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forte-girl7 — Tutorial: Shading with Masks in SAI
Published: 2012-07-21 22:01:44 +0000 UTC; Views: 50856; Favourites: 1110; Downloads: 793
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Part 2 of the Paint Tool Sai tutorial! This bit covers shading with Masks! Hope it helps!Also, I do have to thank ~BechnoKid for originally teaching me how to do this. Passing the knowledge onto you!
Part 1 - Colouring with the Fill Bucket: [link]
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Comments: 90
Someone asked something similar a while ago - with a Mask, you can have a few layers separate the shading layer from the colour layer. For example, I usually have another layer above my colour layer for stuff like glasses and stuff. The Mask isn't affected by that other layer between it and the layer it Masks.
On the other hand, with a Clip, at least what I've noticed in SAI, it only affects the layer directly underneath it. So if you tried to put something between the Clip layer and the colour layer, it would affect that new layer in between.
Of course, I'm not really sure on it - that's just what I've noticed when playing around.
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haha i tried using mask today, and thats totally not my cup of tea!
but thank you for explaning, youre a wonderful person for doing all these tutorials
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Aww, well at least you tried it out! Glad to have been of some help
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I'm holding down ctrl and clicking and it's not selecting anything. Any suggestions?
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Yeah - here. Okay, you have your three layers, yes? Lineart Layer, a blank Layer for the Mask, and then the Colour Layer. You'll see the little tiny thumbnails for them in the Layers box - to the left of their name, okay? While the blank layer is still active, you Ctrl+Click the thumbnail image next to the Colour Layer, that should cause the marching ants to appear. Then you just click the Mask button
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Thanks for explaining in clearer detail! I had no idea you could select everything on a specific layer. Thanks so much <3
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No problem : ) Hope that helped ^^
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Had I known about this sooner I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. Boy do I feel silly.
Thank you for this magnificent tutorial.
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Gosh, this helped me soo much! Thank you so much for this tutorial!
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Simple: Hold down the Ctrl key and left click whilst holding.
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thank you for the tutorial it really helped me do things much faster!
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You!
Yes you!
Thank you so much for this! This will save me so much time when shading. I feel kind of stupid now for not knowing how to do this. >.>
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Really, REALLY helpful tutorial 
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Could be. I'm not sure off the top of my head how to make Masks on Photoshop or GIMP, as I don't use them that often.
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I don't really have either photoshop or gimp, but I use one of the free applications "Fotoshop" and it HAS layer masks on it. And they are rather easy to make.
But SAI is still my dream.
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Ahh I see. Well, GIMP is a free application - it's actually one of those decent alternatives for Photoshop. I used to use it A LOT back in the day (ha that makes me sound old ><) before my friend introduced me to SAI. You can find a download here: [link]
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I don't really look forward to getting GIMP that much, I DID have Photoshop sime time ago but there was nothing THAT new in it, and thank you so much for the link!
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Oh well, alrighty. It's there if you need it - it is a good program considering it's free.
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I know. I've seen it in action, it does seem pretty good and interesting to me. And I don't really use any non-free programs xD
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What colour are you actually using to do the shading? I'm guessing you're using a single grey (or a black with the opacity of the shading layer turned down). Do you use the same colour throughout or do you vary it to get different levels of shading on different areas? Some artists advocate going over the colour with the same colour again in the multiply layer to get an effect somewhat like colouring over a marker coloured image with the same marker after it's dried.
I'm asking out of curiosity, and also because I think it's something that needs mentioning in your tutorial.
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Oh, well, I'm only using one colour - a blue-ish gray, seeing as shadows are not pure black and white. It's said that shadows are actually blue, so I usually use a blue-based shading colour.
When I just do cell-shading like this, I usually use just on colour. You can do whatever you want when it comes to shading for one; I said for this I would be cell shading. If you want, I can do a short shading tutorial later on.
Also, SAI does have a Marker tool that can somewhat simulate that effect as well - I just don't use that Tool that often.
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can i ask.
what is teh different then using preserve opacity, clipping group, and masking?
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*the
Well, to be honest, I don't know the difference between the Clip Layer option and a Mask. The only think I noticed is that a Clipped Layer is highly dependent on the ordering of you layers, where Masking isn't as... picky.
For example, I think the Clip Layer only allows you to affect an area based off the layer before it. With a Mask, I can have as many layers as I want between the Shading Mask layer and the colour layer that the Mask is based off of. This is how I do layers for like... glasses where it's just a solid colour with the opacity turned down.
I guess that kind of takes back my not knowing the difference; that is a noticeable difference I suppose, hahaha.
In regards to preserving the opacity, that works great when you want to like... gel lines or change a whole colour or something, but when it comes to shading and you have shadows that continue into a different colour section, trying to paint in a shadow individually is just time consuming and a tad sloppy, even if you're using separate layers for each colour. With a Mask, being as it's over the colours, you can use a continuous stroke when putting in shadows.
Does that help?
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just asking..but what's a threshold?
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The threshold is basically how strong or how much the tool you're using will work. I guess it adjusts the sensitivity of the current tool you're working with.
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Oh, so that's what it does. Thanks and great tutorial!
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Thank you so much for the tutorials; they are extremely helpful! I'm off to play around with Sai now~
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Thank you so much! This is very helpful.
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I'm curious, do you use just one color to shade? If so, what do you tend to use?
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Usually. I mean, I used to use just darker shades of each colours. However, it depends on the mood of the image and the other colour schemes. I usually use a gray-based blue or purple, but you can use whatever colour you want really.
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Omg thanks 4 this, i was wondering how people got such good shading and colouring on sai XD
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