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Anyways in this tutorial, we'll be rendering out a yoshi, using basic rendering skills to get a clean cut and a high quality render.
Ok, so first of all, open up your image in gimp (obviously). For this tutorial, we are using this image...
Ok, now first thing you wanna do is make a selection box around what you want to render out of the image like so...
Then hit "Image - Fit canvas to selection" to make it so only your selection box is visible. Then hit "Layer - Layer to image size" to make the layer fit your canvas.
Now hit "Shift+Ctrl+A" or "Select - None" to deselect your selection box.
Next, you'll want to select your "paths tool"
Now, zoom in to about 400% by either using the Zoom drop-down arrow, or just holding ctrl and using the wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out. After that, choose a starting point to start rendering at and click that area, the paths tool will make a circle appear on the spot where you clicked.
Now, keep clicking around the image you want to render out and the circles will be connected by lines, make sure to keep them nice and close for better quality.
For more precise and better quality curves, put points on 2 ends of a curve, then hold Ctrl and click the line between them to make a curve anchor point that will make the line it's on curve when you move it
Do this until you make it all the way around your render and back to the point where you started.
So you should have something like this after you have successfully outlined your render to your liking (mine is bad because it was a quick outlining job =P)....
Now what you need to do is, on your Gimp toolbar, click "selection from path" to make a selected path from the anchor points path.
(Sometimes you will accidentally separate the path during anchor placing/positioning. Usually, if this happens, you will see a selection-line go through your render once you hit "selection from path". If this happens do not worry, simply hit "Select - None", find where the path separated {where the line leads to} and click one of the circles on the disconnected path, then hold "ctrl" and click the other circle of the broken path to connect the two anchor points, then hit "selection from path" again)
it should look like this...
Sometimes renders will be in need of alittle feathering around the edges for alittle bit of a glow effect, to do so go to "Select - Feather..." and feather it somewhere between 0.1 and 0.5, I usually do 0.3.
Next youll want to hit "Layer - Transparency - add alpha channel" this makes the canvas behind your layer transparent.
After that you'll want to hold Ctrl and press I, or go to "select - invert" to select everything but the render you selected, and hit "delete" on your keyboard, then deselect the render. Your result should look similar to this...
We're not done yet, sometimes there'll be places inside the render that we miss, or there's something over the render that we dont want (a line on yoshi's tail in this case)
To fix the missed places, simply select around them with the paths tool, select it, then press delete. Simple as that, should look like this...
Now to deal with that line in his tail. Using the "clone tool" and a circular fuzzy brush on the clone tool options that would be a suitable size to clone over the mark you want to remove. Hold ctrl and select a point that has the same color as what would be underneath the mark you want to remove (usually just right next to the mark). For this example, the green on yoshi's tail. Then wherever you click will have the same color as the place you Ctrl selected, so go ahead and click a few times over that mark. Now it should look like this...
Now if you plan to upload your render to PlanetRenders or something, then its a good idea to make your own customized logo to put on your render image. If you wish to do that, open your logo as a layer (once you've made on of course) and merge it down so it's on the same layer as your render. MAKE SURE THAT IT DOES NOT OVERLAP YOUR RENDER AT ALL. Like so...
Now for the final step, you need to make the canvas fit the render size so there's no wasted canvas space. To do this, right click your layer and select "alpha to selection". Then click "Image - Fit canvas to selection" then click "Layer - layer to image size". Then deselect your render.
Now just touch it up (like with a small-brush eraser to fix edging problems you may have) if necessary, save it as a .png (because .png can handle transparency and it's high quality) and your done. Here's my end result....
Not the best I've ever done (actually its my worst) since I did this quickly. But this was done just for a tutorials sake.
Here's just a few more helpful tips...
- If your render has an outline stroke on the original image, try to render out the stroke by keeping the anchor points below the stroke line, and then just add your own 1 pixel stroke when you finish the render (edit - stroke).
- make anchor points very close together to avoid choppiness.
- The more you zoom, the more precise your anchor points will be, just don't zoom in too much, 400% should be fine
Follow this guide, practice rendering often, and soon you'll be making renders like this....
Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions you may have ;D
