K! One of the clearest tutorials I've seen.

that's what's supposed to happen. on the gradient there are colors, on inside an one around it (fading into each other), with the circular border around both. when you first select it, both colors are white, so you cant see where they are. what u need to do is go to the color tab, and make color 1 transparent, using the (i'm not sure what it's called), labeled "Alpha" in the top right, by dragging the little bar-thingy left (or typing 0 into the number box next to it). change the line color to 0 as well. next you can change the color of color 2 and modify it's transparency however you like. you might want to change the item's size (in the Transform tab), as well. i think it says how in another thread. i dont know how to explain that part.

hope this helps.

I think you could try just shading them in a normal way first- dark gradients in shadowed areas, and lighter ones as highlights. Then, use small white gradient circles on each of the knuckles. Not sure how useful that is, but it's an idea- hope it helps.

My problem is with the shadow gradient, it doesn't work the same way with hands. I've tried hiding a duplicate hand under the first and masking a transparent grey insignia over that, but it's hard to get it to match up with the arm.

This might be an obvious and/or dumb question, but you would use this same technique to do lighting effects, right? I've seen some pretty amazing effects…a great, recent example would be like DJuby's Rustbuckett (http://www.heromachine.com/blo…..uckett.JPG).

ams said

Yes you can. Good example. I also use it to get a reflection/shine effect off of metal items.

Reveal Spoiler

Thanks a lot! Will start playing around with this.