Galleries Fractal Gifts

Ultra Fractal Tutorial - The Making of "Lords of Arrakis"
Part 5. Creating the "nearby planet" layer.

    Pages in Part 5:
1. Preparation and assessment.
2. Create new layer.
3. Apply Clipping transformation.
4. Adjust location.
5. Rotate gradient.
6. Adjust opacity.

Layers Chart: Click to view.
Tutorial Map: Click to view.

Page 3. Apply Clipping transformation.

Step 5. Apply Clipping transformation
 
A. The image below is not a part of "Lords of Arrakis": it's a pictorial description of what I plan to do with the Clipping transformation.

 
The Clipping Shape will be an ellipse adjusted to be a circle. It will punch out the area shown in the light circle, so that the coloring will show through what in effect will be a circular porthole.

The area outside the circle will be made transparent by the Clipping transformation. But you can see, in this illustration, the colored areas waiting below the blocked-out area to show through if they should be panned to the porthole while we are searching for the right area of the colored section to be the nearby planet.

We will see the colored planetary shape through the porthole except for those areas of the underlying coloring which themselves are cut out. We will then Ctl-drag the layer straight up about 4 or 5 inches until we like the coloring of the planet (the "Screen-Relative" porthole will stay motionless throughout the dragging.)

When the Clipping transformation is first applied, before the underlying coloring is repositioned, the scene can be confusing, because all of the planet is black, matching the background, except for a yellow stripe. See the underlying coloring in the diagram to understand this.

 

B. In the Mapping tab, click on the Add icon.

 
This will cause the Select Transformation dialog box to appear.

 

C. In the Select Transformation dialog box, in the root of the library, not in any folder, select the "Standard.uxf" transformation file, and, within this file, the Clipping transformation.
Click on Open.

 
The image should now look like this:

 

D. In the Mapping tab, with the Clipping transformation highlighted, type in the following parameters:

 
The image should now look like this:

 
To understand this image, look at the illustration at the top of the page. The yellow strip is the yellow strip, surrounded by black in the "coloring" layer showing through the circular "porthole" of the Clipping circle. All the black is the Clipping transformation filling everything outside of the Clipping circle with opaque black fill. The next step will be to change the black opaque fill to transparency to allow the lower layers to show through everywhere but the Clipping circle.

 

Step 6. Change Clipping region into transparency mask
 
A. In the Mapping tab, with the Clipping transformation highlighted, click on the black swatch in the Solid Color parameter.

 
This will cause the Select Color dialog box to appear.

 

B. Drag the Opacity slider all the way to the left (0).
This will cause the right half of the Solid Color parameter to display a transparency (checkerboard) area, turning on solid color transparency masking. The transparent area indicates that the swatch color, black, where it occurs in the outside region, will be made transparent.
Click on OK.

 
In the Mapping tab, the right half of the Solid Color parameter should now display transparency (checkerboard), indicating that the black color of the solid fill of the Clipping figure is made transparent.

 
The image should now look like this:

 
To understand this image, look at the illustration at the top of the page. The yellow strip is the yellow strip, surrounded by black in the "coloring" layer showing through the circular "porthole" of the Clipping circle.

 

<< prev page page 3 next page >>

© 2005 Troy R. Bishop