Eleblend breathes new life into your texture collection through a process I call
"artificial aging". Really, it's an extension of what you've already seen in
the controlled blending tutorial. If you haven't
familiarized your self with that concept, you might want to do so before continuing.
|
The key to artificially aging a texture is having a bump map that matches the texture
you'd like to age. Worst case scenario is that you didn't get a matching bump map and
that you'll have to make one yourself. That's exactly what I did here. I started with
a cobblestone texture I found on the web.
Below it is a greyscale conversion I did on it. Unfortunately, Eleblend does not include
a greyscale conversion, so you'll have to fire up Photoshop or PaintShopPro.
Load the greyscale image into Eleblend as your Source Image. (File-Source)
We're going to add moss to the cracks of our cobblestone. This was literally a 15 second
image. Green background, black airbrush, medium opacity, scribble.
| 
|
Here's the "trick" to artificial aging: Use the original texture as the top
blending image. Use any "aging textures" such as rust, moss, or gunk as the bottom image and
use the original texture again to control how much moss, rust, or dirt you'd like in
your final image....and always stretch the histogram of the source image from within Eleblend.
Here's what we get if we use moss as the bottom image, and the cobblestone texture as the top image. This really almost
looks like a simple green layer. Look closely and you'll see the green is darker in the cracks between the stones.
Same as above, but we added another image of the cobblestone where the blue arrow points to control
how much moss is shown in our rendered output. This is where we see lots of detail. Notice how the pits in the stone
are filled with moss along with the cracks? Sure, maybe it's no the perfect moss texture since it's a little too
bright, but you get the idea.
This is slightly different. Once again, cobblestone on top, moss on the bottom but instead of using
cobblestone again, we used moss again. This really amplifies how much moss is present. See how in the
first example we had a washed out moss effect? By adding another moss texture, we make sure it's visible
throughout the image. This really changes the feel of the texture from a sandy Egyptian kind of stone to
more of a Mayan ruin deep in some godforsaken jungle.
What's the most important point? Use a top image as your original texture, a bottom of your aging surface and an additional original or aging
surface to control how much of each is present.
And experiment with using multiple variations of aging surfaces with multiple variations of your original texture.
Some ideas to get you started:
Use the same texture for top and bottom but darken the bottom texture by 25%
Use variations in textures to blend paint or wear on upper surfaces
Use multiple aging surfaces such as rust and deep brown/black for different depths
