The download button below will send a .zip or SIT file winging your way depending on OS choice, containing a preset for FiberOptix and source images. Inside the archive you'll find a .kpt5 file that you can import in to the Preset Manager of FiberOptix. You'll also find a Photoshop document containing the finished results.

NOTE: If you are not using Photoshop, your host may not support transparency editing, or editing outside of the selection set by the filter. This tutorial requires both these features to work properly (drawing fibers outside the selected area is required to 'grow' the tinsel).

Step 2: The Path.

Step 3: Launching the Filter.

Before you launch FiberOptix, select your stroke so that the system knows where to grow the fibers. We're going to launch it on the layer that has our brush stroke, so that we get a 'background' to the center of the tinsel.

In Photoshop, you can select the contents of the layer by Ctrl-Clicking (Windows) or Cmd-Clicking (Mac) the layer in the Layer panel.

Once you have selected the contents of the layer, launch the filter.

Step 4: Fiber Controls.

Our tinsel needs to have a moderate length to it and be packed densely along the path. To do this we set the Fiber Length down fairly low, then set the Fiber Density high, as seen in the screen shot above.

Fiber Tapering controls how 'pointy' the fibers are. Tinsel tends to be made of hundreds of thin rectangular strips, so we want to make sure there is no taper at all. For some odd reason, that means taking the Fiber Tapering slider all the way to the right (aren't you glad you had a tutorial now?).

Fiber Flatness controls how 'flat to the screen' the fibers are produced, basically how much they stand up. Because Tinsel tends to stick out at all angles, we want to make sure the Flatness is turned off, by dragging the slider all the way to the left.

Finally, make sure the 'Direction Intensity' slider is set to 0, that slider controls how much the fibers move in the Direction Angle direction, and we don't want them 'sagging', we want them sticking straight out from the mask.

Step 5: Noise.

Set the noise type to a standard Perlin Noise using the menu, then set the noise scale down really low. The larger the scale, the more 'wavy' the noise becomes, and tinsel isn't known for being wavy. Hair, on the other hand, would probably benefit from a larger scale.

Step 6: Mask.

For our tinsel, we want to make sure that the mask beneath isn't just solid black, as it was when we imported it. To do that, we turn the menu at the top to 'shaded', which indicates that a basic ShapeShifter like bevel is to be applied to it underneath the fibers.

The Mask Bevel Width slider controls how much bending there is on the surface of the mask. The stroke needs to be rounded, you can play with the slider until it gets that effect. In our example, the value shown above is about right. As you take this slider too far to the right, you'll see the fibers start to project from the center of the mask's bounding box, which is wrong in this case because we want them to project from the stroke as if it was cylindrical.

Finally, we set up our noise in Step 5, let's apply it by sliding the Blend Noise To Mask slider to the right! This blends in the noise with the growth pattern of the fibers, and can create interesting clumping effects. It's useful when you want to give the fibers a more natural and chaotic look. Don't tweak the slider too high, or the fibers will start to look wavy and odd. All we want to do is create some slight 'clumping' by influencing their direction subtly.

Step 7: Fiber Color.

The most important thing to note here is the button next to the color picker, which currently indicates we are producing Metal fibers. Metallic fibers shine differently when a light is on them, producing a metallic highlight based on the color of the fiber, as opposed to a plastic highlight which is always white. This gives our tinsel a more realistic look.

The color itself is quite dark, because we're going to apply lighting to brighten it up a bit.

Mix Gradient Color allows you to add color from the gradient bar to the length of the fiber (left hand color at the 'root', right had color at the 'tip'). We don't want that in this case, though you might play around with blending some in for interesting metallic effects. Try purple at the root, and a slightly lighter blue at the tip.

Mix Flat Color mixes in the color we selected in the color picker, so slide this all the way to the right to make sure that's the only color we get. If you create a brightly colored stroke, you can slide this slider all the way left to get the color of the paint stroke expressed in the fibers.

Luma Variance applies random variance to how bright the fibers are, make sure we have a fair amount of this to get some variance over the length of the path, that makes it look like the fibers are twisted, some reflecting more than others.

Fiber Transpareny should be at 0, we don't want to see through them.

Step 8: 3-D Lighting.

1 - Make sure all of your lights have sharp highlights. That's done by making sure the bottom button of the three buttons to the right has the sharp circle 'lit' as in the image above. Do this for all of your lights. A sharp highlight gives a surface a more 'polished' look and will create some extremes of light in your tinsel.

2 - Put in some highlight only lights. Make sure that you have a few lights in there that have their Light Brightness turned to 0, and some fairly spread and strong highlights. These lights can be used to light up specific areas of the tinsel where you feel there should be a highlight.

3 - Try color! Colored lights can produce interesting color interactions on the surface of the tinsel, especially as we have Metal highlights turned on so the colour isn't turning to white so easily.

Step 9: Hit Apply...

The background was done with KPT 6 Materializer, just for something to place it against...

Enjoy!