Concave radial fills

[bongoman]

Hi,

Can anyone suggest how to create a concave effect gradient fill for a circle? If I draw a circle, then fill it with a standard radial gradient, it obviously gives the effect of producing a convex sphere. How can I edit a fill to make it look like I'm looking into a concave object, and not a convex one?

Thanks

[McLenin]

Its pretty much observational art.... the deepest part will be in shadow and the outter, higher part will be lighter..... darker in the middle, lighter on the outside.... and usually its a bit off center.... look at some other buttons and crap like that to get a better idea

[bongoman]

Thanks, I've tried doing that but it never looks that convincing... must just play around with the fills more I suppose...

[mave_the_rave]

Hi,
Can't say I've used it myself. Only just discovered
it was there, Have you used the Fill transform tool.
You can distort gradient fills.

[bongoman]

I've played around a bit with the fill distortion tool, and the results ain't bad: I've now got an oval that looks passibly like the inside of a spoon, so long as you screw your eyes up

thnx all

[mave_the_rave]

Hi again..

Ideas spring to mind. (untested).

You may be able to create alpha sections on top
of your shape on a seperate layer. to create shadows
to create the effect you are after.

Seems it will take some patience and some poke and hope.

Good Luck

[Sualdam]

And remember that you'll have more luck if you use different gradient fills on different shapes that go to make up the spoon.

The oval is the inside of the bowl, but a half-moon shape for the outside with a darker gradient will make a big difference.

[McLenin]

for a convincing spoon, or spoon like shape its pretty difficult..for something that is mildly convincing it takes more than just a concave fill... Being a spoon afficiando and all i can tell you that the light is refracted and warped within a spoon....unless its wood, and then you just get smacked with it and dont really care about the highlights and imperfections. god bless art school for providing you and me with this knowledge.

[Sualdam]

A couple of shapes and you can get a pretty convincing concavity:


[Edited by Sualdam on 07-14-2002 at 08:49 AM]

[bongoman]

Sualdam, that is a pretty top spoon, much better than my humble effort. Don't mind if I borrow it? Makes mine look a bit wooden...

Next is a kettle... actually I've traced one of them and it looks ok!

Thanks all, cutlery no longer holds the fear it used to for me.

[Sualdam]

Feel free...


[Edited by Sualdam on 07-14-2002 at 08:50 AM]

[bongoman]

heh - nice one... but can you get a grain effect? Oak, preferably...

[Sualdam]

Could be...


[Edited by Sualdam on 07-14-2002 at 08:50 AM]

[bongoman]

That looks excellent! Really convincing. How did you manage it? Or is that a trade secret?

[Sualdam]

Nope.

The spoon bowl was made by drawing an oval shape, duplicating it, and splitting the copy in half.

The outside/underpart of the bowl is the half-oval and the open top/cup part is the full oval. The full oval goes over the half oval and the spoon bowl now exists.

For the silver spoon, I applied a black/grey radial gradient (for curved effect). I applied it to the whole oval, then rotated and squashed the fill to get the right shade separation.

I applied the same fill to the half oval, but rotated it through 180 degrees. That gives the finished effect.

For the wooden one I used a natural texture fill from an external art package and imported it as a bitmap.

I applied this bitmap fill to the oval and half-oval.

At this stage, the image is very flat because there is no shading. So I duplicated the half oval and pasted it in place in a new layer, then applied a linear dark brown/light brown fill to this copy. I rotated the fill and squashed it until the separation looked right, then I made the dark brown 80% alpha and the light brown 10%.

The wood underneath now shows through with a shadow over it.

I repeated that for the whole oval and rotated the fill on the copy by 180 degrees.

And that was it.

Oh. I did the same with a rectangle filled with the wood bitmap to make the handle.

[bongoman]

Thank you, that's really useful. I'll incorporate it into my movie.

Cheers for spending the time, mate.