First there were Layerd D-Maps. Then I got to playing with gradients.
When I understood gradients, my productivity exploded. While gradients
are good, they are still linear, so to speak. Even if you fiddle with
the mid-points in the grad, they are still linear. Because of this, I
felt like something was still missing. I was pulling some pretty humerous
things to get what I wanted. Even with all of the tricks that I had learned,
I still had one last wall to break through.
One day it came. It was definitely one of my bigger epiphanies. It hit
me real hard after I had read Curves
by Steve. At last I had the final piece to a massive puzzle. I could now
sculpt with complete control and intent.
What is about to follow is the foundation for some of my favorite, "advanced"
D-Map making tricks.
I will be going quite a bit faster than usual. Hopefully I have laid
down enough of a foundation for you to understand the little, explicit
things that I'm leaving out.
Curve It Skew
We've got PSD files for D-Maps! Woo! So far it has just been a little
taste of what can be done with extra Layers tossed into the D-Map. Now
it's time to get a little beefy.
Curves, when applied to a gradient, is very cool. Let's take a romp with
skewing.
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