by Didik Wijaya

After reading a discussion thread in Escalight Forum, I decided to write this tutorial. In forum. one of our member, Skappa, posted a tutorial about creating a wireframe and transparent globe. But unfortunately it seems other people have difficulties when following the tutorial. So, I wrote this tutorial based on tutorial posted in that thread. I also modified and simplified a little bit. Hope this tutorial useful for everyone. Credits should also goes to Skappa. Thanks for participating in the forum and answering other people's question.

1.First, begin with Photoshop. We will use material for creating transparent and wireframe globe in 3ds max. Therefore you need to prepare bitmap image for opacity channel. You need earth map like image below. You can obtain original image from here. Open this file in Photoshop.

2. Activate Eyedropper Tool (shortcut I). From top menu, Select>Color Range. Click blue color in image. In Color Range window, adjust Fuzziness until all blue color is selected. Click OK

From top menu, Edit>Fill. Use black color to fill sea area. Choose Select>Inverse, to inverse the selection. This time fill with white color. Deselect the selection (Ctrl+D)

3. Watch your image closely. You'll see some grey areas. To remove this, from top menu Image>Adjustment>Threshold. Adjust Threshold Level until you have only black and white color.

4. Image below show finished bitmap. Save as GIF or JPG file.

Creating Transparent And Wireframe Globe Part 1 | Part 2

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