Bevel Emboss in FF?

So, does anyone know how to get an effect similar to inner glow (aka bevel) in photoshop? Say, take an arbitrary shape and make it look 'chiseled'? I don't know how to do such a thing in a FF, but there must be some way.

So, say I have this:

Then you can get this sort of thing. (ew...)

You could probably get something similar with a linear blur and threshold. That failing possibly 4 offset linear motion blurs blended with darken and then threshold. Something like that comes to mind first.

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ThreeDee wrote: You could probably get something similar with a linear blur and threshold. That failing possibly 4 offset linear motion blurs blended with darken and then threshold. Something like that comes to mind first.

So, you
1) do linear blur Horizontally, and then offset it some distance -x and +x horizontally
2) do linear blur vertically, and then offset it some distance -y and +y vertically
3) combine the 4 channels with difference, in a stack (X together and Y together, then the resultant X and Y)?

Is that what you had in mind?

Its an inner distance transform - unfortunately thats not possible in FF. The only way to get near that look is by combining differently angled motion blurs. I had a filter lying which I modified a little for this. See the attachment. The problem with this method is that high frequency areas quickly get lost as you increase the radii to get smooth gradients at the low frequency areas.

Faux Distance Transform.ffxml

I just played a little with the hexagonal style bevel thing.. you can tweak out some pretty strange looks (using both inner and outer distances), see pic below.

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ThreeDee wrote: Like such:

Ahh.. that keeps more of the detail.. nice.

That's some really cool stuff. What's the legality as far as buying some clip art, then doing this to it, is it resellable then (as royalty free stock stuff), or not since the underlying design isn't your own property and is only licensed to you to use to create end products typically ? I am from the audio world, where you cannot legally so much as sample one hi hat hit, one clap, one note, or anything at all from an existing recording. I tend to assume graphics are the same or similar, but thought I'd ask since most likely you all know more about it than I do.

jffe

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Sphinx. wrote: I just played a little with the hexagonal style bevel thing

Sphinx, that is an excellent effect.....what is the "hexagonal style bevel" thing???

Not a bevel emboss, but from one of my filters that uses a similar multi-directional motion blur method.....

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Sign Guy wrote: Pretty much all clipart licensing prohibits the creation of derivative works.

That is to say, each collection of clip art has a set of rules attached to it. If you buy a dover book, there is some explanation in the front as to what you can and cannot do with it.

However, if you got a collection of public domain stuff, then sure, you can do what-ever you will with it. If making bevel effects is what floats your boat, then that's OK.

btw: I strongly recommend the book: Content Rights for Creative Professionals, by Lutzker.

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StevieJ wrote: what is the "hexagonal style bevel" thing???

its derived from this one: http://www.filterforge.com/filters/4856.html

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Sphinx. wrote: its derived from this one: http://www.filterforge.com/filters/4856.html

Nice.....I can't believe that I missed this one..... .....

Test 2 - as you can see it preserves more of the fine details, and is pretty crisp.

Test4 - using the tone curve some more. Again, the details are essentially preserved - although there are some funky things going on at the 3-way corners.

Ah, but I like the distracting HDRI artifacts. You could use a less complicated HDRI background. In any case, here is the file.

Hey ThreeDee, would you mind if I submitted this as a snippet? It seems useful.

Z_Emboss003.ffxml

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ThreeDee wrote: Feel free. Although IMO all lettering-style filters should be based on the current selection, not the image, so that you can add the lettering and the effects to an image. Or at least have that as an option (checkbox+switch between image and selection).

Yeah, that's a good point. I guess I'm thinking this thing is more of a proof of concept snippet than a final filter.

The snippet (now submitted to library) seems to do pretty well (see image below). I think it comes from keeping the blur radius and the offset fairly low. I wish you could do non-integer values for the pixel radius... it seems like on the test patterns I'm using so far, anything above a radius of 5 or a distance offset of 20 just flattens out.

