.

Parallax Mapping

Another new filter is the ParallaxFilter, which performs (you guessed it) parallax mapping. It’s a technique like bump and normal mapping, in the sense that it tries to give more depth to a 2D texture. It does so by displacing texture coordinates based on a height map and view direction to the coordinate that it would normally have in 3D space. This causes the texture to look extruded and more detailed. For more (and better) information, check the article on wikipedia. Stok3d implements an iterative variation. It’s a bit slower but takes care of overlap issues and can handle sharp edges.

About deferring technique

Here's about deferring technique.

At this point in time, some form of deferred rendering is becoming the standard rendering technique in games. I've long been a fan of deferred shading, and was quite pleased with the results after converting our forward renderer to deferred on a 360 project a little over a year ago. More recently, moving to a different project and engine, we went through the forward->deferred transition again, but our lead programmer tried a variation of the idea called deferred lighting. From the beginning, I wasn't a fan of the technique, for a variety of reasons. For a longer summary of the idea, and a more in depth comparison of deferred shading vs deferred lighting, check out this extensive post on gameangst. At this point I am going to assume you are familiar with the techniques. I mainly agree with Adrian's points, but there's a few issues I think he left out.

Deferred lighting is usually marketed as a more flexible alternative to 'traditional' deferred shading which has the proposed advantages:

- similar performance, perhaps better in terms of light/pixel overdraw cost

- no compromise in terms of material/shader flexibility

In short, I think the first claim is dubious at best, and the 2nd claim actually turns out to be false. Adrian has an exposition on why the 2nd material pass in deferred lighting actually gives you much less flexibility than you would think. The simple answer is that material flexibility (or fancy shaders), modify BRDF inputs or they alter the BRDF itself. Flexibility in terms of modifying the BRDF inputs (multi-layer textures, procedural, animated textures, etc.) can easily be accounted for in traditional deferred shading, so there is no advantage there. Deferred lighting is quite limited in how it can modify the BRDF because it must use a common function for the incoming light (irradiance) at each surface point, for all materials. It only has flexibility for the 2nd half of the BRDF, the exit light (radiance) on the eye path. Materials with fancy specular (like skin) are difficult to even fake with control only over exit radiance.

Now, there is a solution using stencil techniques that allows multiple shader paths during light accumulation, but traditional deferred shading techniques can use this too to get full BRDF flexibility. So Deferred Lighting has no advantage in BRDF flexibility. (more on the stencil techniques in another post)

But the real problem with deferred lighting is in performance - its not similar to deferred shading at all. The 1st problem is that all else being equal, two full render passes are just always going to be slower. The extra CPU draw call cost and geometry processing can be significant, especially if you are trying to push the geometry detail limits of the hardware (and shouldn't you?). The geometry processing could only be 'free' if there was significant pixel shader work to load balance against, and the load balancing was effecient. On PS3, the load balancing is not effecient, and more importantly, there is not much significant pixel shader work. Most of the significant pixel shader work is in the light accumulation, which is moved out of any geometry pass in both techniques - so they easily will be geometry limited. This is the prime disadvantage of any deferred technique right now vs traditional forwad shading. With forward shading, its much easier to really push the geometry limits of the hardware, as all pixel shading is done in one heavy pass.

Furthermore, the overdraw performance of the two systems is not comparable, and for high overdraw objects, such as foilage, deferred shading has a large advantage. Foilage objects are typically rendered with alpha-test, and because of this they receive only a partial benefit from the hardware's HI-Z occlusion. In our engine, the 1st pass in the two techniques for simple foilage is similar, both sample a single texture for albedo/alpha. The only difference is in DS the 1st pass outputs albedo and normal vs just the normal for DL. The 2nd pass, unique to DL, must read that same diffuse/albedo texture again, as well as the lighting information, which is often in a 1 or 2 64-bit texture(s). So its easily 3 times the work per pixel touched.

As a side note: the problems with Hi-Z and alpha test are manifold. With 2 pass rendering, you would think the fully populated z-buffer and Hi-Z from the 1st pass will limit overdraw in the 2nd pass to a little over 1.0. This is largely true for reasonable polygon scenes without alpha test. The problem with alpha-test is that it creates a large number of depth edges and wide z-variation within each Hi-Z tile. Now, this wouldn't be such a problem if the Hi-Z tiles stored a min/max z range, because then you could do fast rejection on the 2nd pass with z-equal compares. But they store a single z-value, either the min or the max, useful only for a greater-equal or less-equal compare test. Thus, when rendering triangles with alpha-test in the second pass, you get alot of false overdraw for pixels with zero-alpha that still pass the Hi-Z test.

Stage and type of shading

Above about stage and type of shading.

