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How I do my Stuff - Distance Fog

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Helloey Guys!

This is a Step-By-Step...Thing, asked by :iconarainekoo: and :iconalteara-del-mar:, who pretty much asked the same thing here. :]
(Sorry for taking soooo long > <)


And this time it's about Distance Fog...or Atmospheric Fog...Foggy Fog, you name it.

As like my previous Step-By-Step, here in the comment/description I'll try to explain the stuff more in detail (with a rather small portion of what the base idea is)
while the picture mostly explains it in a visual way...like a picture is supposed to do.

And for any case - the picture is pretty much a TL;DR-Version (hopefully) of this wall of text here. ;)

Well, to start off first - I'm by no means an experienced guy when it comes to this and most of the time I'm just working the way I think looks and feels okay.
It's definitively one of the more complex topics and I'm quite unsure whether to cover just the most necessary parts or more than that. But I think that the
necessary stuff is enough in this case since the rest covers more or less a theoretical part with graphs and stuff.

To put in a rather simplistic way and just to make it complete when it comes to the question what that is :

Fog is that kind of stuff which makes environments at a certain distance gradually fades more and more into a silhouette while losing detail on the way and
becoming a one-toned color(mostly the sky-color but slightly darker).


Fog is composed of two main elements, the color you want to blend it into and the distance you define :

- Color is the property where the objects, which are further away gets blended into. Often the color blend to is the sky color - for simplicity's sake use one slight tone darker to keep the silhouette intact.

- Distance depends on where you want to use fog - either really far away for wide shots or really close to emulate a rather thick atmosphere and more atmospheric shots.

(Side note : Fog also has a certain height before it dissipates, the reason is the atmosphere thickness and humidity at higher elevations - you know, air at higher places is thinner and such)


Usually I have two approaches when it comes to fog :

- either I'm doing it Layer-Based, which I do more commonly to have greater control over the final outcome.
- I'm doing a Back-To-Front-Doodling, which is more reserved for One-Layer-Doodles, Speed-Doodles or I just want to doodle the BG completely on one layer.

Layer-Based :

What happens here is that I'm creating the desired Distance-Objects one at a time on certain layers (the number is completely up to you, I find 3-4 Layers [Foreground, Midground and Background]more than enough)
The advantage here is that you can create them in any order you desire. And the most important one being able to adjust them afterwards properly, if you find them to look not fitting for any reason.
One disadvantage would be the layer-count, which increases by quite a bit (of course depending on how many you're using) if you're going for many layers of depth. Another disadvantage would be that the distance-objects
might not interconnect each other very well. What I mean by that is that the several objects might look a bit too separated rather than naturally blended between - but this is more a taste-thingy here.

The Step-By-Step works as followed (a three-layer to four-layer setup) :

1. Paint your base sky horizon color.
2. Start at your designated point (in this case I start at the front, just for show-off)
3. Add another layer for the next depth point, gradually use less detail the farther you get to the background.
4. Repeat until satisfied with the outcome, create for each depth point another layer.
5. Create clipping masks for each layer, now you're able to adjust them afterwards with your preferred fog
    + Use a very soft brush, pick the base sky horizon color / the color furthest away and softly paint over all the depth points - this gives a nicer blending to the several depth points.


Back-To-Front :

What happens here is that I'm starting with the silhouette at the most distant object with the highest density and get one by one closer to the closest object with the least density.
This keeps your layer-count pretty much to one, depending on your doodling is faster and the objects blend from back to front more naturally - at least as I can tell.
But then this approach is more destructive - means that there's less room to adjust the fog. And another thing is that you're pretty much forced to start at the back and work to the front to get a proper result - it really
depends on how much you're used to it, working in between distances is still very possible.

The Step-By-Step works as followed :

1. Paint your base sky horizon color.
2. Start at the farthest object/s that you can see on your picture and only draw the silhouette/s from it.
3. Continue to move to the front, adding more objects and detail the closer you get to the view point.
4. Repeat until satisfied with the outcome or at least when the depth points are defined well enough.
5. Use a very soft brush, pick the base sky horizon color / the color furthest away and softly paint over all the depth points - this gives a nicer blending to the several depth points.


In both cases, everything depends on the distance of the fog you want to achieve since both ways can get to the quite same result anyway. And since you're working on a 2D static picture, you're free to manipulate the fog as you
wish, making it more pleasant looking rather than logical.

Well, it took me waaaay to long to actually write down all this stuff and I bet there have to be mistakes/errors here and there, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong at anything, even at my own logic. I mean I'm dumb and such.

Anyways, I hope this will explain some of my stuff...and yeah, if you have any questions, feel free to ask me. :3




Please download to see the images and descriptions properly.



Done with Paint Tool SAI




In case you want to know how I did the trees, rocks and clouds, I have another Step-By-Step here : How I do my Stuff - Rocks, Trees and Clouds
Image size
1300x4100px 1.36 MB
© 2016 - 2024 HatschYuh
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