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Tutorial: Smelting text / Creating blood text

Written by · Created on Sep 05, 2007, last updated about 13 years ago CC BY-NC License
Smelting text / Creating blood text

Motivation

In this tutorial I show you how you can liquify / smelt text or other graphical objects. I'm going to demonstrate this by creating a blood text.

Tutorial details

  1. 1

    Make a new file: 600×400 px. White background. Write one or two words with a sans-serif-font (i.e. “bloody GIMP” ;)).

    Size: 140px.
    Line height: ca. -15
    Color of text: #870000 (a dark red)

    Layer / Layer to Image size. After this the text cannot be changed because it is rendered.

  2. 2

    The next technique is optional. The blood looks simply better when your text has rounded corners. We’ve a seperate tutorial for the rounded corners-technique. The technique is very useful. Have a look at it.

    These are the quick steps to get rounded corners on this text:
    - Apply Filter / Gaussian Blur
    - 10px
    - Repeat the filter by Pressing CTRL+F
    - Repeat it again
    - Choose Colors / Curves, top left choose Alpha as channel. Move the point at the bottom to the middle, do so with the point that is at the top right. You’ll see immideate changes in the picture. Do this until you have nice rounded off corners.

  3. 3

    Create a new layer and choose the pencil-tool. Make sure the color is the same as before #870000.

    Paint even vertical lines down now. (You get exact lines when clicking a single dot someqhere into the text – this is the starting point – then hold SHIFT and set the endpoint). Do this a few times as seen on the image below.

    The strength of the pencil should be 7.

  4. 4

    After being satisfied with the lines click “Merge down” by clicking right in the layers dialog. The Text and the lines should then be on a single layer.

    To make the lines look like a part of the text we use the Liquify-Filter. Filters / Distorts / IWarp. Choose “grow”.

    Deform radius: 9
    Deform amount: 0.26

    All Work is done in the preview-window of this filter: Now first work on the area where the ‘blood’ is coming out of the text and running down. Click and hold your mouse down at the exitpoint of the blood of the text and make small circular movements. The hard edges look more as they would have been a part of the text. Repeat this for every line.

    The next step are the endings of the lines. They should look like drops in the end, do this with the same teqchnique as with the exitpoints.

    After that use “shrink”. Now shrink the middle parts of the lines so that they become much thinner. To do this move the mouse (while holding down the mousebutton) from top to bottom until you find it thin enough. It should be uneven to look real!

    You should the have a result of something like that:

  5. 5

    If your satisfied with the result you’re done ;)

    If you want to look the text even more like blood follow these steps:

    Duplicate the layer with the blood and click the “Lock”-Button in the layers dialog (it is found above the layers). It’s called “Sperre” in the image below.

  6. 6

    Rightclick in the layers dialog “Selection from Alpha”. Then click the Channels dialog (Dialogs / Channels). Add a new channel: “Initialize from selection”.

    Click the channel in the channels dialog, then go to Select / None. Filter / Gaussian Blur 4 times with these values: 10px, 6px, 3 and finally 1 px.

  7. 7

    Click the visibility (eye icon) of the channel to make it invisible.

    Change to the layers dialog, click the duplicated blood layer. Choose #818181 as new foreground color.
    - Edit / Fill FG-Color. The duplicated layer should now be all gray.

  8. 8

    Filters / Lights and Shadow / Lighing Effects. As bumpmap choose the channel we just created. Max. height: 0,05

    For the Materials tab choose the values of the picture (they are in the same order in the english version of Gimp)

  9. 9

    Then we need 2 lights.

    For the first light use these values:

    Light 1
    Type: Directional
    Color White
    Intensity: 1

    Direction:
    X Y Z: -0.9 / -1.5 / 0.7

  10. 10

    For the second light use these values:

    Light 2
    Type: Directional
    Color White
    Intensity: 1

    Direction:
    X Y Z: 1.4 / 1.65 / 1.0

  11. 11

    The layer is still alpha locked. Now apply the Gaussian Blur again. 3 times. every time use 2px for the blur.

  12. 12

    Set the layers mode to “Hard light” and you get nice dark blood ;)

    Have fun by making your own blood!

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devvv member for over 17 years devvv 1475 comments
about 3 years ago

You can now use the dedicated tool for this - Warp Transform. Much easier and straight forward to use :)

nmag
about 3 years ago

iWarp doesn't exist any more. I thinks is a good idea to update the tutorial. Meanwhile is useless.

devvv member for over 17 years devvv 1475 comments
over 5 years ago

It is now its own tool called "WarpTransform".