I notice that the snippet tends to not do curves as well as the pshop version... they seem to get sort of squared off - an artifact of offsetting it. (If you figure out a better way, pls post it!)

The snippet just offsets them all the same distance. I also got some interesting effects by offsetting the blurred parts different distances... some very funky asymmetrical shapes come out of it.

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StevieJ wrote: I think the answer lies in the manipulation/mapping of profile gradients.....

Corvus, I think that I have it......just using curve-manipulated profile gradients without any blurs at all.....which makes for a very crisp and clean effect with the surface result like your PS sample.....and it's extremely fast!!! I ended up going off in all kinds of other directions with it like glass, chrome, HDRI mirrors, etc (last few pages in StevieJ's Lab).....but I'll get back to this particular application soon and post it up.....

Until I can get around to cleaning up the construction madness in them.....I'll describe how to do it......

1) Create the pattern like you already have it.....flat white interior and black exterior.....

2) Create the center lines by branching right after your original pattern (#1).....by isolating the edge lines of your pattern (I'm assuming that you know how to do this with offsets, etc) and then use math curve op ('A-B' I believe)....then blend it back with your pattern.....

3) Depending on the surface contour that you want, experiment with plugging a single or multiple connectors into the the control nodes of either circular arc, bias, gain, or .5 frequency sine curves.....so that you get a contoured/curved shape.....nothing linear. This will allow the profile gradient work and subsequently whatever texture to map to it in the surface result......

4) If you don't want a smooth/shiny texture, do the same thing with linear or flat noise plugged into one of those same curve components.....then curve blend with the first branch to create the texture map on your gradient.....

5) After the curve blend, plug into the profle nodes of four profile gradients set at 0, 90, 180, and 270. You can also sinc Uber's "Rotate Gradient" snippets for complete degree control of lighting if you want. You can also just use one, two, or three profile gradiends for different lighting effects.....

6) If more than one profile gradient is used, blend together either using color 1 and color 2 profile gradint inputs (with the profiles set on linear or smooth).....or with blend components. Using different modes of the blend components will give you a wide variety of different things that you might like.....

7) For the sake of simplicity, take a look at how ThreeDee handles the gradient profile "after" the motion blur in his "Lathe" filter.....and duplicate/copy that segment in. You can use levels and/or de-contrasting to fine tune it.....

plug into both surface and height with what you have......making the necessary modifications to the surface color, tone, etc to the way you want it. As you know, you can also bring in noise for additional surface texture at the end.....but I think establishing the texture height of it at the beginning maps and looks much nicer......

9) Max out Reflectivity and Metallic controls......and minimize Reflection Blur.....

I think that's basically how I have it without leaving anything crucial out..... I think you will get it by following what I described here and experimenting around......probably end up with other neat new things that I didn't think of.....

Hows that.....no blurs, highpass, or refraction.....the evil "sludge" components.....

LOL....

Yeah, after reading it again, I can see that it might be a tad hard to follow.....

I'll get back to this soon and either post something up and/or get one of those screen capture programs to put something up.....

I think the most interesting "trick" in all this is transferring, manipulation, and map prep of images through curve control inputs......combined with curve ops, it's like the "undiscovered country" of FF......at least it is to me.....

Jeese.....I feel pretty stupid......in all my years of computer use, I never knew that was there.....

if you want video capture on windows, use the freebie 'camstudio': http://camstudio.org/ . great little program. great for making tutorials.

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So, what else should I know about computers???

control+alt+delete + control+alt+delete no longer works. and, windows sucks.

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CorvusCroax wrote: Could you just upload a filter, or screenshot?

I will.....but I need to take care of a few other things first. I finally "stumbled" upon it in the middle of alot of component carnage, then just left it.....so I want to refine it a little more and clean it up before posting it up. I promise that I will share.....especially since you (thankfully) got me into this.....

PS..... Do you know how to create the center lines in the patterns???