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Thursday, September 6, 2012

Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop


Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to Design this Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop. This is an intermediate tutorial so some steps can be tricky, but why not have a try :)
Along the way, we will be practising how to produce the meteor effect, the impact effect, particle and fire effect, as well as some layer blending tips.
This effect is inspired by Mass Effect 3 in-game graphics, which is just really awesome :)
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Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)
planet impact scene flatten 500x300 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
OK Let’s get started!
To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:
Cloud brush (optional)

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1200px *720px with black background. Load the planet PSD file into Photoshop, drag all layers onto our document, resize it as shown below:
1 paste1 500x300 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Expand the “Cloud” folder, go to the “Cloud Shadow” layer, and reduce the layer opacity to around 30%:
1 decrease 500x375 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Use a soft eraser, erase the edge of the render layer so it blends into the background a bit:
1 erase1 500x151 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Use either the cloud filter, or the cloud brush you downloaded, add some cloud effect on the edge of the planet:
1 cloud 2 500x285 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
1 cloud 1 500x245 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop

Step 2

On top of the planet layers, let’s go and add the following the adjustment layers:
Black and white
2 bw1 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Layer mask on the black and white adjustment layer:
2 bw mask 500x289 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Colour Balance
2 color bal Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Levels
2 lv1 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Layer mask on the levels adjustment layer:
2 lv mask1 500x294 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Curves
2 curves1 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
and here is the effect so far:
2 effect1 500x289 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop

Step 3

Now let’s try and make this meteor effect. Create a new layer and grab a 30% hardness round brush, paint an orange dot as shown below:
3 paint Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Distort this dot twice, as shown below: (Ctrl + T, right-click to choose distort)
3 distort 500x570 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
3 dis 2 500x433 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Duplicate this layer, and apply the following Hue/Saturation  (Ctrl + U) settings to this duplicated layer:
3 hue Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
This will make the duplicate layer colour brighter than the original – Reduce the size of the duplicated layer slighting and move it to show the glowing part in the centre
3 resize Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Duplicate this layer again, apply the following Hue/Saturation settings:
3 hue white Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
This will turn the last layer to white – again we resize it and then merge all three layers together, compress it down as shown below:
3 compress 500x507 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Duplicate this merged layer a few more times to make the meteor trail path wider and longer, and here is the effect so far:
3 duplicate Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop

Step 4

We will now work on adding more effect for the impact. For this tutorial, I firstly use a soft white brush to paint some highlights on a new layer, use free transform tool to adjust the light shape if necessary:
4 highlight 500x316 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
We can then duplicate this meteor effect around the planet, as shown below:
Hint: add some smaller ones around the main (first) meteor for more effect, adjust the size of each one for more depth.
4 dup 500x222 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop

Step 5

We will now design the impact site – I decided to apply the fire texture to it – go and select a portion of the fire texture:
5 select Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Copy and paste the selection onto our document, place the new layer below the meteor layer and above the last adjustment layer for the planet. Refine the edge as shown below: (Ctrl + Alt + R)
5 refine 500x440 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Distort and warp this layer as shown below:
5 dist 500x284 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Change this layer blending mode to “Hard Light”, 70% opacity:
5 blend 500x350 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Duplicate this fire layer a few more times, change the layer blending mode to either “hard light” or “vivid light”, adjust the layer opacity accordingly. Try warping the fire texture as well to create a splashing effect:
5 more Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop

Step 6

We’re almost done! Finally we can add some particle around the area of impact with the fire texture – this time, we select some small pieces of the texture, as shown below:
6 sel Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Copy and paste the selection onto our document, then we can resize and distort it a bit to fit the angle of the planet, as shown below:
6 paste1 500x374 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
Duplicate this layer a few times, resize and attach them around the impact site:
6 paste 2 500x500 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
I also added this selective colour image adjustment setting to fine-tune the colour of the image a bit:
6 red Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
6 blue Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
and here is the final effect I have: (click to enlarge)
planet impact scene flatten 500x300 Design Dramatic Planet Impact Scene (Inspired by Mass Effect 3) in Photoshop
That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful! Till next time, have a great day!

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