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I had posted a completed sun on Marvin X's Better Planet Tutorial a while back which I was very proud of. After many weeks of trying- tweaking here, tweaking there, trying to simplify the whole thing I came up with something I think I actually improved upon the original:
To this one, which we will create today:
1. Start with a big square canvas -1500x1500. Tip–too small or too big and we lose some detail.
2. Fill with black. Tip-leave the eye visible at all times
3. New canvas, filled with a dark yellow color. Name it 'color'. Click the eye off to turn invisible. Tip-I used f6ae03.
4. Duplicate 'color', named 'texture' – active layer
5. Filters>Artistic>Gimpressionist
5a. Presets tab: Furry
5b. Paper tab: n/a
5c. Brush tab: Dribble
5d. Orientation tab: Flowing
5e. Size tab: Flowing
5f. Placement tab: Randomly
5g. Color tab: Average under brush
5h. General tab: Solid – Paint edges. Drop shadow.
Now we should have what looks like a really tacky shag rug carpet:
6. Grab a big fuzzy brush. Use a darker yellow-use the 'value' slider in the color dialogue; don't use black due to the blending modes. Stick some random splotches wherever-these are your sunspots. Don't make them too big or too many:
7. Filters>Map>Map Object
7a. Options tab: Map to sphere; Transparent Background; The rest are defaults.
7b. Light tab: No light
7c. Material tab: n/a
7d. You can play with the X and Y Rotation to get your sunspots where you want them:
8. Duplicate your texture twice, name one 'blur', the other 'distress'. put 'blur' directly below your 'texture' layer. Put 'distress' below that -then turn 'distress' invisible, keep 'blur' active:
9a. Filters>Blur>Gaussian blur; Blur by 8 pixels:
9. Duplicate blur layer – named 'glow'. Move 'glow' layer below 'texture' 'blur' and 'distress':
9a. Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur
9b. Blur by 40 pixels
9c. Filters>Blur>Motion blur; Set to Zoom:
[/URL 10. Make texture layer active layer. Layer>Transparency>Alpha to Selection.
11. Select>Grow. Grow by 8 pixels.
12. New layer. Named 'distress2' Script-Fu>Selection>Distress Selection. Keep the defaults.
12a. Fill with the same yellow we used in step 3]Tip-Ctrl-Shift-A.[/color]
15. Gaussian blur by 5 pixels:
16. Move 'distress2' below 'distress' and merge down 'distress' with 'distress2' into one layer:
Blending mode on 'texture' is set to Screen. Blending mode on 'blur' is Overlay. Blending mode on 'distress2' is set to Dodge. All other layers are set to Normal.
17. Merge down from the bottom up. If you merge down from the top down you will lose all the blending effects.
Tip- to keep the blending effects but still keep our completed sun transparent so we can put it into a starscape: On 'distress2' layer, Alpha to Selection, New layer, fill selection with black; put this at the bottom of the stack above the background layer in normal mode.
18. And we have our completed sun:
And now for part 2 – The large prominences:
1. Turn off the eye on all completed layers except for the black background layer.
2. The original background layer is active-it is important to create our flame on the original background layer, the flame looks best on a layer without an alpha channel. I have tried many, many times to get the flame to look good when created on a layer with an alpha channel and it just does not look right.
2a. Filters>Render>Nature>Flame.
4. Make sure Colormap is set to our yellow 'color' layer -you didn't delete it did you?
5. Hit the edit button and play with the displays -set the variation to sphere and start looking for some big looping circles. Use the Zoom in the camera tab to get up close and personal with the detail-remember we will be putting our completed sun on top of the flame so keep that in mind when deciding on your flame.
6. Duplicate background copy three times so we have a total of four copies including the background.
6a. Blur the bottom layer. Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Blur by 8.
7. The blending modes for the flame copies will be the oppisite of the sun: Top one will be Dodge. Second one will be Overlay. Third one will be Screen. Bottom one will be Normal.
8. Merge down from the bottom up.
9. On the completely merged flame layers-
9a. Layers>Colors>Brightness/Contrast Drag the contrast up:
10. Delete the solid yellow layer.
11. And we have our completed sun:
[url=http://imageshack.us]
Cut out the black background with your favorite tool -I recommend 'select regions by color'. And put your completed sun into your favorite solar system.
Since this is my first tutorial please let me know if I need to make any clarifications.
Thanks to Marvin X and Kelxz for inspiration.
Please use this tutorial, abuse it, Just mention me somewhere.
