Exploding Puzzle Globe Part III

Tutorial: The Exploding Puzzle Globe Part III

Welcome to the great Exploding Puzzle Globe 3 part tutorial series. This is where we’ll take an ordinary planet, apply a jigsaw, add an energy explosion and get a cool effect:

Hey Guys! Welcome back. Having fun with your Planet Puzzles? Feel like going all Vogon-like and blowing the thing up? Then grab your coffee and follow me.

 

 

 

Part III: Form of Light! Shape of Kablooey!

Here’s where we left off. A Puzzle Planet front and back with missing pieces. If yours looks more like a yellow ducky then you’ve got the wrong room. This is Part III of the Exploding Puzzle Globe tutorial. If you need to get caught up, check out Part I: Carving a Planet and Part II: Shaking Things Up.

 

Step One:

Let’s start by putting a light in the middle of the globe. Create another new layer (Layer>New) in between the BackPieces and PuzzleFront layers and name it “CenterGlow”

Change the Foreground color to white and select the Gradient Tool. Make sure the tool is set to Radial and the gradient goes from White to transparent.

Use the Gradient Tool to draw a radial gradient starting at the center of the image and fading out just beyond the edge of the globe.

So now we have a nice glow coming from within the globe, but it’d be really cool to have rays of light shining out through the holes left by the removed pieces. We could paint those in by hand, or we could use some of Photoshop’s filters to do the heavy lifting for us.

Now, if you’ve been around the Photoshop block a time or two, you probably think you know where this is going. Creating that light burst effect with the Raistlin-level incantation of filters (start with a circle, polar coordinates, rotate 90, apply hurricane force gale wind, flip horizontal, stand on one foot, reverse polarity, and so on) Is that where I’m going with this?

Well, remember back when you used to play Street Fighter and you’d try to throw a Dragon Punch but somehow it didn’t work and you ended up with a lame-o regular uppercut as you got kicked innaface? Remember that feeling? That’s pretty much how I feel whenever I try that light burst technique. So let’s do something different. Something a bit simpler.

 

Step Two:

Create another new layer (Layer>New) on top of the PuzzleFront layer and call it LightRays

Set the Foreground color to a pale yellow and the Background color to black Add the Cloud Filter to the layer (Filter>Render>Clouds)

Step Three:

Then select Filter>Blur>Radial Blur. Change the amount to 100, method to Zoom, and quality to Best.

After Photoshop thinks about that last request for a few moments. (You could probably refill your coffee cup while you wait. Mmmm cooooo-ffeeeee….) You should get something like this image here.

 

Step Four:

Change the layer’s Blending Mode to Linear Dodge, and there you have a cool explosion of light!

See there? Sometimes the simple approach works. You don’t ALWAYS have to go for the Fireball. (I’m looking at YOU, Ryu!)

Now let’s make it look like the light’s coming out through the holes in the puzzle.

Step Five:

With the LightRays layer active, Ctrl/Cmd+Click the vector mask thumbnail for the Missing Pieces layer. This creates a selection in the shape of those pieces. Make that selection the layer mask for the LightRays layer (Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal Selection)

 

Step Six:

Now, with this new mask still selected, (The mask, not the actual layer) run the same Radial Blur filter as before (Filter>Blur>Radial Blur) be sure to use the same settings as last time. (Amount 100, Method Zoom, Quality Best)

Then with the mask still selected adjust the Brightness and Contrast (Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast) to make the rays grow or shrink to taste. Play with the settings until you get the effect that you like best.

Alright! Now we have a cool exploding puzzle globe. To add a final touch, we’ll bring back those missing pieces and make it look like they are really flying out of the puzzle.

Step Seven:

Turn on the visibility for the MissingPieces layer. You should now see that all the holes in the puzzle have been filled back in with the pieces we removed before.

With the MissingPieces layer selected (make sure you select the layer, not the vector mask) Scale it up (Edit>Transform>Scale) until the pieces are a good distance away from the globe and several are even going beyond the confines of the canvas.

Things are shaping up now. But the “exploded” pieces are pretty distracting and the hide a lot of the action. But, since they are defined by vector masks, that’s easy enough to fix.

Step Eight:

With the Path Selection Tool, hold down the Shift key and select several of the exploded pieces and press the Delete key to remove them. Keep a scattering of the pieces around the edge, but remove pieces that obstruct the view of the globe too much.

Step Nine:

With the MissingPieces layer still selected, open the Layer Styles for that layer and add a Satin style. This makes the exploded pieces darker than the rest and helps to visually set them apart.

That looks pretty good, but those pieces appear to just be statically hanging in space, we want to give them sense of movement, like they are really flying out from the puzzle.

 

Step Ten:

First rasterize the Vector Mask for the MissingPieces layer (Layer>Rasterize>Vector Mask) this changes the Vector mask to a Layer mask. We now apply that to the layer. (Layer>Layer Mask>Apply) This leave the MissingPieces layer with no mask at all.

 

Step Eleven:

And finally we add another Radial Blur filter to the MissingPieces layer. Select Filter>Blur>Radial Blur. Set the Amount to 5, the Method to Zoom, and the Quality to Good.

That gives a slight blur to those pieces and adds sense of motion.

Congrats! You’re done! Hopefully your image looks something like this one:

Final Image:

Explody Puzzle Globe