I was using "The SwampThing" as inspiration, and he has very stumpy blocky hands and fingers, so I use that as my excuse
I made 3 copies of the image as layers, 1 with no blur, 1 with 3.5px blur, 1 with 5px blur. Then I painted on the alpha channel of the layers to hide and reveal blurred areas as necessary. That gave be a lot of control over where the blur happens and lets me play with the bluriness in a more artistic than scientific way.
I also used 2 Bryce renders, one with muted lighting and one with strong bright lighting and highlights. I used the same layer blending technique to control the light intensity - helped mostly on the rock formations, so I could have a brighter bit in the centre of the image, and dim out gradually round the corners.
Might stop now NB: The fish were fun to make using a new "Join" feature in Curvy Beta - I joined lots of fish into a single mesh, then I used the widget tools to twist the shoal all at once - much easier than hand editing 30 fish!
"Join" Also lets you put several meshes together so you can change their object properties all at once. It is the opposite of "Explode".
Last edited by Simon on Sat Jul 03, 2010 11:06 am, edited 1 time in total.