für das tutorial braucht ihr 3dmax und photoshop. ich habe das tutorial auf englisch gelassen, weil ich erstens keine lust und zeit hat es zu übersetzen und zweites könnt ihr somit eure englishkenntnisse verbessern. wer kein photoshop hat, kann nüzliche tricks ab step 3 sich aneignen. [labtech]

Septic's exclusive trendwhore tutorial *yeah!*

It might be the easiest way to get into computer ARTS. My opinion to it is: It actually sucks because everybody does the same stuff over and over again. I think if everybody would concentrate on bringing their own style to life, nobody would complain about trendwhoreism :> This tutorial will no be able to show you guys your own style, but it can explain some main techniques and the tools you use for it!

I wish you a successful learning! And visit my website @ www.reali-t.net 8)

Well first we will start on making a render in 3dstudioMAX. Who does not have that software can download a free (but smaller) version called gMAX at www.discreet.com . In this tutorial i am still using 3dsmax 4.0, some of you guys might already have version 6.0, but there are no big differences. You may also excuse me using german software versions ;)

There are two ways of making an abstract in 3dsmax. Well, actually there are more, but the following are the main ones (and the easiest).

3DSTUDIOMAX

1.) Distort it!

First create a geosphere and scale it to the size you want.

Then move to the drop down menu in the upper corner called "modificators". Then choose these options: "rauschen"

You can play around with the options displayed on the right side, but ill show you some parameters that you can copy ;)

So that abstract object is done now with the distortion technique (many people may want to kill me for this). You may also play around with other modificators!

Now you need a good material. Press "M" to open the material editor. Now just to show you some basics, you can copy these parameters. If you know later what all those option are there for, try to make you own material!

Then just drag your material on your abstract object.
If all that is too bright for your purposes, or it takes too long to render, just skip the part with the raytrace. In this case I did that. You can also choose a mesh smooth modifier in the modifier list to smoothen you object if you dont like it hard 8)

Now you just have to render! This is the way how to do it:

Well no its time for me to show you the second way of creating an absract in 3dsmax. It is called "2 rail shapes". I will not explain much about it, but ill show you some parameters.

2.) 2 railed shapes!

As before: assign a material on your object and render the whole stuff!

PHOTOSHOP

Well, this was the 3dstudiomax part. Now I will continue showing you how to handle the biggest part: The refining in Photoshop (i'm using version 7.0 in german).

First of all, you got to open your render (I hope I will not have to explain to you how to do that). For the tutorial I'm using an old render of mine, its quite tatty but it's ok if your not intending to create a masterpiece (2 rail shape technique, falloff map on opacy slot...).

Step one: Make a nice background. Its enough to make a gradient. If you rendered your object in the tga format, you just have to apply the gradient on the layer under your render.

It might look like this on your computer now:

Now merge the two layers by marking them and pressing ctrl+m. Then duplicate the merged layer and apply a gaussian blur on it (filters: blur: gaussian blur). Now play around with some blend modes. Now you should add a light at the center of your picture (there were the render ends!) (Renderingfilters: Then this light thingy in german it's "Blendenflecke"). Now duplicate, and layer-mode the layer again. Now play around a bit with the distortion filters to distort your render a bit and overlay it to the original render!
Mine looks like this now:

Now you can also add a radial blur to a duplicated layer and blend-mode it again.

Now comes the tricky part. Add some highlights like stars or tentacles.

Making stars:
I always make my stars with the brush tool.
You must have selected the brush tool on your control panel to modify your brushes at first.

Making tentacles:
To make tentacles use these options:

You can also add clouds by creating a cloud-brush or just using the cloud filter (renderingfilters). Or add some trendy 2d stuff and give the whole thing a title. But I won't explain this to you now.

Of course there are many more ways of making abstract art, but I wouldnt like to tell you all of them at once ;) as these explained techniques are also the easiest ones for beginners. I might come up with some more tutorials sometime :>

I can only say:

GOOD LUCK! AND FIND YOUR OWN STYLE!

tutorial by septic / http://septic.deviantart.com / www.reali-t.net / #septic @ quakenet