Thread: Looking for help on making a cliff

I'd do this with a few layers. First you have your land layer. Then you have a rock layer, put a soft chisel bevel on that with a big size so that it covers the rock and creates striations. Copy the land layer, put it on top, and erase out the middle where the cliff and river are leaving the rock layer to show through.

Ok, i gave it a shot. How's this (it's at 50% scale; the map is 20 inches on a side)?

Not too shabby if you ask me. It doesn't look like a big cliff - for that just increase the size of the bevel and erase a bit more on that side on the top layer...you get the idea. Also the bridge looks to be really big compared to the trees - reduce the size, split it in the middle, spread it out, copy chunks out of the middle, and then piece it back together. Overall looks good.

Hmm...more like the trees are too small. One square is 5 feet.

Thanks for pointing it out, though!

Bear in mind that though I use Photoshop/GIMP for some design functions, I mostly create maps using a Vector drawing program, in my case, Xara Xtreme Pro 4.0. However the technique should end up with the same results.

I create cliffs by creating various beveled layers each with its own texture, beveling, and shadow properties, then create the next layer and stack it on top, repeating this process, until I achieve what I am after.

Though I have several cliff designs made in this style, here's one from April of last year...

Note the last map towards the bottom of the page - entry with two other maps in it...

Cliff map

You should be able to emulate that in PS or GIMP as well.

GP

I recognized that bridge from the DJ forums.

Later in that post I posted the same bridge with the shadows/highlights foxed and a perspective sag added.

The scale doesn't work on your map, however, so I adjusted the scale, widened the boards and rotated the bridge to match your scenery a bit better, also adding a bit of shadow in the gorge to show the difference a bit of touch-up effort makes when working with stock objects.

For your convenience here is the widened, rotated version if you wish to replace yours:


-Rob A>

n0oB question here, but how does one perform a "chisel bevel" in GIMP?

.TM7

A little late to the party but I was messing with a automated Photoshop map file thingie I have and made me a new cliff...

Cliffs and craters

Let me know if you want the recipe and I'll post it here.

- Joel Fagin

Of course we do! And here's some rep in expectation.