[Award Winner] Using GIMP to Create an Artistic Regional RPG Map

[RobA]

Yeah-

What Karro said

Re: the noise, if you create a nice square layer exactly centered on the basic heightfield, fill it with tileable noise (maybe turbulent), then convert it using the rectangular to polar filter, it can be used as a nice radial displacement map. It will probably also require a bit of 50% grey in the center to hide the pinching.

Attached is a sample overlay, along with a zip of the gradient I used initially.

-Rob A>

[Lewas5372]

I have been working on this for about 12 hours and its my first time with Gimp (Downloaded it for this tutorial). Now its time for bed but I just wanted to show everyone where I'm at. I'm not too happy with the forest but I'm pretty sure I can do better my next go around. I did have to make some adjustments because my mountain was blocking the sun. I think I did a pretty good job making the shadow. Anyway, I hope to work on it more tomorrow. So once again, RobA thank you so much for this wonderful Tutorial.

[Ascension]

Looks good, oh and we all struggle with forests

[Steel General]

Looks good, oh and we all struggle with forests

Amen to that!

[acosinus]

Hi all. I've just registered, and I want to say a big, BIG thanks to RobA for making this great tutorial! This is just what I needed - I'm a Linux user, and the stuff I've found for this purpose was either commercial software (which mostly required WINE to run), or obsolete and abandoned projects which didn't even remotely do what you can do with this tutorial.

So, once again, thank you very, very much! I'll start working on something serious as soon as time allows, and if you people like, I can post my accomplishments here.

BTW, I may have a solution for the dreaded forests - however I'll have to test them myself first, but I'll try to stay in touch and give back to the community as much as I can (not that it'll be much - you guys are a league way beyond mine here, at least for now).

Cheers!

[Highlieche]

RobA;

Once again i come to you for help. When i try to get the mountain layers onto my map it blocks out the actual map. But from your photos in the tut, it isnt supposed to do that. Help plz?

[RobA]

@Highlieche-

Can you post a sample?

-Rob A>

[Jallorn]

I'm stuck trying to make my forests.

Use the magic wand again to select the non-mountain area (like with the land) and create a new layer called “Mountains Mask” with a white on black. (Also the white colour selection as a new selection mask using Select->Save to Channel).

What does that mean? Particularly the part about "a white on black". The weird thing is I had forests yesterday before my program froze and I lost the work, and now I can't get them any more. Prompt help would be appreciated.

What I see it as now is to make the forest parts white and the non-forest parts black, but then normalizing the color doesn't do anything. I tried skipping that step but that didn't work either.

[Gidde]

Thanks for posting that crater, Rob, that will come in handy on my map for LadyTear

Jallorn, it looks like you're missing a step. A lot of the steps in this tut follow this pattern: make a new layer (all black), put a filled outline on it (in white), blur, noise, normalize, do something. Sounds like you skipped the blur & noise steps somewhere.

[Jallorn]

Post 11:Let There be Mountains

Before you continue, there is a better way I found to make mountains located over here. It works well with the rest of this tutorial, and seems much easier and predictable than what follows here...


The technique for making the mountains is very similar to that of making the land. Because we have an idea for a map, we will start in this case by sketching a blurred representation of where they should be. Otherwise, just use one of the random techniques:

Create a new layer “Mountains”. Fill in white for the general areas of the mountain ranges, and apply a 50 px (or so) Gaussian blur. It is helpful to keep the original sketch on top with reduced opacity to act as a guide. Don’t worry about going in to the sea, because we can we can erase those areas later:
Attachment 1485

Now the noise layer (I used detail 8 and size of and set the blend mode to multiply. Then add a third layer (remember the TLS) as a clipping layer, and use the levels dialog to bring it down to show the mountains you want Here is the screen showing the three layers
Attachment 1486

Use the magic wand again to select the non-mountain area (like with the land) and create a new layer called “Mountains Mask” with a white on black. (Also the white colour selection as a new selection mask using Select->Save to Channel).

Now we want to create a heightfield from this. The easiest way I have found to do this is to copy the current visible image (Edit->Copy Visible) then paste it (CTRL-V) to a floating selection. Click the New Layer button to get it on its own layer rather than a floating layer. Now stretch the colour range out (Color->Auto->Normalize):
Attachment 1487

Rename this layer to “mountain colour”. Make a duplicate and call it “mountain bump map”. Now set the foreground colour to “lowest dirt” and the background colour to “highest dirt”, and on the “mountain colour” layer, do a Color->Map->Gradient Map.
Attachment 1488

Normalize the colours (Colors->Auto->Normalize) and add a layer mask, using the mountain mask channel. (Note, the Dirt layer was turned of in this image by accident).
Attachment 1489

I dunno, I'm pretty sure I've gotten everything before that step. I mostly just don't understand what to do there.