by Melissa Raissa

Created on: February 04, 2010

Ornament balls are common decorations during Christmas time and often comes in simple silver, gold and metallic finishes but certainly not limited to these. There are also those that have beautiful graphics or messages along the surface which depicts a more whimsical and cozy feel that is opportune to the season.

Creating a spherical design is very easy to do using a graphics software such as GIMP, a freely distributed imaging program that has the same capabilities as most commercial software.

GIMP has various sphere designer filters that enables you to render three-dimensional spheres quite easily in just a few clicks.

 Creating A Metallic Ornament Ball

In a previous article, I've discussed how to use the Sphere Designer filter you can find GIMP to make a sphere or an oblate spheroid commonly known as egg-shape. However, GIMP has another sphere rendering filter which is more appropriate for making spheres with graphical or text designs along surface.

The Spinning Globe filter wraps your current canvas or image to form a sphere, thus allowing you to create decorative sphere images using your own pictures, posters and other graphic or text designs. Just like the Spinning Globe term implies, this filter is also used for making rotating sphere images.

It follows the same rule as the Sphere Designer filter in making a perfect sphere, wherein you have to specify equal height and width for your canvas, otherwise you'll be rendering an egg-shaped image instead. Once you have your square blank canvas, fill the whole area with metallic gradient using the Blend Tool.

Activate the Blend Tool at the Toolbox dock or click TOOLS->PAINT TOOLS->BLEND at the menu bar. Select the Gold gradient or other metallic gradient of your choice then drag your cursor all the way across your canvas. Once the gradient is applied, click FILTERS->ANIMATION->SPINNING GLOBE.

At the Spinning Globe dialog box, set the Frames to 1 and make sure the Transparent Background and Work On Copy boxes are checked. Setting the number of Frames to more than 1 allows you to have different rotary views of your sphere image and you can also make a rotating sphere image by using a GIF file extension.

Creating A Graphic Ornament Ball

Open a graphic or text image of your choice or create a temporary image by drawing random shapes on your canvas. Once you have your graphic or drawing, crop it into an even square for a perfect sphere shape. Using the Rectangle Select tool, highlight a portion of your canvas then press the SHIFT key for a perfect square shape before releasing the mouse button. At the menu bar, click IMAGE->CROP TO SELECTION.

Once you've acquired a square portion of your canvas, click FILTERS->ANIMATION->SPINNING GLOBE at the menu bar. At the dialog box, specify the settings just as before or you can try setting the number of Frames to a higher value. The more number of frames, the longer it will take for the filter to render the sphere. Once rendered, save the working copy as a GIF file. You now have your own custom ornament ball design.

You can also convert this file into an animated rotating sphere by saving it as GIF but adjusting some options that will save it as animation. At the file menu, click FILE->SAVE AS and save still using the GIF extension but this time, click the second option that says SAVE AS ANIMATION and check LOOP FOREVER before saving your file. Open your new GIF file on your Internet browser to see the resulting animated image.

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