Making a 3d picture with your digi painting.
File preparation
Needs: You’ll need Photoshop (or something else :p) and a nice little free soft called StereoPhotoMaker (http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/
).
To begin with, I will detail the process when
having a multi layered psd. It will be a lot more hard if you only have one layer to work with. In this
case, you have to select part you want to move and try to avoid the selection
to be too obvious by using flur etc…
To prepare your file, just make sure everything
is organized. I actually don’t do it cause I’m a messy
mess, and I just remember the correct place of each of my sometimes 50 layers lol. But it will be more easy if
you make sure each layer in the layer window of PS is in the order it appears
in your picture. That means no layer A above layer B
in the window, when Layer A appears farther than layer B in your picture.
Let’s take this picture as example, with its
proper organized layers.
Let’s make a merged copy of all that that we’ll
put on top of all layers for later (make it invisible of course), that we call PictureL (for left). This picture will be your left eye,
and you’ll load it first in StereoPhotoMaker.
Now, the fun begins. We will create the right eye, that will decide the whole 3D of your picture, as you
wish it to be.
Making the 3D
For that, some simple explanations.
Everything in your picture will move, horizontally,
to the left or to the right. That will create the 3D effect alone. Don’t move
anything vertically. Don’t move things manually!!! Use control+t
(free transformation) and change the x number at the top of the ps screen (with the triangle clicked to begin the count at
zero)!!
The depth is basically 3 categories.
_The things you don’t move (meaning it’s the
same position, overlapping the L picture) will appear at the glass of your
screen position, like if it was flat and glued to the screen. (It can be good
for text for exemple, but you’ll avoid it if you want
the whole scene to look 3D)
_The things you’ll moveto
the left, with a negative X in the ps stat, will seem
to be in front of the screen. Those ones will be pretty killing for your eyes
if you do it to much. I generally don’t use more than
-20 for it. (Important notice: all the values I’m using are for a 1920x1200
picture! The scale of the gap would have to be different for a smaller image,
just adapt the values. When I say -20 is my maximum –x value, it would be -2
for a 10 time smaller image)
_Thirdly, the things you move to the right will
look farther in the back.
After that its pretty simple if the psd
is organized well. And you just have to make sure you have the proper
distances, but I will help you (even if you can play with different scales and try
things)
I use those general rules to help myself and it
works quite well for my pictures.
_As I said, everything you want to appear
really in front, not appearing entirely on screen (where you don’t see the
bottom of it) is -20 maximum (the front trees for example here).
_The character is at 20, cause it’s not too far
away and yet still in the depth.
_Everything in between those two are then
between -20 and 20. You’ll have to estimate how far they are from the 20, or
how near. For exemple, the bush here would be at 10,
mi distance.
_For the ground, we’ll see after cause there is
a trick.
_For the background, it’s up to you to decide
if you want something really far or not, based on the scale we used. It’s
always a matter of proportion based on the value we used for the front scene.
_There, the
trees don’t seem that far, so let’s say if the distance from the character to
the screen is 20 (always for me), the trees behind will begin at 30, then the
one after that will be at 50, and finally the last line at 80.
You’ve understood it’s all in the art of
estimating, based on the scale of your picture. My videogame wall generally
goes from -20 in front to 100 in the back, but for larger scale background,
like my starfox picture, I went to 200.
Special cases
_When you move a layer and there is no information
to fill the new position. For example, if I take the front trees here.
There is a gap when moving it (in the wrong
direction for the sake of the exemple). When facing
this problem, well.. just
fill the gap homogeneously :).
_Ground:
For the ground you’ll use a special cool trick
that will give more 3d feel to your picture. You will deform it. Using the skew
tool in ps. Beware to NOT change the vertical size of the layer, never ever, or
it will make this (http://3dporch.com/2pdy.wiggle
look at the tree, even if it’s not higly noticeable
in 3d view. The wiggle thing makes every problem appear really clearly.) That
means only use the top and bottom narrows to move it, never the corners points!
The skew tool looks like that. Here it’s a
little tricky to not make something weird. As your brilliant mind already
guessed, you will here simultaneously create many 3D
positions for the layer. But how to make that with the proper distances will
you think ?, Well there is a simple rule for that. Use
the markers ‘other layers) and the scale values.
Here, remember, as we have a fix mark it’s
easy. The character is at 20. The ground goes from the trees to a front value
we’ll have to decide. We said the trees are at 30. The more
easy for that is to move the ground before you skew it. Move it to +30, then skew it so it match the proper positions of the layers
on top of it. That means, look at the bush and where
is it, relatively to the ground. Well, skew the ground until it matches that
position and everything will be all right. Make sure you do that after you
already moved the layers on top of the ground, or it will be useless.
_With this skew skill, you can make anything
appear as a 3D perspective, if you make sure you respect the right distances by
looking at the numbers you use.
_You can also use the free transform skill to
make that on vertical object. If an object as a position, and you take it’s right side to move it to its right (expanding it), it
will make the object appears as it was going deeper on its right side. Now, if you use the tool to make its right side go to its left side
(shrinking it), it’ll appear as if it was going toward us.
Finalizing
When finished with the layers placing, just
export the first merged Left eye, then this new right one. Open StereoPhoto Maker and choose “open right and left images”,
then load the pictures (in the right order, left and right, but you can switch
after that if it’s the wrong order). You can now verify everything is right by
choosing the anaglyph view (with the glasses) if you have one, or the wiggle
view. When happy (there are always some corrections to do in PS), save as a mpo and put it on the web!
With all those rules and skills, you can find
your own way to do that I guess!
Thx for your time.
Follow me on Twitter if you don’t do it yet :) http://twitter.com/Orioto