Shiny & Cute Jewels

I take some time to write a small tutorial about crystals and jewels. Diamonds, ruby, topaz and emeraud are hard things to draw. You need to be a real artists and work hard to do something realistic. However, with some technics you can do some cute and shiny jewels for video games

1 - Draw the geometric shape

There is a lot of geometric reference on internet to help to draw a good shape like this.



2 - Colorize first faces

Choose the origin and the direction of the light and color the first and the 2 opposite faces on the ray of light. To color the face, create a new layer, use the Polygonal Lasso Tool, and the key ALT and DELETE
to fill with the foreground color.

Here, for a cute diamond, choose a light blue like this one :

http://www.wc3campaigns.net/attachme...1&d=1228585257


3 - Add the "Shine"

-Create a new layer
-Draw a circle with the Elliptical Marquee tool
-Fill with white color.



-Go to Filter, Blur, Gaussian blur and get something like this ( it depends on your project, so there is not defined parameters )



-Make sure to have the White round selected
-CTRL+Click on the thumbnail of the layer of the colored faces to select it.
-Click on Add Layer Mask and you should have something like this :



-Unlink the Layer Thumbnail and the Mask by click the small chain icon between thumbnails.
-Now move the white round, rotate it, scale it and have this first result



-If it's not enough shiny, duplicate the layer :



-Merge the White Circles and Blue faces layers and work the shiny effect with the Dodge tools ( shadow range ). If you have are skilled in Dodge tool using, you don't need white round and you can draw it with the hand on the Blue faces layer.
The result should be near to :



4 - The other faces :

-Do the same technic on the opposites faces on right and left, with a darker blue and a 50% alpha circle or lighter dodge tool.
Those face face shouldn't contain white but just light and dark blue.



- The top face are just a little lighter than the left-top, same color but the light blue from the center take more place:



- The main face should be the more dark. Its difference is the light blue reappear on the corner. Do it with the dodge tool. The more light blue in the main face should be the dark blue in the left top face.



5 - Shiny details :

- Create a new layer
- Use the main geometric shape to make a black solid diamond ( do the selection of the diamond's edges and fill it with black )
- With the Polygonal lasso tool, cut triangular shape in the black diamond. This is the more artistic part, you have to follow your light emitter. In mine, i just put more triangle on the right than i put on the left. You have to imbricate your triangular shapes, not always the same shape but the same size. You can also make negative triangular shapes by drawing and fill it with black. You may obtain something like this :



- Create a new layer below the last one ( black diamond mask)
- Create 3 circle, add gaussian blur, 2 white round and 1 light blue like this ( example for a diamond):



- Make sure to have the 3 rounds layer selected
- CTRL + left click on the black diamond layer thumbail, so it selects the black diamond shape.
- Click on Add layer mask icon ( bottom of the layer panel )
- Delete the black diamond layer or make it no visible
- You should obtain something like this if only the 3 rounds layer is visible :



- Set mode of the 3 rounds layer "Overlay"
- Make all the layer visible and you should got this :



That sound good but we can have better if we work a little with the dodge tool to increase shiny effect. Add 2 small triangles on the top right and left so it adds contrast. The final result could be something like :



Other example on differents shapes :

The crystals look nice and are shiny and all but I don't think they fit well with Wc3 environment...

Still, I do love the shiny and clean look of ye crystals.

Thx ;)
It can fit if the user want make it fit with Wc3 style, this is the basic technic to learn how to make our own jewel. It can be used on talisman, gem and jewelry, or on model texture :)

i think it will fit to wc3 just fine ...when you add some glow and stuff ...

With enough glow to hide the gem itself completely, yes.

This was a pretty good tutorial for basic gems, it seems to have the wrong mix or type of cartoony when put with WC3, but it's pretty good.

Points if you show how to apply it to other things, e.g make a ring or necklace with it.

What program did you use? Photoshop?

yes.

Yes. However it's not really a question of software but more a global technic to understand and made to apply in your projects :)

This is not approved. Is there a problem ?

I like it. Well done!

This is really great, if you've ever played bejeweled looks like one.

I like the tut a lot. However tried for a long time but I can't get same good effect =/ What do you think about it? Any hints?

PS I colored faces in a bit different way as had problems to get nice colors lol...

Also I don't understand what actually to do with the dodge tool. And what do you mean by "Dodge tools ( shadow range )"? I suppose it's a functionality not present in GIMP... or it has other name.

Nice tutorial.
Someone should put it somewhere else like the Game Maker forums.
It would fit there.
But yes, nice tutorial, not only for Warcraft III.