Quote Originally Posted by Karro View Post
I'm still not quite sure how you do those long snaking range ridgelines. They do bear somewhat of a resemblance to what they actually look like from sat-photos (although I also think sat photos of mountains look peculiar, but you capture that in a good way!)
Hmm.. well, in this case, I just used the same technique you used based on RobA's tutorial. I am currently working on another variation of the samething, but in this one, I just(going off of memory):

  1. create a transparent layer
  2. filled a random selection with a 50% gray
  3. using a med brush set to high jitter, draw some white very squiggly lines (these are going to be the valleys in the picture)
  4. Noise around 20-30px
  5. Blur perhaps 10-20 px. You want to maintain a small bit of the pixelation but not too much.
  6. new transparent layer
  7. using the same technique you used draw your mountains on the new layer in the mostly empty areas between the blurred white/gray lines of the layer below.
  8. use the smudge tool to clean up some of the hard lines on the edges of your mountains will help it blend in below.
  9. merge down and bump map the whole thing.


I am also working a lot with the smudge/airbrush tool to try to get some vertical ridgelines, clefts, etc. while maintaining the "point" of most of the ridges. In a few places, I intentionally smudge the white of the ridge line to make not all of the mountain tops pointy.

Joe