FaceoffFembot's damage tutorial for Paint.net

This tutorial assumes you have a basic familiarity with Paint.NET, such as knowing how to use tools, layers, resizing, rotating, etc.

What you'll need

• Paint.NET
  • Alpha Mask Import Plugin (2.0)
  • BoltBait's Plugin Pack
    • Bevel Object
    • Fill From Clipboard
  • pyrochild plugins
    • Outline Object
    • Trail
• Source pictures
  • Photo manip workshop
  • FaceoffFembot's manipulation archives
  • textures.com
    • Decals
    • Various plastic
  • Your personal library

Tip 1: textures.com requires you to create an account that only give you 15 download points per day. Come back even when you're not working on a manipulation to increase your stock.

Tip 2: After getting pictures for a manipulation, keep them in a personal library.

Preparing the workspace

Create a folder for your project, and copy every file you'll use in it. At the end, feed the files through FileOptimizer, and use Winrar or IZArc to compress and archive your project.

Optimizing the original picture

Let's optimize our original picture. Feed it to Google's Search by image or the reverse image search of your choice. Select the largest, cleanest version returned (no compression artifact, no nearest-neighbor upscaling, etc.) and feed it again. Do this a couple times. This will allow you to:

• Work with the best foundations possible
• Source the model

We now have a cleaner, larger version of our picture, but it is still too small. I prefer working more in the 2000x3000 range, which we're currently at half. We could use Paint.NET's Image > Resize, but this will make any compression remaining in our picture pop. Feet it to waifu2x instead, saving the lowest comfortable noise reduction setting result. This will double the size of the picture while keeping it somewhat clean.

Tip 3: Bookmark any website you may have a recurring need for.

Preparing the alpha mask sources

Download a couple masked exposed plaster pictures off textures.com. Save them in your project folder. Look for a variety of shapes: circular, jagged, smooth, cracks...

Let's turn these pictures into something that can be used for alpha masking. Open them with Paint.NET. Use Effects > Hue / Saturation, lightness set to -100, to turn them uniformly black. Since we won't have any use for the originals, you can save over them (Ctrl + S).

Making the alpha mask

We now have the best original picture we can, and several .png files of cracked and damaged shapes. Time to create the alpha mask.

Open the original picture in Paint.net. Create a new layer, and rename the two.

On this new, empty layer, we're going to paste various shapes of our liking from our alpha mask sources. Each time you add a new element, create a new layer before pasting, and merge the layers once you're satisfied with the placement. Think about the kind of damage the fembot received and the direction it came from.

Tip 4: Duplicate a layer containing a transparent element to thicken the more transparent parts.

You might want to change the dimension and rotation of your elements. Ideally, using Image > Resize and Layers > Rotate / Zoom in conjunction with Crop to selection will give you a better quality over the Move Selected Pixels tools. However, this will increase your workload significantly and will barely be visible in the end. Prefer it only when working with very small size.

Once you feel done with your shapes, you might notice it has a much sharper quality than the original picture, and elements vary in quality. Use Effects > Blurs > Gaussian Blur on a low setting to tie it together.

Making the damage

Alpha masking, at last

We now have our damage alpha mask. Time to apply it.

Select and duplicate the original picture's layer. Rename the new layer and hide the old. Go to the damage alpha mask layer, select it entirely (Ctrl + A), and copy it (Ctrl + C).

Tip 5: Always duplicate a layer you're going to alter, but may need to come back to.

Hide the damage alpha mask layer. Select your base layer and use Effects > Alpha Mask. Every pixel under a black pixel will be made inversely more or less transparent depending on the alpha value of its corresponding pixel on he alpha mask layer.

Tip 5: Always check Mix Alpha when using Effects > Alpha Mask.

Adding depth

Let's give some depth to this hole. Duplicate your base layer, then use Effects > Object > Bevel Object. Set the strength to maximum and check off "Keep original image".

Effects > Object > Bevel Object will produce unnecessary beveling on the picture's border. Use the Rectangle Select tool to delete them.

Rename your layer, set its blending mode to Overlay and reduce its opacity.

Go to your base layer and duplicate it. Rename it, and use Effects > Blurs > Surface Blur on its default settings. Then, use Adjustments > Brightness / Contrast with "Brightness" between -25 and -50.

Move the depth layer at the bottom, and use Effects > Object > Trail. Check off "Fade out" and reduce "Length" to between 5 and 10. Adjust the angle relative to the angle of the camera and of the surface.