Anybody know how I might create a hammered metal texture?

[Eidolon Aeon]

I'd like to create a hammered metal texture with the same look as the vase in this link:

http://www.housetohome.co.uk/products/type/accessories/vases/Hammered_metal_vase_from_Woolworths_25467.html?subslug=

Anybody have experience doing this?

[Poenald Palen]

A 3D CG software could make that. Um, there are possibly other ways using photoshop. I think even gimp might be able to make this, or possibly filters in inkscape. I mean, you can get down to painting by hand or paintstakingly constructing this form tiny bits (of course using zoom) in vectors with gradients (/me almost passes out of the thought of trying to do that) uh....I mean, heck you could paint it in oil paints and then photo it and use that lol.

I like to use blender, it works well enough and I can give you a hint or two on how to make that.

 

First things first. What is the material here? Metal, reflective, shiny, bumpy/dimpled and there is a tone or color to it.

Um, first thing you might want to do is check the blender materials library lol.

Basically, make a plane or curve froma  plane and add or make a material. to add from the library you need to go to file > apend from file and then search for the .blend of the material. You click on it and then look for the materials folder. Select the material and add it. Now, just switch the curved planes material to that one. Next, lighting and camera.

To set the lights...um, I would experiment BUT try 2 or three, drop the power on them and make one higher than another OR move the others further away. The idea is to get light hitting it from different angles to drop shadows. Then the camera...um, well, Ctrl+alt+0 will move the render camera to the view you are presently working with. numbers 7,1,3 will give you different view of the plane directly on. 5 togles orthogonal view BUT for the camera you need to set this. I asume you will need to learn blender...um, that a bit much to explain real quick lol. Then render, tweak, render tweak etc. till it looks like what you want. I mean, you can even make the object in blender using domino's scripts and then bake the texture for it! For specular objects, remember to set a node thingy up and then open a new panel/view thingy and switch to nodes and render twice with the diff turned on and off to get the spec and diff to layer together in your fave 2d photo editor!

How to make the material? Ok, just a few ideas.

Bumpy = Normal Mapping and use some procedural texture stuff in blender.

Shiny/reflection = Check out the mirror setting BUT adjust the back ground and maybe add some planes to similuate what a photo studio would end up with in the reflection. If it is out doors though, then you might want to load a view of the place. Heck, even in door you could maybe stand in the area where the vase/object would be and take a pic of your SL surroundings and use it!

The color is sort of tricky BUT simple to adjust and set. I can't name the color of that as reflective objects also will be colored by the reflected surroundings! So you might also want to play with hues in the backgrounds OR even maybe the lights...though I doubt and obviously sutdio render would use much more than neutral lights. Adding large panels might help to mimic what a photo studio would have in reflections, they are called Soft Boxes. But they also use tents, so maybe even huger panels might mimic that.

I really have to get on with a search I was doing lol. But, maybe I will see if I can get another av to do a tutorial for this...no promises though. I have to continue the hunt right now lol. Bye, for now.

[Eidolon Aeon]

I don't have time atm to do much but skim your answer, Poenald, but thank you for the details.  I'll actually be making jewelry pieces with the texture.  I don't know what the pieces will look like, yet, I just know I want to do something with a hammered metal texture.

[Poenald Palen]

Well, maybe a photoshop filter might help. You can also maybe find photo source. Even make your own by getting a peice of copper or similarly soft metal and boring or finding a pean hammer. You use the round faced (pean) part to simply hammer it over and over until you get that lool. A metal polisher or possibly a hand rag and some polishing compound might do the trick. Then, to get the right color, you take a photo and color adjust it in gimp or photoshop. Make is seamless and viola, you have a real life keychain candidate and a texture as well! lol.

Using a light tent and a few lights might work if you have a digital camera available or don't mind a tripod and some old film camera. A light tent can be made with some fabric and there are a few tutorials on the net to show you how to use some sheer fabric and a cardboard box to do this. So, making your own photo source is not totally out of the picture if you are worried of costs. But, how to light it to get a good seamless texure? Wow, that is trial and error I suppose lol.

Sorry I can't be of any help, this was a challenging thing to think about it and I did get an interesting enough vase out of the tests to see if I could figure it out in blender lol.

[Madeliefste Oh]

You could use Filter Forge for this... like: http://www.filterforge.com/filters/8857-v6.html

[Chosen Few]

Here's a really simple overview of one method of creating that kind of hammer-patterned look.  This is assuming you've already created your base metal texture.

1.  Duplicate the base metal layer.  Make sure the duplicate is above the original in the layer stack.

2.  Give the duplicate layer a mask, and make the mask black with white polka dots.  There are any number of filters you could apply to generate the polka dots, or you could just use a white paint brush, and click-click-click away.

3.    Apply bevel effect to the duplicate layer.  Set the structure direction to down instead of up, and it will look like the polka dot areas are recessed into the metal.

[Bree Giffen]

I tried making one in Photoshop and this is what I came up with. I think if you play around with your dot pattern you can make a better dimple pattern.

Here's how I made it:

1. Start with small 100x100 canvas. Add small dots/spots with a brush. Avoid drawing dots at the edges.

2. Basically we are trying to make a seamless polka dot background. Under Filter->Other->Offset you can offset the image by 50 pixels which basically pushes the image halfway in whatever offset direction you choose.Here I chose offset up/down.

3. Draw more dots in the area in the space between.

4. Actually I should've just applied a 50 offset on both up/down and left/right at the same time... But for me, the next step is to just offset by 50 left/right and then fill in the more dots in the empty space. You should have something like this,  a seamless image which can be tiled to make a seamless background.

5. Select the entire 100x100 area and choose Edit->Define Pattern. Then make a canvas as large as you want. I made a 500x500 canvas. Use your paintbucket and set it to pattern fill and choose the polka dot pattern that you just defined. Fill that area!

6. I really didn't plan for that pattern to show up. Now run Filter->Stylize->Emboss.

7. Select all and choose copy. You are copying the embossed dot pattern as seen above. But don't paste it anywhere yet!

8. Create a new layer and fill it solid white.

9. Here's the tricky part. while you are on that solid white layer go to the 'Quick Mask Mode'. I just press Q or I press the little quick mask mode button at the bottom of my toolbar (looks like a rectangle with a circle inside).

10. While in quick mask mode, choose Edit->Paste, or press ctrl-V, to paste your embossed dot pattern in the quick mask. It should look like the image in step 6 but it will be pink and white. I really couldn't get an image of this. Sorry.

11. Exit the quick mask mode by pressing Q again or click on the little button at the bottom of the toolbar. You will see a lot of 'marching ants', those moving dashed lines whenever you cut and paste stuff. Press ctrl-H to hide those if you want.

12. Swith to the paintbush again and choose a large brush size. As you paint over the canvas you shoudl see that the Quick Mask is masking the brush and the dimple pattern is showing. The more brush strokes you make the pattern changes. I tried black brush strokes first, then I tried white, and then I tried different colors!

13. And that's basically it! I was using Photoshop CS3.