Marble room tutorial page 3

PAGE 3

We need pillars that will go almost the full height of our image, so it is easier to make one in a separate, larger, image, as we did for the floor. So open a new image, 300x500, transparent.
Use the selection tool set at rectangle with feather 0 and antialias unchecked in the tool options palette. Double click on the selection tool so that you can specify the size of your selection precisely. Set the values as shown below.
This will give you a tall thin selection a little way in from the left of your new image. With your marble texture as the background style, use the fill tool and right click in this selection to fill it with the marble. Keep the pillar selected, and use Selections>Float.
Now use Effects>3d effects>Cutout, and use the values shown here.
There is some darker shadow at the very bottom of our pillar that we need to get rid of. (That at the top will disappear out of the image and not be seen, but the foot of the pillar will be visible). So release the selection, select a small rectangular selection that takes in the shadow at the bottom and then hit delete.
Now use Edit>Copy. Make your room the current image, make the top layer (steps 2) the current layer, and use Edit>Paste>as new layer. Rename the layer Pillar 1.
Use the mover tool to place the pillar to the left of your room and push it up till the bottom is about half a centimetre from the bottom of your image.
The bottom of the pillar has a very harsh line. Use the retouch tool with these tool option palette settings.
(This tutorial was done with PSP 7.02. In earlier versions the tool type - soften here - is on a different tab in the palette, rather than on the tab with the settings.)
Gently apply the tool to the very bottom of the pillar, to soften that harsh line where it joins the floor.
Now all we need to do to add a second pillar is use Edit>Copy followed by Edit>Paste>As new layer, and move the pillar over to the right side of the image. Rename its layer Pillar 2. And that gives you your finished room.

The elements we have made here are simply building blocks. By changing the marble, rearranging things, using different sizes, you can get a completely different room. The various parameters I have used in the tutorial are just sizes which fit the size of image I was making here. If you make a bigger image you will want to vary all of them to suit the proportions of your room, but you know now how to do that.
This is a different room I made to show you the sort of thing you can do. My steps were made with ellipse selections with bits cut off them at the top, and their risers are copies of the steps, darkened and brought down below the treads. The girl is a Hemera Photo Object, and the peacock (it is the same one copied and mirrored) was made in Poser with Anton Kisiel's peacock model. I think marble rooms lend themselves very well to reflecting in water, so I used the Almathera puddle filter to finish this image.

© Carol Brooksbank 2001
This tutorial may not be copied to any other website nor distributed in any way. It may be downloaded for personal use only. Links to my tutorials at http://www.caroluk.co.uk/tutindex/ are welcome.

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