build button glows

Post by **graviton** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 6:14 pm

I have lately gone on a spree of creating build button templates (there's nothing in them), taken and modified from various sources. I am trying to put a glow/aura around the ship in a build button, so they can be better seen, especially on a black background. Try having a mostly black build button template and then putting a Borg ship in the middle. Darn near impossible to see or make out. But it would be much easier to see if there was a glow around it, like the build buttons in Alliances.

I have experimented with several options in PSP11, and while some are pretty neat, don't give the effect of a glow at all. I have tried searching the forums on AFC, but can't find any thread relating to this. Can anybody help? Somebody must know besides Achilles

Post by **iOSYS** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 8:45 pm

In photoshop, you can apply a glow to a layer, not sure if there is an equivilant in psp, but surley you can simply select around the ship with a lasso, and then draw a glow around it with an airbrush tool?

Post by **graviton** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 9:09 pm

I don't know. I'll try it.

Hmm. Not working too well. I can select the ship easily enough, but I can't find any glow effects that work right. And it may just be my lack of skill, but trying to draw or paint a glow around it just looks plain crude.

Post by **Achilles** » Sun Apr 01, 2007 3:50 pm

I didn't use an effect, I selected the ship then created a layer beneath it, I filled the layer with whatever colour I wanted then selected the whole screen and an applied a gausian blur..

Post by **graviton** » Sun Apr 01, 2007 6:13 pm

First, thanks for the advice

Second, I'm a bit confused. What I'm doing right now is taking a standard Federation buildbutton and selecting the ship in the centre. Then I create a black, 64x64 square that will become the new button. Then, I take that selection of the ship and paste it as a new image. I resize this image to be 3-4 pixels larger, then select the ship in it, and fill it with a color. I take this colored shape and paste it into the the black square. Then I take the original Federation ship from the original button and paste it in the middle of the coloured shape on the black square. Oh, and I Gaussian blur the coloured shape after pasting it in, but it still looks crude.

Post by **Achilles** » Sun Apr 01, 2007 8:19 pm

yeah 64x64 does look crude, that's why I used 128x128

ok so step by step, lets imagine you already have your background/ buildbutton template ok.

take a render of your ship on a black background

paste the render into psp
use selection modifiers to select only the ship and not the black
copy this and paste as a new image
resize the image to have a maximum length/width of about 110
copy the resized image
go to your button template and create 2 new raster layers
paste you ship into the 3rd layer it should still have a selection around it
click on the second layer
choose your glow colour
fill the selection area with your colour, you wont see it behind the ship
press select all
then use a gausian blur of between 4-8
save.

Post by **graviton** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 4:23 pm

Thanks alot Achilles

I decided to use a different ship than before for this button. The end result is...

Looks better than the first