Create a Space Scene

Quick reference

• 00:04 Hey, everyone.
• 00:04 For as long as I can remember,
• 00:06 I've been dreaming about what may be out there that we'll never get to see.
• 00:09 Fortunately, we have Photoshop to make our dreams come true.
• 00:13 Creating the basic star field for your scene is actually quite simple.
• 00:16 By creating a custom brush, we can create a nice star field within minutes.
• 00:21 Making sure you're working with a new layer,
• 00:23 grab your brush tool from the tools bar.
• 00:25 Now, to customize our brush, we need to open our brush panel.
• 00:28 If yours is not already open, activate it by going up to the window menu and
• 00:32 then down to brush.
• 00:33 We are looking to create a nice, tiny, scattering brush.
• 00:37 Starting the brush tip shape section, set your brush nice and small.
• 00:41 Around 3 pixels.
• 00:42 And then down under spacing, crank it up to around 260%.
• 00:46 Moving over to shape dynamics, turn the size jitter up to 100%.
• 00:50 This will allow our brush to paint many different sized stars,
• 00:54 once we start brushing.
• 00:56 Next, under scattering turn on both axes and
• 00:59 set the scatter at 1000% with a count of one.
• 01:03 This will move away from a boring, straight line of stars.
• 01:07 And finally, let's turn on transfer.
• 01:09 Turn the opacity and
• 01:10 flow jitter up to 100% to give us stars with different brightnesses.
• 01:15 Our star brush is complete, nice and simple.
• 01:18 If you think you might use this brush later on, you can save it by selecting new
• 01:22 brush pre-set under the drop-down menu at the top right corner of your brush panel.
• 01:27 Now, all you have to do is brush.
• 01:29 Because we use shape dynamics, scattering and transfer to our advantage as we
• 01:34 brush in our canvas, all of the stars are being randomly generated so
• 01:38 there won't be any repetitive patterns going on.
• 01:40 I'm simply brushing in circles to fill up as much or
• 01:43 as little of the document until I get the amount of stars that I'm looking for.
• 01:47 Now keep in mind that we're not looking for an extravagant star field.
• 01:50 We want something basic that won't distract us from the other elements,
• 01:53 which we're about to create.
• 01:55 Let's move on and create our large planet.
• 01:57 This part is a little bit tricky, so make sure to follow along closely.
• 02:01 Go ahead and
• 02:01 grab your ellipse tool from the tools bar, and we want to draw out a massive circle.
• 02:07 You might wanna zoom out a little bit so you have enough room to place this circle.
• 02:10 You want to end up with only a portion of it poking out from the bottom of
• 02:13 your canvas.
• 02:15 Once it's in place, change the color of the shape to black by double clicking on
• 02:18 the color box in the Layers panel, and choosing up here black.
• 02:22 Now we need to add a few layer styles.
• 02:24 Let's start with an inner glow.
• 02:27 Start by setting the blend mode to this glow to linear dodge, and then for
• 02:31 the color, use a nice baby blue.
• 02:33 I'm gonna use C2, E7, FF.
• 02:38 Down below. change the size to 20 and
• 02:40 then the range to 60.
• 02:43 Next will be an outer glow.
• 02:44 Once again, set the blend mode to linear dodge, and
• 02:48 the color's gonna be a slightly darker blue 59B3FF.
• 02:51 Now, set the size at ten.
• 02:57 And, finally, an inner shadow, blend mode again,
• 03:00 is linear dodge and the color will be 3599ff.
• 03:03 Go ahead and turn off global light and set the angle at 90 degrees.
• 03:10 The distance at 10 and the size at 70.
• 03:15 Now that the layer styles are complete we need to bring in a texture.
• 03:18 Doing a search for planet texture on deviantART you'll find many textures which
• 03:22 you can use for your personal projects, like this one here.
• 03:25 When you have your texture open in Photoshop, drag it onto your document and
• 03:29 place it on top of your planet.
• 03:31 At the moment, the texture is too flat.
• 03:33 In order to create a curved illusion,
• 03:35 we're going to apply a filter to the texture.
• 03:38 But before we do that, we need to define our sphere.
• 03:41 With your command or control key held down,
• 03:43 click on your planet layers thumbnail to turn it into a selection.
• 03:47 When the planet is selected, head up to the filter menu, down to distort, and
• 03:51 then spherize.
• 03:53 Make sure your mount is set to 100% and press ok.
• 03:56 Your texture should have a spherical look to it inside the selected area.
• 04:00 With the selection still active, add a layer mass to the texture by clicking on
• 04:04 the add layer mass button at the bottom of your layers panel.
• 04:07 This will hide everything outside of the selection leaving you
• 04:10 only the rounded area.
• 04:12 That looks good, but it's not very convincing.
• 04:14 There are a few things we can do to help drive this effect home.
• 04:17 First, in your Layers panel,
• 04:19 change the blend mode of the texture layer to Overlay, with an Opacity of 70%.
• 04:24 Now if you're happy with just the edge of the planet visible,
• 04:27 you can skip this next step.
• 04:29 We're gonna add a little bit more visibility to the middle of the planet.
• 04:32 Right above your planet layer, add another new layer, when that new layer is added,
• 04:37 turn your planet into a selection once again, by command or control clicking on
• 04:40 it's thumbnail, grab your brush tool and select a nice large, soft brush.