There are several stages to, and types of shading. Let’s start with a simple circle.

1. The first type of shading and the best place to start for beginning pyrography is positive/negative shading.
Positive/negative shading is used for branding irons, metal cut outs, scroll saw patterns, etc. You really only utilize one shade, and that is the dark. The shadows are really the only thing you are drawing.

Here is a pyrographed picture of my son that utilizes this type of shading as an example.

2. The next type we will talk about is hatching and cross hatching. Hatching is a technique used in mediums such as ink to give the feel of shadow with lines. Cross hatching uses lines that cross each other. Two of these figures illustrate the point simply, and the third shows that depending on how detailed you get, you can really get a good feel of shadow, and still with only one tone of color.

The snake sketch was an ink drawing done with no lines other than “hatch” marks. The sketch of the rose and lantern was an original sketch in ink used to create the pyrographed piece “Revolution”. It illustrates the use of hatching and cross hatching to shade.

3. The next type of shading is another used in monochromatic mediums such as ink. It is another good method for pyrography because like the other methods, it uses only one tone. Pixilating, also known as “pointillism” or "stippling" is a technique for shading by using many small dots at varying distance to create the feel of shading. This technique is time consuming, but it creates such a unique texture that even when more advanced shading is developed, this method can still be the most effective way to shade textured surfaces such as fur or cloth.

This picture is a wood burn which used pointalizing to shade the trees in the background.

4. The last method of shading, and the most difficult to master with pyrography, is “smooth shading”. It is the most realistic shading effect, and will look the best on smooth surfaces like skin.

The second illustration shows how you can calculate a shadow by drawing lines from the object parallel with the direction of the light to give you an idea of where the shadow would be cast. Another note is that we have eliminated the outline. A picture will always look better when you can eliminate the lines that are unnatural.

The illustration of the cube is to show how the same light source would affect a different shape. The top is the most direct surface to the source of light, the front of the cube is in partial light, and the side is completely shaded. Flat surfaces are usually easier to shade.

Smooth shading is an effect created in pyrography by varying the speed you move the burning tip across the surface to create the different tonal values. Speed (rather than temperature or pressure) is the most effective way to create this effect. Of course lower temperatures will help you get a smoother transition between values, but don’t be cautious or afraid to burn dark, as you will find the lighter values will fade over less time than the darker ones.

Rendering water

Here's about rendering water.

Water plays an important role in all terrain renderers used in modern games and visualizations to present outdoor areas. This is because it improves general image quality in an extent bigger than any other technique and makes it more photorealistic. Alas, even though it tends to look better and better with every game released it is still far from being realistic.

Besides, deferred shading gains popularity every month. Many newer games and engines make use of it, eg. Starcraft 2 and Tabula Rasa. Though deferred shading is typically used to limit lighting-related operations from O(objects_number * lights_number) to O(objects_number) I will prove that it can be helpful in many more algorithms.

In this article I will describe a technique of realistic and flexible water rendering by using bump mapping in the post-process stage just after deferred shading. The presented technique fits into the concept of deferred shading pretty nicely, i.e. it helps to avoid additional geometry rendering. A description on deferred shading can be found in [1], [2] and [3]. It is possible to implement this technique using forward rendering but in this case it seems less natural and may require additional work.

The presented algorithm eliminates the majority of the flaws of typical techniques used for water rendering such as hard edges or unrealistic colour extinction. I will talk shortly about common drawbacks in the section “Traditional approaches to water rendering”.

Theory behind water

The theory behind water is very complex and not fully understood. It will suffice to say that there is no adequate formal model describing it so far. Survey conducted by Guillot [4] proved that none of the 46 models he analyzed is valid when compared to reality.

Existing models are also a way too complex and computationally expensive to be used for real time applications, especially games. A game should not spend most of its CPU or GPU processing time just to update and render realistic water.

So a completely different solution has to be found.

In my opinion the theory of water for real time applications can be divided into two categories:

• Waves - their animation, propagation and interaction with the rest of the world
• Optics.

To simulate waves propagation, FFT (Fast Fourier Transform [5]) is frequently used. In this article I do not focus on waves propagation and so I will skip the theory behind it. I strongly believe that what is more important for good looking water is optics and I will describe it in a very detailed way.

About blended shading

Above about blended shading

Blended Shading- a popular shading method among pencil artists. Graphite is a wonderful medium because it's very workable. You can lay down graphite and then blend it with pretty much anything. This shading method consists of just scribbling some graphite onto your paper. Now the graphite is blended. I've had good results using regular facial tissues. You can blend with anything though. Play around with different materials to create different shade textures. Facial tissues yield very smooth shading, perfect for flawless looking skin.

(blended shading example)