This tutorial will require some photoshop knowledge. I suggest you view our other tutorials if you cant find or figure out anything in here. As always, im glad to help out VDCORE members, so if you're registered, please feel free to IM me At AsyranChimp or just post in this thread.

Alright, so you've got a bitchin render you made from our Abstract Cinema 4d Tutorial or one you downloaded from our new Resources Section and now you're going to start brushing it and turning it into a wall paper. But the first thing you need to know about wall papers is placement. Everything needs to be placed in a way that it flows together. If you have a great render, beautiful tech, but flat, sloppy, brushing that looks as flimsy as paper, people wont notice the good parts about it. This is why you need to learn placement. In the first part of this tutorial, im going to talk to you about tech, and 2d assortments that you can add to your wallpaper to really make it shine.

So push on, and learn the ways.

Step 1:

The first thing you need to do, before ANYTHING else, is place the render in a place where you want it. It can be either on the left, creeping into the scene, in the direct middle, boldly shining, or on the far right, just peeking in. Keep in mind that the renders going to be a big part of the wallpaper, and if you dont place it in a spot that compliments it, you wont get good results. I suggest you rotate the render, duplicate and shrink and tweek it around, and just play with your render until you get something that you want to keep. Once this is done, its off to the next step.

Step 2A:

Now we're going to add some tech. Press D, to reset your colors. Black is our median for today. This is the bulk of the tutorial, so pay attention. The first thing we want to do is map out the area we're going to apply the 2d tech too. I usually apply it after the brushing so i can gauge and make them compliment each other, and i dont have to worry about limiting my brushing to save tech. Brushing comes over tech. If you dont know how to brush an abstract render, go view any of Tweaks Tutorials in our Tutorial Section.

Step 2B:

The tech. Right. Make the first background layer white, and then click new layer. Ok so that you've got a spot for it, now grab your Rectangular Marquee Tool (Image) and cut out a straight portion like so:




Make sure its not too wide but not too skinny. This is going to be your grounds for the tech.

Now again, take the same tool, and cut out random thin slices from it, so you have what looks like racing stripes down your page. You dont want all the stripes to be the same size, so be sure too be a bit random about it. Fill it with black.




Step 3A:

Make a New layer. Now, grab the SAME Tool (notice a trend) and make a selection over the stripes you now have; just a bulky, regular selection thats NOT bigger than the outside stripes (Dont make it cover them completely). Fill this with black. Now grab your pen tool (image of pen) or polygonal lasso tool (image of poly) and slice out a selection with a random... technological feel. Use the below image as a guide, as its hard to really convey what you need too doo. Make diagonal cuts, straight cuts, just make a nice big bulky tech-y looking slice, as shown below.



Step 3B:
The stripes below look kind of stupid huh? Well lets fix that and make them have a sense of depth by lowering the opacity on them until they are an entirely different tone than the black.




Step 4:

Great! Now we have the basis laid out. Heres the fun part. Remember the Rectangular Marquee tool? Grab it, and select just a side of the piece you just cut out, and move it too the right or left of the bigger half, so that theres a small white gap between them. Its also good if you copy and paste this to a new layer and play with the opacity, to add a more random look too it.



Do this same step in a different place, but grab your polygonal lasso tool and tweak the part you just moved a bit so it looks a bit different.



Step 5:

Remember that original layer, just above the stripes? The cut out? Well, duplicate this layer, and press control + T. Now hold shift and drag until its sideways. Move it so its just going off the page, but crossing over the bottom of your tech so far. You can tweak this as well too your liking, just be sure that you play with opacity if you do tweak to make it look like it has more depth. What i did was i held control and clicked the layer we duplicated, to make a selection. Then, on our new layer after our tech is in place, i did select < expand < 2 pixels, and pressed delete.



Step 6:

Now, you're going to go through the previous steps, and repeat however many you want, however you want. I dont suggest doing step 5 too much or it'll look overused, but play with everything you've learned so far.


Step 7:

Again, as always, though i dont need to say it, make a new layer. Now grab your circular marquee tool, and hold shift and make a rather large selection. Fill it with black, and go to select < modify < contract, and put in 1 pixel. Now press control + T and hold shift, grab the corner, and shrink the circle down. Make sure you place it in a place that compliments your tech so far. Now duplicate this layer, play with the size, and place it again someplace else. Lower the opacity as needed to make it look better. Dont do this TOO much.



Step 8:

Now we get creative. Take your polygonal lasso tool or pen tool, and make a random techy selection, and fill it with black. lower the opacity low enough so its easy to tell its there but it doesnt overpower the original layer. Opacity in tech is huge, if you're having trouble seeing your tech you've done so far, then the opacity on the original layers are too high. Random is good, and do this a few times, making random tech styled selections and making it just look like random tech. If your original tech is black, as it is for my demonstration, just fill your selections with a lighter hue instead of using opacity.


Step 9:

Now we add some text. Grab your text tool, and select a font that fits. I use impact a lot and it comes with photoshop, so if you dont have a font right now, use this one. Type in whatever you want. For mine, i typed in Technical, as it fits with my theme, but you can even type the name of your piece. Press control + T hold shift and turn the tech so that it fits a part of the tech so far. You want it to fit IN with the piece, not be just beside it. I usually make my text bigger than it needs because sometimes you loose quality in your text as you move it. If this happens, and you've made it bigger than you need, you can always scale it down to fit, and it'll fix this problem.





Step 10:

Alright, now we grab our render, duplicate the layer, scale it down REAL small, and do image < adjustments < brightness // contrast and move all the bars to the far left. This will give you a black silohette of the render, and you can place it somewhere and it gives a nice techy feeling to it.


Step 11:

STOP! TURN AROUND! Go back and try these steps as much as you want to until you feel you have something you like.


Final Check:

Now you need to go back, and make sure you utalized everything, and try and make sure you did everything you want too and it looks good. It NEEDS to compliment everything. Opacitys lowered, steps repeated, everything should look good and dandy.


Heres what i made specifically for this tutorial. As most of you know, my wrist doesnt allow any brush work for now, so i just did some tech for you guys.



Much love, peace, and tranquility,

Jay, Akule, Whatever you want to call me.