Tiho Ramovic shared a cutaway of a Ferrari F50 he created with renderings out of KeyShot. It’s a simple process and he was kind enough to also provide a short tutorial about how he created it. You can download the PDF from the forum post and we’ve recreated it below for your reference. He uses an exquisite model of a Ferrari F50 for the example that takes you through a few steps in Photoshop and a simple lesson on Layer masks.
Creating 3D Cutaways
While this can be done in many image editing programs, this tutorial assumes you have access and foundational understanding of Photoshop and its tools. For those new to Photoshop, you can read this great Getting Started with Photoshop article from sitepoint.
To create a cutaway, as shown above, you first need to render out separate images of the model using the same camera settings for each. For example: the first render is the car body, the second render is the car frame and so on. For this particular image, I rendered four separate images as shown below.
After you render all the images, import them to Photoshop. Every image is on their own layer keeping in mind that the image of the car body must be on top of all the other layers. It should look something like this:
There are few ways to create a cutaway. You can use the eraser tool to erase part of top layer and show part of the layer below or you can use layer masks which preserve your image by only masking the portions you apply a color to. Here, I will show you how to make transparent areas using layer masks. First, make sure you are on the top layer. Then, select the area you want to be transparent, either using the magnetic lasso tool or marquee tools. Now, we need to Feather (Select, Modify, Feather…) the edges of the selection, ensuring a smooth transition from transparent to opaque. The feather radius depends on how gradual a transition area you want. Here I used radius of 15 pixels.
Now, create a layer mask by clicking: Layer/Add Layer Mask/Reveal All. A layer mask icon will appear on the right side of the selected layer in the layer window. It is important to switch to our layer mask by clicking on it once to select it. Next, we will paint it. After you switch to the layer mask, select the brush tool and select black as the primary color, adjusting the opacity of the brush somewhere between 30%-50%. Start painting over the previously selected area of the picture, you will notice how the layer underneath it starts to appear. If you need to make the area more transparent just increase the brush opacity and repeat brushing.
After brushing with 27% brush opacity:
And after some more brushing:
As you can see that’s pretty much it. Other transparent areas of the car were made using the same method. After this, I increased contrast a little bit and sharpened the image.