Stephanie
over 5 years ago

the iWarp tool no longer exists in gimp. Can you re do this tutorial or advise how to get that very important step done without iwarp?

Mangle
over 7 years ago

Hi

devvv member for over 17 years devvv 1475 comments
about 9 years ago

well done ;)

MrC
about 9 years ago

Link =)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBBsP_QizFU

MrC
about 9 years ago

I made a video tutorial of this for my High School class.

(Thanks for the CC license!

David Davidson
over 9 years ago

Naturally, the moment after I posted my previous text (after about an hour of "futzing" with it) I figured out that I need to reduce the amount of gaussian blur to about 6px (at 50px size) and only move the top right point to the center top to give it a nice spread and curvature that looks more in line with the images posted.

So yeah, pummel me with eggs, but people having prob, just kep on trying.

David Davidson
over 9 years ago

I'm honestly lost on this from the start. I can follow most of the directions except to set the initial text at 140px and the line at -15 doesn't seem to make any sense at all. The text ends up being too big for the page and when I set it to something reasonable (50px) the gaussian blur applied 3x makes the text so faded that no amount of twerking the color/curves in alpha does anything to make it any darker (btw "center" means top center? bottom center? the center of the center line?). It seems like it should work but there's no illustration of the letters looking anything like the faded ones I'm trying to work with. I downloaded GIMP because CS2 apparently cant put a fade in and fade out text on an existing .GIF file and I was hopeful I could with this, but it didn't even include "matterOFfact" font (which is the text I need for this) and I thought this would be the "fix" for that. Guess not.
People who do tutorials should really do them from the assumption that people are not as familiar with the program as they are, hence they are not the ones doing the tutorials.

Sijt
almost 12 years ago

at step 4 you had to merge the layers but in the image in step 5 you have to layers???
I think i have screwed everything

siausi
almost 13 years ago

I got lost at step 6. Could someone please help me? Are we supposed to blur the alpha channel or what?

And are we supposed to right click on top of the alpha channel to make a new channel to call it "initialise from selection" ?

And step 7, when we click to make the channel invisible, which channel is tihs?

Janice
over 13 years ago

This is excellent one. Well, my blood looks a bit crooked during the iWARP part. I will try it again. Thanks!!

cookiecasper member for over 13 years cookiecasper 2 comments rated this topic with 3/5
over 13 years ago

why is this so hard to understand???
please, who ever makes these should explain a bit more, ive been using GIMP for about two months and i kinda get it, but it still takes me a while to understand what im suppose to do, and that's valueble time that i could be using, to make something else.

cookiecasper member for over 13 years cookiecasper 2 comments rated this topic with 3/5
over 13 years ago

why is this so hard to understand???
please, who ever makes these should explain a bit more, ive been using GIMP for about two months and i kinda get it, but it still takes me a while to understand what im suppose to do, and that's valueble time that i could be using, to make something else.

ela member for almost 14 years ela 1 comment rated this topic with 5/5
almost 14 years ago

hey there! super thanks for this! it was really fun doing it.. i'll be posting it on my blog as well with you as my source of course.. here's my finished product.. cheers!

n00b member for about 14 years n00b 3 comments rated this topic with 5/5
about 14 years ago

Here's my chocolate I told you about. ^,^

n00b rated this topic with 5/5
about 14 years ago

I used this to make a table with blood dripping from the top and with color I played around a bit and made some melting chocolate. YUM!

darlingPresley rated this topic with 5/5
about 14 years ago

what a dickhead!!! ^^^^^^^^^

I thought the tutorial was fine...just took a bit of concentration...and common sense,,,somethink that tool above doesnt posess....

UR FUKIN SHIT rated this topic with 1/5
about 14 years ago

tbh you dont exaplin stuff clealy, this is shit mate, yh if u know what your doing fair enough but for new people we aint got a clue what all this means, hardly any printscreens on what to do, so your so called tutorial is fucking shit

1/10 -- yhh i learnt how to round text and this was with help from another tutorial

CUNT!!

MAJOR FAIL
about 14 years ago

hey dude i really slagged off your HOWTO. some mnths later http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/3104/mygift.png
nice one. just need to go back and do the blood. excellent TUTORIAL.
keep up the good work.
you was correct about A poor workman always blames his tools!!!!
w00t

k41
about 14 years ago

nice tutorial

i can made it... with gimp 2.6

Gabberklaus member for over 14 years Gabberklaus 1 comment
over 14 years ago

hardcore

2ty
over 14 years ago

wow, great tut! It took a while before I could understand everyting (I'm dutch and I have a dutch version of gimp), but the result is great!
This is what I made:
[IMG]http://i36.tinypic.com/v5xq45.gif[/IMG]
Yeah, I know this 'welcome' doesn't look so inviting...

