The Creation of the BYU-UUG Logo

26 Jun 2002

It all began on a rainy spring morning. Clouds covered the sky and the light in the house was dim. He sat at his typewriter, pecking away at yet another wasted masterpiece, when a knock came to the door. Strange, he thought. No one should be up this early. He stood and began to walk to the door, thinking about how on earth he could get Florida Bob to escape the spider nest before the three Mafia members stormed the treasury. He looked through the hole and promptly fell to the floor.

Whoops, wrong story. The real one is perhaps more on the boring side, I'm afraid. :) It wasn't very hard to create the BYU Unix Users Group logo. Just a lot of messing around, randomly trying effects, hoping for something cool.

But of course such random effects are reproduceable (I hope). The first part of the logo, the background, was created in POV-Ray. It was then postprocessed in the GIMP. Without further ado, then:

Step 1. Create checker.pov by downloading the file from that link or by copying the following code and pasting it into a file.

/* checker.pov */

#include "colors.inc"

camera 
{
    location <-2, 4, -4>
    look_at  <0, 0.5, 0>
}

sphere
{
    <0, 0.8, 0>, 1.2
    pigment
	{
        color White
        filter 1
    }
    finish
    {
        diffuse 0.2
        ambient 0.1
        reflection 0.25
        specular 0.6
        roughness .1
    }
    interior
    {
        ior 5
    }
}

sphere
{
    <0, 0, 0>, 8
    pigment
    {
        color White
        filter 1
    }
    finish
    {
        diffuse 0.2
        ambient 0.1
        reflection 0.5
        specular 0.6
        roughness .1
    }
    interior
    {
        ior 8
    }
}

plane
{
    y, -1
    texture
    {
        pigment
        {
            checker color White, color Black
        }
        finish
        {
            diffuse 0.4
            ambient 0.2
            phong 1
            phong_size 100
            reflection 0.5
        }
    }
}

light_source
{
    <2, 10, -5>
    color White
    spotlight
    radius 15
    falloff 18
    tightness 10
    area_light <1, 0, 0>, <0, 0, 1>, 2, 2
    adaptive 1
    jitter
    point_at <0, 0, 0>
}

Step 2. Render at 800x600 with a nice quality level:

	x-povray +ichecker.pov +w800 +h600 +qr +a0.9

Step 3. Open the resulting file in the GIMP. It may complain about the PNG file being corrupt, but don't worry about that. (If you've told POV-Ray to render to TGA or something else, you probably won't get this "PNG error. File corrupted?" error message. If you do, something has gone horribly wrong. Horribly. Make sure there's no one in your cellar. Keep all the lights on and call a friend over. Safety in numbers.) This is what the image should look like. (Keep in mind that there's no reason you need to stick to this tutorial. If an artistic fancy strikes you, turn the other cheek and go with it. Be free.)

Step 4. Right-click on the image and select Image->Scale Image. Click in the New Width entry (as you can see in the figure below) and change the 800 to 500. Click OK.

Step 5. In the Layers dialog, click on the Duplicate Layer icon. The GIMP authors aren't sure yet whether this constitutes cloning and needs to be dealt with in the legal arena. But for now mum's the word -- if you won't tell anyone, they won't tell anyone.

Step 6. Select the Background layer.

Step 7. Select All (Control-A).

Step 8. Select the Bucket Fill tool.

Step 9. Make white the main color by clicking on the double-headed arrow.

Step 10. Click in the image window to fill the layer with white. This is what the layers window should look like now:

Step 11. Select the Background Copy layer. (Click on it.)

Step 12. Right click on the layer and choose "Add Layer Mask." Make sure you get one with two holes so you can see through it. Masks without any eyeholes aren't any fun, unless you're Superman and can see through anything but lead. (Side note: if you're Superman, you probably won't be wearing masks without any eyeholes. One would hope you would be saving people falling off the side of the Niagara Falls and such. And if you really are Superman, I want your autograph.)

Step 13. A dialog entitled "Add Mask Options" will pop up. Make sure it's set to White (Full Opacity). Click OK.

Step 14. Double-click on the color selector. Where it says "Hex Triplet," type in #424242. Don't worry, this is not a secret combination. It may look like one, but you can tell anyone you want to about it.

Step 15. Select the Bucket Fill tool and click inside the image window to fill it. The image window will become quite white now, although the layer mask in the Layers window will look dark gray. Layer masks are just that: masks. If a layer mask is white, it lets the whole layer show through. If a layer mask is black, none of the layer shows through. #424242 is a shade of gray between the two extremes, so the layer shows through partly, as if behind a curtain. It looks white because the Background layer underneath it is white; if the Background layer were black, it would look dark and black. (Yes, this paragraph really is serious. It's not a joke, I promise.)

Step 16. Click on the Selection Tool.

Step 17. Select an area starting at 0, 150 (150 pixels down on the left border) and make it 500x75. This creates a band across the image. The band can actually be any size you want, really.

Step 18. Fill the band with color #adadad. Refer to previous steps for exact details on how to do this. The layer window should now look like this:

Step 19. Unselect the band. You can do this by hitting Shift-Ctrl-A or by right-clicking in the image window and choosing Select->None. This step is actually unnecessary.

Step 20. Now create a new layer by clicking on the New Layer button in the Layer window. Make sure it has a transparent background.

Step 21. Make white your main color. (There are a few different ways to do this. But they're all secret, so you'll have to figure them out yourself.)

Step 22. Select the Text tool and click in the image window (it doesn't matter where). Choose the font you want to use. I used the SF Automaton font at 36 point. Type in the text for the logo.

Here's what the text window should look like, if you're using SF Automaton:

Step 23. Click OK. Center the text (I usually do this by cutting (Control-X), pasting (Control-V), selecting the move tool (hitting 'M' should do that) and then maneuvering the text with the arrow keys). When you find a good spot, anchor the layer (either right-click and choose Layers->Anchor Layer, or use Control-H). You should see white text in the center of your image.

Step 24. Right-click in the image and select Filters->Blur->Blur. Set the repeat value to 2 and click OK. Your vision is growing blurry. It is becoming hard to walk. Perhaps you'd better lie down. Perhaps I need to see a psychiatrist.

Step 25. Right-click in the image again and select Filters->Blur->Gaussian Blur (IIR). Set the blur radius to 7 and click OK. All this blurring makes a kind of glow behind the text.

The image should now look approximately like this:

Step 26. Create a new layer, also with a transparent background. This will be where the real logo goes.

Step 27. Select color #0b0d2d. Select the Text tool and click in the image window. Click OK. Center the text. The layers window should look like this:

Step 28. Pat yourself on the back. Congratulations, you're done!

Final image: