Thread: A few quick questions on making a custom userbar

I'm curious how people make such nice backgrounds for their bars, like the deisgns, or patterns. let me show you what i mean



what makes it look glossed over like that? how do you get that striped deisgn? and what's the font being used.



I'd like to do similar things with my bars, please help me out here!

well there are a few things
(i work on photoshop)

1)the glossed look - if you look closely you will notice it has a round shape so what i did once is took the regular brush and sized it to 2500 pixels and minimized the zoom to the smallest so i could see the brush then did a new layer and painted that layer with the brush with white and then lowered the opacity until you find the right result

2)the pattern is easy - you make a new doc with size of 2 by 2. you take the pencil and size it 1 pixel and paint in black two pixels diagonally after this you go to the menu and press "Edit" -> "Define Pattern" or something like that and now you have that pattern :)
now go to the original userbar and go to blending options select "Pattern Overlay" and now select the pattern you created and choose the layout as "Overlay" and click OK.
if the pattern is too dense you can create a new pattern with 3 by 3 or 4 by 4 and do the same.

3) well i don't know if there is a specific font but i used the pencil to write ... you might think a lot of work but actually when you learn what to do with each letter it's easy
i would show but now it's a bit of a problem for me S:

this is some of the bars i did once so you would know this works :






as you can see i also added borders but that's optional and i played with it so there is no actual guide i just thought of some things and went with them

hope i helped :)

Originally Posted by Movieholic

well there are a few things
(i work on photoshop)

1)the glossed look - if you look closely you will notice it has a round shape so what i did once is took the regular brush and sized it to 2500 pixels and minimized the zoom to the smallest so i could see the brush then did a new layer and painted that layer with the brush with white and then lowered the opacity until you find the right result

2)the pattern is easy - you make a new doc with size of 2 by 2. you take the pencil and size it 1 pixel and paint in black two pixels diagonally after this you go to the menu and press "Edit" -> "Define Pattern" or something like that and now you have that pattern :)
now go to the original userbar and go to blending options select "Pattern Overlay" and now select the pattern you created and choose the layout as "Overlay" and click OK.
if the pattern is too dense you can create a new pattern with 3 by 3 or 4 by 4 and do the same.

3) well i don't know if there is a specific font but i used the pencil to write ... you might think a lot of work but actually when you learn what to do with each letter it's easy
i would show but now it's a bit of a problem for me S:

this is some of the bars i did once so you would know this works :






as you can see i also added borders but that's optional and i played with it so there is no actual guide i just thought of some things and went with them

hope i helped :)

thanks mate! got some questions though..

1. i do exactly what you say, but for some reason when i poisition my 2500 brush above the bar, it fills the entire layer, even if i only have the brush on the top half.

2.thanks, this is perfect!

3. you're crazy!! lol

I really like you're bars, and im wondering if you could tell me how you make borders?

Awesome work guys! Do you make those kind of bars just for yourselves or by request?

Originally Posted by pike

Awesome work guys! Do you make those kind of bars just for yourselves or by request?

Well I mostly do em by request over at TPS, not sure about movieholic though =p

this size of brush has a huge range and although you see the line of the brush it will paint beyond it so you will need to find where to place it so it will align in the right place
but that's what i remember and as i said i have a problem with my graphics card and i can see only in 800*600 and my regular res is 1440*900 so everything is smudged =/ so i can't see small details in photoshop ...

the main thing for the borders is to create a new layer and paint in white and make the filling to 0% then go to blending options and go to stroke and make it 1 pixel and just play with the filling type. i made some new patterns and used some gradients and mixed some colors around.

and thanks man :) i have some more bars and sigs i made but as i said i can't make anymore now because of my stupid graphics card :(

Originally Posted by pike

Awesome work guys! Do you make those kind of bars just for yourselves or by request?

i did them for myself :) but that's because i know what i want but other people have so much demands and they don't really know what they want so it's hard to make them for a person that has a problem with the worked he asked you to do.
but if that person has a very specific idea in his mind and willing to accept the work i will give him(which is the best i can deliver) so i can do it :)

Okay I understand it's hard to know what somebody really wants. And it's a waste of time if he/she doesn't like it.

I still need an avatar and sig over here and I think I will start a competition for it over here. But first I will think about what i want them to look like.

Once again, great work with the user bars!

well as i said i have some problems now but as soon as i will fix them and you will have a good idea of what you want i will try my best to make you a sig and avatar(though i never made any but i don't think it's a big deal :D)