Metal and rust texture tutorial

From FreeGameDevWiki

This is a tutorial on creating metal with rust in GIMP 2.4.

Contents 1 The tutorial 1.1 Cerating the metal 1.2 Creating the rust 1.2.1 Improving the rust 2 About this tutorial

The tutorial

Cerating the metal

• Create a new image

• Set foreground color to A6A6AE

• Fill the base layer with the foreground color (Edit/Fill, Ctrl + ,)

• Run the fog filter (Filters/Render/Clouds/Fog) using following settings:
  • Fog color: 91919c
  • Turbulence: ~5.5
  • Opacity: 100

This will create some dark patches on a new transparent layer.

• Repeat this filter a few times ( Filters/Repeat, Ctrl + F)

• Now play with the opacity of these fog layers until there is a nice balance between light and dark.

• Flatten the image

• To add some life, gently Dodge and burn the image ( Tools/Paint Tools/Dodge / Burn, Shift + D):
  • Use an exposure of ~10
  • Foreground should still be A6A6AE
  • Use a large fuzzy brush
  • About ½ of the canvas size is a good brush size

• Dodge the highlights of the dark areas
• Burn the midtones of the light areas

• Be gentle, use single clicks

• If using a circular brush watch out for "ring" artifacts

• Sometimes you will have to burn the highlights and dodge the midtones to keep the surface somewhat even

• You may want to play with your metal's contrast and saturation settings

Creating the rust

• Add fog (Filters/Render/Clouds/Fog) with following settings:
  • Color: cc813c
  • Turbulence: ~5

• Name the layer “Rust Body”

• Duplicate the layer to “Rust Blend”

• Gaussian blur "Rust Blend"
  • The amount of blur depends on the image dimensions
  • For a 512x512 image use 20px

• Colorize the "Rust Body" to a dark, not fully saturated red/brown

• Duplicate the layer "Rust Body" to "Rust Body Copy"

• Colorize "Rust Body Copy" to an almost black, even less saturated red/brown

• Set "Rust Body Copy's" layer mode to "dissolve"

• Reduce "Rust Body Copy's" opacity untill the fog turns nice and grainy, probably arround 50%

• Create a new empty/transparent layer ( Layer/New Layer, Shift + Ctrl + N) under "Rust Body Copy"

• Name the new layer "Rust Noise"

• Merge "Rust Body Copy" down into "Rust Noise"

Improving the rust

Our rust is looking all right, but it is kind of “all-over” and cloudy. To fix this we'll add one mask to the layer "Rust Body" and another to a duplicate of the "Rust Noise" layer.

• Duplicate the layer "Rust Body" to "Rust Body Copy 2"

• Add a layer filled with white below "Rust Body Copy 2"
• Merge "Rust Body Copy 2" down and name the layer "Threshold"

• Apply a threshold modification ( Colors/Threshold)

In the apply threshold dialog pull the right handle back until the shapes clean up a little

• Duplicate the layer "Rust Noise" to "Masked Noise"

• Right-click "Masked Noise" and select "Add Layer Mask", to add a Mask

• Also add a layer mask to "Rust Body"

• Go back to the "Threshold" layer and select everything ( Select/All, Ctrl + A)

• Copy the mask ( Edit/Copy, Ctrl + C)

• Select the "Rust Body" layer mask by left-clicking on the layer's name, clicking the mask (right/white) box

• Paste the threshold mask ( Edit/Paste, Ctrl + V)

• Paste the mask into the "Masked Noise" layer's mask

• Delete the "Threshold" layer

Now our rust body is more crisp and we have control over the amount of noise within the rust area and scattered beyond the rust area

• Mix the layer's opacities until the result looks good

• Here are some example settings:
  • Rust Noise opacity: 25%
  • Masked Noise opacity: 25%
  • Rust Body opacity: 75%
  • Rust Base opacity: 60%
  • Metal opacity: 100%

About this tutorial

This tutorial was started by bwschram in a FreeGameDev forum thread.