Photobie Forum

odidio · Joined: 01 Mar 2006 Posts: 89 Location: N.S. Canada

In this tutorial we'll be making a brush for snow flakes and then applying it to an animation.

There are some other ways to do the same thing but this is pretty easy. You can also experiment with the different settings to get what you like.

- Start off with a new file, 80x80 and on a white background.

- Make sure the primary color is black.

- Select the 'draw with color pen' tool and 'solid pen without dot' from the
menu on the right.

- Turn off the 'auto layer generation' on the layer manager.

- Set the pen size to 3 or 4 and start clicking out random dots on your
new image.( you can also change the size of the pen as you go for a
little better effect )

- I noticed a small problem when saving the brush so to solve this, go to
the top menu 'Selection' and 'select whole image region'. Then go
to 'Edit' and 'Copy'. Now go to 'Edit' and 'Paste as new image'.

- You will now want to save this new one, go to the top menu - 'File' and
'Save', name it and save it as a jpg in your Photobie brushes folder.
( You can now close this image. )

- Go up to 'File', 'Open', 'Image' and find the picture you want to add the
snow animation to.

- On the right menu click on the 'shape brush' tool. Up above that click
on the 'Refresh brush list' button. Find the snow brush you created and
select it.

- Turn the 'Auto layer generation' back on and go to the top for your
brush settings. There are lots of combinations, for mine I set the
opacity to full, no blur, no speed and the size almost full. I also
selected random flip, you should pick either or both random flip and
random rotate to get a good effect.

- Set the primary color to white.

- Do a test run, click and drag your cursor around your picture creating
your snowflakes and 1 new layer. If you don't like it, delete the layer
and adjust your settings.

- Now to create the next set of frames. Select the 'background' layer on
the layer manager and then go to 'Clone' then 'Clone current whole
layer'.

- With your brush still selected, click and drag out a new layer of snow
flakes. You should now have 4 layers, background, Brush, Imaging and
Brush again.

- Repeat the process a couple more times, make sure to clone
the background first and then apply a layer of snowflakes.

- Now you have to merge the layers. Put check marks in the
'Background' layer and the first 'Brush' layer, then go to the 'Merge'
tool and 'Merge remove'. Now do this for the rest of the layers
being sure only to merge one of each image together ( 1 background
cloned layer with one snowflake brush layer.

- Now to animate your creation. Go to the top menu, 'GIF Animation' and
'Animation control panel'. Put a check mark in 'repeat' and 'uniform
delay as the first frame'. Next click on 'frame 1' then set the 'delay'
time. Click 'refresh' and then 'start' to view your animation. If you find
it too slow or too fast click the first frame, adjust the time and hit
refresh/start again. When you are happy with it click on 'Save' and
save your gif.

Thats it !! Once you have the basics you can add boarders, text and other things all the same way.

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odidio · Joined: 01 Mar 2006 Posts: 89 Location: N.S. Canada

I made a brush for rain if anyone wants it, or it's not too hard to make one. It works the same as the snow tutorial but don't select the random rotate in the brush controls, try to keep the rain falling in the same direction.

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