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Last time, we converted our 3D rendering into vectors. We left off with a Photoshop file which we’re going to finish today with textures and shading.

First things first, I made a slight mistake in the last tutorial that I need to correct. Luckily, there’s a quick fix.

In the previous version of the graphic, I colored in the vectors with shading. This certainly makes the image more interesting, but shading so early not a good idea, as we can do it much better with Photoshop.

So, if you’re following along, go ahead and make all of your fills a neutral version of their base color. In my case, it’s mostly brown with a little light gray for the blade. When that’s done, export the file again and you’re ready to go for today’s tutorial.

Onto the Shading

I won’t be able to take you through all of the steps I used to create this image, as it’s FAR too much to document. What I am going to show you are some basic techniques for finishing off a drawing.

Before you do anything, add a white background layer. You’ll delete it later, but it’ll make it easier to work—especially with the shadows.

Texture

Not everything has texture, it’s true. But if you’re tired of seeing so many graphics that look like they’re made out of plastic or metal (as we are), it’s something to look into.

1. You can find textures all over the web. Try to look for images that have a decent amount of detail and a good size.
   
2. Open up the texture. Desaturate the image and bump up the levels/contrast to bring out the relief in the details.
3. Select a layer of your drawing to start texturing. If you followed the end of the last tutorial, you should have the different shapes of your object cut up and divided into layers according to planes.
4. Copy-paste the texture into your drawing. It should appear in the layer above the one you selected. If not, move it up there.
5. Edit, Transform the texture so that it fits the shapes in your drawing. Distort helps, as does Vanishing Point if your version supports it. Switch layer effects (to Multiply, for example) if you are having trouble aligning things.
   
6. Ctrl-click the layer thumbnail (the image to the left of the layer name) of your drawing layer to quickly make a selection from your objects. This is a quick way of creating a mask; something we’re going to be using frequently here. If you’re not already familiar with this command, it’s a huge time saver.
   
7. Make sure you’re on the texture layer. Invert your selection and Clear (delete) the excess texture.
8. Adjust the layer effects to apply the texture to your color. I like to use Soft Light. Depending on how the light should hit the texture, you may want to adjust the Transparency of the layer.
   
9. Repeat these steps to texture your drawing, transforming each layer of textures to fit the drawing as you go.

Edge Highlights

Manufactured objects typically have beveled (rounded) edges. In the real world, this makes them less sharp, so they wear better and pop out of molds easier. A side effect is that the edges of beveled objects pick up highlights. Simulating this effect is a nice way to add a bit more realism to your pieces.

Another way to use edge highlights is simply to help distinguish the various pieces of your object. That’s what we’re going to do with our guillotine.

1. Ctrl-click the layer thumbnail to get a selection going.
2. Go to Edit, Stroke. Use the Center setting, in white, with a decent width, depending on your resolution. Here, I’m using 3px. for a 1000×1000 image.
   
3. Add a bit of Gaussian Blur filter. Not too much; just enough to blur the edges a bit.
4. Invert your selection and Clear (delete) it.
   
5. Change the layer effect to Lighten and adjust Transparency as needed. In this example, I also erased a bit of the highlights.

The principles are exactly the same whether you’re going for this kind of effect or simulating bevels. One other trick is to use Select, Modify, Contract to offset your selection before you add a Stroke. This gives a different effect.

Shading

We’ve got everything textured. Now it’s time to start adding depth and shadow through shading.

It’s really helpful—though not essential— to have a tablet for shading. It seems to make the work go much faster and it makes blending a snap. When I’m using mine, I like to adjust the Brushes to use pen pressure for Opacity.

Shading is pretty straightforward if you have a plan. If you rendered your model with any kind of lights, you should have a reference to work from. Otherwise, you’ll have to come up with one or think on your feet.

My general advice for shading:

1. The object(s) should all have a common light source—just one. This should be the brightest point of the object.
2. Start from this light source and work outward, getting darker as you go. Think about where highlights appear on the materials and where shadows are cast.
3. To build contrast, the piece should also have one or more darkest spots—black or near black. Typically these are not close to the bright spots, to give the eye someplace to travel. Your mileage may vary.
4. Tone should be used to separate elements, not just outlines. The way light catches on an intersection should be sufficient to define the planes involved.

Shading method

1. Create a very dark version of your base color and a very light one. Make sure they have plenty of saturation. Even if the base is gray, it helps to have a bit of color in there. Add these colors to your Swatches for easy access.
2. Use a Ctrl-select to get the outlines of your layer objects.
   
3. Add shadow and highlight layers between your texture and the base color layer. It helps to make a group of each set of objects.
   
4. Select your dark color. Paint in the shadows using light strokes with light opacity/flow. Gradually build up the color as you go.
   
5. Add a new layer for highlights and select your light color. Paint in the highlights as you did for the shadows.
6. Continue to shade the rest of the piece. As you work, you can adjust the layer transparency to quickly make changes to your shadows and highlights.

Shadows

Lastly, in most cases your graphic should have some kind of grounding shadow. This gives it the visual feeling of mass and offsets it from the page or other interface elements. For some pieces, a layer effect drop shadow is just fine, but for more complicated objects like our example, it just won’t do.

In general, shadows are not homogenous. Real shadows fade at a distance from their source. Also, cast shadows are often made up of several different shadows from different pieces of the parent object. There’s no need to get too realistic figuring everything out, but a little craft and care goes a long way.

I freehand painted the grounding shadow with an airbrush. For the cast shadow I used the shape mask from the shadow layer with a Gradient Fill and more freehand brushing.

Exeunt

It’s impossible to say what to do in every case, but the general method is to use these techniques along with your reference material to create something that looks right and holds visual interest. More than anything, it takes practice.