DarlingPresley
over 14 years ago

Paco.....

Selection from Alpha was not found on my version (2.6.6)

In the LAYERS tab, you use "Alpha to selection" and in the PATHS tab you use "path to selection"

hope this helps :)

devvv member for over 17 years devvv 1475 comments
over 14 years ago

in the layers dialog - rightclick the layer - in the context menu somwhere at the bottom.

Paco
over 14 years ago

where is Selection from Alpha?????

DarlingPresley
over 14 years ago

MAJOR FAIL,

A poor workman always blames his tools!!!!

I managed to follow the steps and created the image above....it is hard to describe this program because as hard as you try you 'presume' that the user has some knowledge of the program already and can apply a bit of artistic license to the piece...

Also, there's nothing wrong with the screen grabs..if you click on them they're big enough to see...don't know what your problem is really...

MAJOR FAIL
over 14 years ago

been using gimp every few days for few hours. like 5 a day :)
anyway this HOWTO seems to totally wrong..
is it one of the tutorials the autours wants to show off with but not really show you how to do it correct. cos lot of what he says does not work at all. MAJOR FAIL. also the captcha on this page is ridiculous. if you must use one to stop bots. use one you can read . MAJOR FAIL

Darlingpresley member for over 14 years Darlingpresley 9 comments
over 14 years ago

Cool Phil...don't forget to post the finished item!!

Phillipe member for over 14 years Phillipe 2 comments
over 14 years ago

Thanks Darlingpresley. I was moving the curves adjust too much. The tutorial isn't too clear about it, as moving the top-right point that much makes it too skinny.

After doing the gaussian blur, I got a better result by duplicating the layer twice, and then merging down.

Still working the steps, I think it will turn out cool.

I'm trying to make the word "Nightmare" bloody, to put on ObamaCare t-shirts. :-)

Phil

Darlingpresley
over 14 years ago

...........and John.........you must be missing a small step out somewhere along the line, because I folllowed it to the letter and came up with the piece above ^^^^^^^^

Darlingpresley
over 14 years ago

Phillipe....it comes back into focus when you apply the "curves" selection....

Phillipe member for over 14 years Phillipe 2 comments
over 14 years ago

Can someone please tell me how to get the text to appear clear again after applying the gaussian blur and curves adjustment?

Thanks,

Phil

John
over 14 years ago

This tutorial sucks. I got nothing like your example.

Darlingpresley member for over 14 years Darlingpresley 9 comments
over 14 years ago

ok...so now i am registered...I will upload the image I created following your tutorial....

xx

Darling
over 14 years ago

OMG I DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for your brilliant, brilliant, genius tutorial lol

xxxxx

zakariya
almost 15 years ago

how to download it

Sander Valcke
almost 15 years ago

Brilliant tutorial, followed it several times and keep being astonished by the result :)

Harvinder Puri
about 15 years ago

Well i am newbie to GIMP. Trying to switch from windows to linux with all softwares also. This is just an amazing tutorial, I follow all steps and what i get finally was just wow! Thanks to help peoples like me.

Joe
about 15 years ago

I could not get step 2(rounding the corners)to work as shown. I achieved a similar effect by blurring the text layer(transparent) a few times and then duplicating that layer 5-6 times until it looks good and then merging all of those layers together.

anay member for about 15 years anay 1 comment
about 15 years ago

i dont know where you got the shrink tool but i cant do that when i tried this, =[ if you can, can you explain more on part 3 and 4? thank you so much

sadie
almost 16 years ago

! Dracula !

tommytk member for almost 16 years tommytk 1 comment
almost 16 years ago

-*-

devvv member for over 17 years devvv 1475 comments
almost 16 years ago

the bumpmap and the layer itself must have exactly (!) the same size. try "layer / layer to image size" and redo the step then

Greg
almost 16 years ago

Step 8 says: "As bumpmap choose the channel we just created." My bumpmap list seems only to show layers and doesn't have my channel. Any hints?

tayfuralt?nba?
about 16 years ago

süper çocuklar prova:D:D:D

Trevor Andrews
over 16 years ago

Wow! very nice tutorial! I made a blood drip effect, but it dosent look nearly as good as this!