This tutorial is a follow-up to the previous lesson, where you learned how to create a simple wood plank. To complete this tutorial, you'll need a finished wood plank texture from that tutorial. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to spruce up (no pun intended) your plank texture to look more realistic, and to give you ideas on how to detail your textures.

    First, we'll start out with our wood plank. I created a simple wood plank shown here, similar to the one found in the first lesson to be your guide. The details we're going to make for this plank are knot holes and end-cuts. Knot holes are the natural, oval-shaped grain formations from tree branches, and end-cuts simply refer to how wood grain looks from the ends of a plank.

 Knot Holes

    We'll learn how to make knot holes first, then you'll apply what you learn here to make end-cuts. Open your wood plank image, make a copy by selecting the whole image ("CTRL + A") and pressing "CTRL + C" , then paste ("CTRL + V") the copy into a new image (should be 512 x 128). Now flatten the layers on this new image, go to Filters > Distort > Polar Coordinates, and choose "Rectangular to Polar" and click OK. The new image should look something like this. Be sure to keep this "Polar Coordinates" image around, as you'll need it for the second half of this tutorial.

    Now back to the first image. Go to the Image menu, and down at the bottom is a command called Liquify (You can also access the liquify command by pressing "SHIFT + CTRL + X" and in Photoshop 7, Liquify is found in the Filters menu.). Once the Liquify Window is up, select the Bloat tool by pressing the "B" key, make sure your brush size is between 50 and 70, and start widening the lighter spots in the wood grain. Try the settings shown here, and take a look at the example here.

    Starting to look good now? We're not finished yet. Select the image that we used Polar Coordinates on earlier, and choose the "Elliptical Marquee" tool in the tool bar (you can also do this by pressing "SHIFT + M"). Now adjust the "feather" value to about 5, and then draw a selection near and around the outer-most rings of the image, as shown here. Go ahead and copy the selection, then paste it into the image we modified earlier with the liquify editor.

    Now we can start to scale the ring-shaped object into one of the widened portions of the wood grain; and adjust the brightness, contrast, and hue of the layer to make the knot hole darker and more saturated. You may wish to paste an additional one or two layers to make more knot holes of different shapes and sizes, to further enhance the natural properties of the wood. Once you're done, you end with something that looks like this. Pretty cool, huh?

 End-cuts

    End-cuts, at least from a 3D design perspective, are what you would see at the ends of a plank of wood where the grain is not following the direction on the other 2 dimensions. You normally wouldn't need this particular texture, but if you or another 3D artist is picky about little details, then this is the section for you.

    First, lets create a new image, set the resolution to 128 pixels wide and 32 pixels high. Now render some clouds and then add some noise (about 15% - 20%). It doesn't matter what color you render with because next we're going to tint the image to match your wood plank. Hit "CTRL + U" to bring up the Hue / Saturation window, make sure "Colorize" is checked, and adjust the hue and saturation to match your wood plank. We'll refer to this image as the "end-cut image", shown here.

    Now, here's where the "Polar Coordinates image" from the previous section comes in handy. You will need to make a selection on part of the circular grain that is at least 128 pixels wide by 32 high like the example shown here, copy it and then paste it over the end-cut image. Once there, adjust the contrast of the ring layer (I like increasing it between +40% and +60%), and then adjust the opacity of the layer to about 50%. Change your layer filter to Luminosity, and that should give the final effect to the wood grain. Click here to see the final result.

    That about concludes the whole wood tutorials section. I hope everyone has found some good uses for the material and if anyone has any comments, feel free to send them my way. Oh, and if you want to see what all the fuss is about with these textures, check out the final product in 3D Studio Max.

Questions or comments? E-mail Mr. Lake