Tutorial [TUT]Depth in Graphics - A Simple Technique

The Welsh Paddy

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Well, this is my first tutorial, and I doubt this would be anything that useful to the more experienced GFX'ers here, but hey. :monster:

Basically, this is gonna be a brief tutorial going through a very simple, yet effective technique that will add more depth to your graphics. There is some debate as to what 'depth' actually is when it comes to graphics, but what I think of when it comes to depth is pretty much just creating the illusion of distance in your piece. Making some things seem closer, and some things further away. There are many ways to do this, but the method I am showing you now is all about focus.

To better understand what I'm getting at, hold your hand up in front of you and look at it. Notice how everything behind your hand goes out of focus and blurry? Now, keeping your hand where it is, look at something at the other end of the room. This time your hand becomes blurry. That's down to your eyes focusing on certain objects. It's the same with what you see out the corners of your eyes. That's the sort of thing I'm going for here.

So we'll start by opening up a render.

Depth1_zps6736a5c9.png

In this instance, we are going to make the sword our point of focus. So, we'll duplicate the layer and then "hide the copy".

Depth2_zps03a9e0dd.png


Now, making sure the original layer is selected, we are going to use the Gaussian Blur filter. For this image, I set the radius to 1.5 but you may want to change that in your own work. It will end up looking kinda like this:

Depth3_zps9946609b.png

Un-hide the duplicate layer and get your eraser tool. Adjust the size and hardness to your own liking (For this sorta thing, I usually set the Hardness to about 50. I find that it blends better that way.) and then erase everything except for the sword.
And that's pretty much it! This is what the image turned out like:

Depth4_zps34330bd2.png


The image looks less two-dimensional, despite it being a two dimensional image. I hope this has helped someone. :monster:
 
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