Most of this book is about manipulating and combining existing image materials. However, the GIMP is also an excellent tool for creating and enhancing image materials. In particular, there are many tools in the GIMP that can be used to render image objects. By this, I mean that image objects can be made to look more three-dimensional by doting them with textures, shadings, lighting effects, and shadows. Many intriguing effects can be created in this way, and that is the subject of this chapter.
The first half of this chapter covers some basic GIMP tools useful for rendering. These include the Bucket Fill tool, the Gradient tool, the Emboss filter, and the Bump map filter. The second half of the chapter describes techniques for creating shadows and for combining these with several other image rendering techniques.