To make the dyson sphere I began with this source, I've added a gradient map and tweaked the contrast til I'm about happy with it. Note: I've cut out the window parts. This is important because we'll be putting a glow in behind there later.
Next we set up a couple of guides, in line with the outer edges of the hole in the top of the sphere.
add a new layer below the sphere and call it "static". On this layer draw a 1 pixel high white rectangle then select Noise->add Noise from the Filter menu
Make sure "Monochromatic" is ticked and then twiddle about with the slider til the line breaks up with grey spots, like so
Then click "OK"
Now stretch the static layer toward the top and bottom of the screen, like so
I've set the layer blending mode to "screen" and dropped the opacity down to about 15%
Next we move the two vertical guides in toward the center and add a whole bunch of horizontal ones like so.
You could do this freehand but I'm shooting for a nice tight sine wave so I use the guides
using the pen tool and the guide intersections draw a path like so
Now we need to go to the brush menu and choose a nice sized brush with a good hard edge. We're going to stroke on the path we've just drawn and stroke always uses the currently selected tool preset. Create a new layer, called "thick beam" click on the "Paths" tab (if you can't see paths, select it in the windows menu), right click on "work path" (the path you just made) and choose "Stroke Path" from the menu. Make sure that "brush" is selected on the little panel that pops up and click "OK" If you did all that right it should now look like this
Now pop up to the edit menu and choose Transform Path->Flip Horizontal. Reduce the size of your brush, add a new layer called "thin beam" and stroke the path again.
I've cleared the guides now cos I'm finished with them.
Okay, so far so good, we've got a couple of nice even sine energy beams but, let's face it, they're a bit boring. Time to tart them up a bit with blending effects
I've added an outer glow to both my beams, dropped the opacity to about 50% and, while I was at it, I added a colour fill to my static layer to make it a bit more yellowy
Well that's better but it still aint screaming "Awesome!" at me. Time to roll out the big guns - fairy sparkles!If you read my last tutorial you'll know how to set up a spray brush. To prove I'm a one-trick-pony I'm going to use exactly the same technique here only with a different brush shape. Preset 70 to be precise.
Create a new layer, call it "fairy sparkles" (go on - I dare ya!) and spray some magical pixie goodness along the beams.
Finally we need to set up some glow around the windows and beam exits. Create a new layer above the main sphere, called "glow", set blending mode to "hard light" and spray some yellow on like so
Okay so the plain black background isn't helping here. Let's see how this bad boy looks against the Habisphere background which I'll be showing you how to do next time.
(I've increased the brightness and contrast at the top just to emphasise the glow)