• 04:45 Set the color of this brush to a nice baby blue, A,E,D,O,F,F.
• 04:51 Now add a spot towards the top of your planet.
• 04:54 This will interact with your textures' overlay blend mode to
• 04:56 reveal that new area.
• 04:58 It's getting there, but it needs more glow.
• 05:01 In your layers panel, make a duplicate of the planet layer and then clear its layer
• 05:05 style by right clicking the duplicated layer and choosing clear layer styles.
• 05:10 When the layer is all clear, we want to add a simple outer glow.
• 05:14 Linear dodge for the blend mode, 100% for the opacity.
• 05:18 The color will be set to 419aff.
• 05:21 The size 155, and the range 60.
• 05:28 Once the glow is in place enter free transform mode and
• 05:31 horizontally squeeze the planet inwards.
• 05:33 This will taper the glow leaving the middle slightly thicker,
• 05:37 make sure to hold your alt or
• 05:38 option key while dragging either side to transform it from the center.
• 05:42 Two more glows to go, hang in there.
• 05:44 Go ahead and create a new layer below all the planet layers.
• 05:47 With a soft brush around 200 pixel or so, add a white spot at the top of the planet.
• 05:53 As long as you place this new layer below the planets,
• 05:56 their layer style should compliment this new sport quite well.
• 05:59 Now to finish up this glow, on another new layer,
• 06:02 use a soft 7 pixel brush to create a single horizontal line,
• 06:07 which should be only slightly longer than the spot that we just created.
• 06:10 Once that line is created, we need to taper the edges.
• 06:13 Head up to the Filter menu, down to Blur, and then choose Motion Blur.
• 06:16 When the Motion Blur window comes up, set the angle at zero and
• 06:20 the distance at 500 pixels.
• 06:23 Once the blur is applied,
• 06:24 place the new light streak into place to finish the glow.
• 06:27 Our scene is coming along well.
• 06:29 However, the pitch black star field could use some variation.
• 06:32 Let's create some clouds.
• 06:34 In your Layers panel, create another new layer right above your stars layer.
• 06:38 On this layer,
• 06:38 we're going to use the Clouds filter, but first we need to set some color.
• 06:42 For the foreground color, we're gonna use a medium blue, 3e78CF.
• 06:49 And for the background color, it's gonna be pitch black.
• 06:52 When your colors are set, add your clouds filter by going up to the Filter menu,
• 06:55 down to Render, and then choose Clouds.
• 06:58 Now in order for our scene to not get overwhelmed by blue clouds,
• 07:01 we wanna pull in some additional dark tones.
• 07:04 To accomplish this, add a levels adjustment to your clouds layer and
• 07:08 pull the mid-tone slider slightly to the right, around 0.7.
• 07:12 At this point, we have one clouds layer, but we want two.
• 07:15 One to interact with the stars and one to act as clouds.
• 07:19 Inter layers panel duplicate your current clouds layer so
• 07:22 you're left with two identical layers.
• 07:24 Now in the bottom layer, change your blend mode to soft light.
• 07:28 On the top layer, keep the blend mode at normal, but
• 07:30 drop the opacity to 25 percent.
• 07:33 Things are looking good, but the scene is still a little bit bland.
• 07:36 Let's add one more additional planet.
• 07:39 Go ahead once again and grab your Ellipse tool from the Tools bar and
• 07:42 draw out a black circle at the top right corner of your document.
• 07:46 When that circle's created, make a duplicate of that layer.
• 07:49 You should now have two identical dark circles.
• 07:52 On the top circle, we're going to use the same layer styles that we used for
• 07:55 large planet.
• 07:56 In your Layers panel,
• 07:58 right click on the large planet's layer, choose Copy Layers Style,
• 08:01 and then right click on the new circle, and paste the Layers Style.
• 08:05 Now just like we did for the large planet, we need to give this planet texture.
• 08:09 I'm gonna use this texture which I also found on deviantART.
• 08:12 Bring this texture into your document and place it on top of your small planet.
• 08:16 Now we wanna follow the same steps we did with with the large planet.
• 08:20 First, turn your circle into a selection and then head up to the filter menu,
• 08:24 down to distort, spherize with a value of 100%.
• 08:29 Apply a layer mask to hide the leftover bits, and
• 08:32 then change the blend mode of the texture layer to Overlay.
• 08:36 Now, we need to mask the top right side of the planet in
• 08:39 order to give an eclipse effect.
• 08:41 In your Layers panel select both the texture layer and the top circle.
• 08:45 You can do this by selecting one of the two layers, and then with your Cmd or
• 08:49 Ctrl key held down, click on a blank area of the second layer.
• 08:53 Once both layers are selected, we need to place them in a group.
• 08:56 At the bottom of your Layers panel,
• 08:58 with your Shift key held down, click on the Create New Group icon.
• 09:02 This will place the selected layers inside a new group.
• 09:05 Once they're grouped, apply a layer mask to that group.
• 09:08 Now with a soft black brush, around 400 pixels or
• 09:11 so, click a few times at the top right corner of the small planet.
• 09:15 This will hide the texture and
• 09:16 the layer styles revealing the second black circle below.
• 09:20 With the same method you can create as many planets as you like to fill up
• 09:23 the remaining areas.

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