Workshop 10 notes, Week of October 31, 2005

1. CUT SOLID WITH FENCE

• Place simple solid slab and overlapping sphere on ground plan.
• From top view, draw fence partially covering slab and sphere using the place fence tool located in the top right corner next to the element selector tool .
• Use the move tool to move the portion of model inside the fence, selecting the “fence” and “clip” options.

2. STRETCH FENCE

• Extrude rectangle from ground plane to form box. (a.k.a. slab)
• View rectangle from front view (parallel, not perspective).
• Place fence over upper edge of box.
• Use “inside”, “stretch”, options on fence tool to increase height of box.

3. GO TO PHOTOSHOP

• Create simple image file of 400x400 pixels with white background
• Add pattern by drawing in black simple lines with the paintbrush tool and/or adding noise by selecting filter>noise>add noise) save file as a jpg image.
• Enter microstation.
• Create Table, Palette and Material File making sure to save each one.
• In the new material, click on the top right checkered box to assign the photoshop image as a bump map (next to the word bumpy).
• In the dialog box, find the .jpg saved earlier.
• In the dialog box for the bump map, choose “invert” if you wish to switch the valleys and hills created by the black and white.
• The slider in the material box controls the intensity of the bump map from smooth to bumpy.
• Assign the material to an object and render. Raytracing with antialias is better to see the full effect than phong.
• To save the rendering, go to utilities>image>save. Name the file, make sure the correct view is selected and click ok.
• To view an image/rendering in microstation, go to utilites>image>display.

4. CUTTING SOLID WITH SURFACE

• Build simple solid slab
• Draw a bspline at the base of the slab and pass through it with the acs plane and acs plane snap on. After drawing the bspline, turn the acs locks off and move the curve directly down to sit below the slab.
• Copy the bspline to a height above the slab using the Accudraw and front or side construction planes.
• Join bsplines together with a network surface by going to tools>surface modeling>surface modeling.
• Selecting the "construct surface from section or network tool" .
• Click on each bspline curve and then left click to confirm.
• To boolean subtract the surface from the slab, go to tools>3D main>TF 3D modify.
• Select the "construct difference" icon .
• Select the slab first, the surface second, then left click to confirm.
• Use the move tool to see the two pieces made by the differencing of the surface.

USING PHOTOSHOP TO ENHANCE A RENDERING

1. ADDING LINES AND SELECTIVELY CHOSING COLOR IN A RENDERING

• Open your image file of a microstation rendering.
• Copy the background layer by highlighting the layer and clicking on the copy layer icon at the bottom of the layer dialog box .
• Name it “lines”.
• Working on the copied layer, “lines”, choose Stylize>Glowing Edges: 1:4:1 OR play with settings to suit your rendering.
• Invert (ctrl-alt-“i”), Desaturate (ctrl-shift-“u”)
• Copy the background layer again or add a new layer, naming the layer “white” and use the fill tool to make the layer all white (normal blend mode, 100% opacity)
• Turn off the background or rendered layer.
• In the “lines” layer (which should be on top of the “white” layer), add a layer mask.
• Making sure the mask is selected (not the image) paint lines in/out with black/white brush. Note: painting with black on a layer mask makes the mask less transparent so that you see less of the image you are “masking”. Painting with white makes the mask more transparent so that you see more of the image.
• Copy “white” layer, move up to second layer, above original rendering naming it “white2”.
• Turn “lines” layer to the blend mode>multiply near the opacity slider in the layer palette. The opacity at 100% is recommended.
• Create a layer mask on “white2” layer (normal blend mode, 100% opacity).
• Restore rendered color back in by painting on the layer mask (again, not the image): black paint brush--BIG brush first, then smaller, more and more brush strokes and smaller opacities.
• Adjust the opacity (normal blend mode) of the original background layer to taste.

2. OTHER FILTERS / LAYERS TO ENHANCE YOUR IMAGE / IDEAS

• Copy the background image and name the copy “underpainting”.
• Go to filter>artistic>underpainting to get a canvas texture and rough color areas of your image.
• Change the blend mode of the layer to darken or multiply (recommended opacity at 47%).
• Copy the background layer and name the copy “watercolor”.
• Go to filter>artistic>watercolor to get the inexact edges and fields of color similar to a watercolor painting.
• Change the blend mode of the layer to darken (or as always, mess around with the different blend modes to get the effect you need). The recommended opacity for darken is 59%.
• The colored pencil filter (filter>artistic>colored pencil), ocean ripple filter (filter>distort>ocean ripple), and motion blur (filter>blur>motion blur) were mentioned but not covered.

3. ACTIONS

• In the history palette in Photoshop, select the tab next to history called actions.
• Open the actions menu by clicking on the button in the top right-hand corner .
• Select "new set", name it and save it.
• Then while the new set is highlighted, click on the actions menu button again and select "new action".
• Name the new action and hit the record button at the bottom to capture the moves you make. Note: actions record everything you do, including undos and redos, unlike the history palette which will lose steps in the undo/redo process. Once you have a set of actions, you can edit them. Or while recording, you can stop the recording to leave out steps if you don’t want those steps replayed in the saved action.
• You can also download a set of actions. In the workshop we used Ryan Hughes’ action in the PS Demos>PS Layers Demo folder on classes.
• Important note: actions will record only larger steps. Ie. layer order, opacities, blend modes, applied filters, etc. It does NOT get some of the smaller scale steps like using the paintbrush.
• Once you’ve created and saved an action, you can replay the action on another image or in the file you started to see its effect.