WIP using RobA's GIMP Tutorial

[jfrazierjr]

Alright, so I tried out Mountains, Forests and Rivers on the second part of RobA's tutorial.

The first time trying mountains was a disaster.

Practicing techniques 1-part2-ugly.jpg

Yea, my first couple of attempts came out crappy also. This is one of the reasons I started playing around with some other ways to do mountain fields. Think I finally have something I like....

The forests didn't come out super great, either.

Try DanChops mini tut on this thread: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=2087 I really like the way this effect looks in the end. He needs to make a proper tutorial out of it.
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Anyway, I deleted all the mountains, went back and tried again. I followed the basic tutorial as much as possible, but even by duplicating the mountain bumpmap layer, I couldn't get the same "pop" that RobA (and others) seem to get, nor the same variability in peak height.

Here's the second try:
Practicing techniques 1-part2-complete-Mountain1.jpg

Then, I decided to try out RobA's other Mountain Tutorial in the context of this map:
Practicing techniques 1-part2-complete-Mountain2.jpg

Then, for kicks and giggles, I combined the two. I allowed one of the two identical bumpmaps to overlay on top of the second mountain style:
Practicing techniques 1-part2-complete-Mountain3.jpg

Then I tried it with both duplicate bumpmaps on the second style:
Practicing techniques 1-part2-complete-Mountain4.jpg

Overall, I think I like the two combined, with only one extra bumpmap overlay, the most.

Yep, some of those look pretty good!

Didn't try redoing the forest yet, but started to try to carve out rivers. Issues: the forests completely cover the rivers in many places. I'll have to pick the brains of those who have figured out how to carve the rivers through the forests (and maybe later those who carve rivers through mountain canyons), and play with the rivers more to make them pop as well.

Select all your water (rivers and seas/oceans), create a layer mask (optional but recommended), run the bevel tool with 1-2 px. Make SURE you turn off the "make a copy" or whatever so you get it in the same layer. This will create that cut effect nicely. Then, apply the layer mask on whatever layers(forests, etc) and they all get cut out to make room for the river. Personally, I plan to play with adding ANOTHER forest layer with just a few small "bits" on top to cover the river in a few tiny places to better simulate real terrain.

Joe