Abstract Tutorial.

Step 1:

Make a new Bryce scene with a full black sky and place a sphere in.

Then press the [*] key 2 times to enlarge it. The result should look like this:

Step 2 :

Now we are going to make a nice volume texture that will be the base for our abstract.

We start by loading this preset texture onto our sphere:

Now we do a render of the whole sphere to find a nice area to use in our abstract.

You'll find that the texture is detailed enough to find several nice area's to zoom in on.

And that's no problem because you can use them all and combine them in Photoshop or PSP later.

This is my testrender. The area in the red rectangle is going to be the area I'll use:

In bryce you can click and drag a selection of the rendered image.

Select your favourite area and click on the little triangle:

Now click “Zoom to Selection” and hit the renderbutton:

You could use this image straight away, but I'm going to add a different color to it.

To do that we click the little “M” that appears when you select the sphere.

You can then change the colors in the texture editor. This are my settings:

I decided to zoom in a little further and the colored render now looks like this:

I made a few other volumes using the same technique. You can find the scene-files of the volumes here: rayraz.tripod.com/abstract/scenes.zip

Step 3:

Now we are going to combine the layers to make a nice abstract. I used PSP for this, but you can use Photoshop too.

After I rendered all three volumes I started with this image:

As you can see even one volume is already a nice looking image, but I'm going to try to make the abstract a bit more rich.

To do that I loaded the image of the green volume and rotated it 90 degrees to the right. I resized it and fit the canvas to the size of the first layer. The result is this:

If you get a seam in the midle of the layer you can blurr it away with a heavy gausian blur.

Now we add this green layer to the gray layer in screen mode (strength 100%).

Now we start playing a little more and add the yellow image as a third layer. Play with the layers

properties to find a nice result. I Mirrored the layer and set the properties to hardlight 100%:

We now open the grey volume again and add the above image to it as a second layer.

Don't close the previous images yet, because you might want to use them later. I set the second

layer to screen and masked away a few area's using a simple soft brush with a radius of between 100 and 250 pixels (depending on the size of the image):

Now we go back to the old image and copy the second layer. We add it as a third layer to the above

image in hardlight 100% mode:

Copy this merged image and past it as a new one. I'll call this the green hardlight layer.

Go back to the original and change the settings from hardligh to softlight 100%:

Now we add the green hardlight layer again in screen 100% mode. The result is still too weak so we

duplicate this layer. We now have this result:

As you can see we used just 3 different renders and by just playing and experimenting we create the coolest things.

Step 4:

Now we have the basis of out abstract. It's time to fill the “empty area's”. To do this I use all kinds of effect images I've saved and made over the years. I've got a library of over 200 effects images.

I mostly make them using Bryce volumetrics and filters in 2D-apps. A great program to create these effects with is UltimateFX. Just play with the settings and you'll get all kinds of nice effects. I can't tell you how to do that specifically, because it's a process based on playing and accidents.

I started the filling process by adding this image as a new layer:

I set it to multiply 100% and I made a merged copy of the result. I then deleted the layer again and added the merged copy as a new layer. I flipped the layer, and then mirrored it and set it to screen 100%:

I decided I wanted the gray base to become stronger, so I duplicated the bottom layer and set it to screen 25%:

I made another selection of the already rendered green layer and fliped it to get this result:

I'm first going to change the colors of this image to get something that resembles the overall feeling I would like the abstract to have. In order to do this I loaded this image from my effects archives:

I added this image as a second layer to the green image with the settings set to overlay 100%.

I then duplicated this layer and set the duplicate to color 25%:

The colors are really nice now, but the lightness needs to be adjusted. In order to do that I duplicated the first (green) layer again and put the duplicate on top. Then I set this top layer to dodge 100% and duplicated it again to get an even more intense dodge effect. The result looks like this:

Now it's time to add this to our abstract again. I added it as another layer and set the layer to sceen 75%:

The image is really taking shape now, but it's time to add just a few tiny effects. I used this image:

And I masked it with this mask (made by grayscaling an effects image, substracted by another mask I already made once):

I then duplicated layer in the masked image two times and set both the duplicate layers to dodge.

Then I merged the image without deleting it's transpacency and added it to the abstract in screen 100% mode. I also did a sharpen filter on the layer to make it a bit more noisy and make it appear more agressive. This is the result:

I repeat the same technique with another image:

And another mask from my effects library:

I added this as a new layer with the settings screen 100%.

I duplicated this layer and gave the duplicate the settings dodge100%.

This is the result:

This could go on for ages, but I've decided to add just one more thing. A layer with some start blasting from the center of the image. This can be made by making a full black bryce sky with only the stars turned on. Then point the camera straight op and zoom out. The starimage should look like this:

I added this star-image in softlight 100% mode and made a merged copy of the result. Paste the merged copy in a new image and delete the starlayer from the abstract. Now take the merged copy and add it as a screen 100% layer to the abstract. Now make the original starimage the mask for the merged copy layer. The result should look like this:

And that's it. You have now seen how I produce my average abstract. It's really all based on trying and playing with settings. I hope this tutorial will inspire you to create your own abstracts with your own personal feel and emotion.

Happy Brycing!

Ruben ”Rayraz” Vreeken.