Looking back at that last post, it's been awhile. That sci-fi map fell through, 'nuff said.
Over the last couple three months I've been working with Arsheesh's tutorial: Making Photo-realistic Trees in GIMP: A Mini-Tut. I ran into a problem that I finally figured out was an issue of scale. See, Arsheesh's tutorial teaches with a canvas size of about 1000px. My map is more than double that size at 2400px x 3200 px. The forests I was generating were far to smoothed out. I figured out that the issue had to do with Gimp's Render > Cloud filter. The filter seems to produce the same render irrespective of canvas size. For smaller, regional maps this is fine as the light/dark areas of the render provide more variation in forest canopy in the area selected for a forest. For larger maps, say continent size, your perspective is more zoomed out but the cloud render remains unchanged. When the area for a forest is selected there is actually less variation in the forest canopy resulting in a flatter looking forest. This ends up visually unappealing, kinda like a Christmas cookie with green sprinkles glued to the surface of your map. So, I started looking for alternatives.
I found a good alternative in the Felimage Noise filter. I spent hours experimenting with various settings and finally found something that worked pretty well. Using the Sparse Turbulence algorithm with a 15x15 scale and 5 octaves I was able to produce -
While I'm sure I have more to learn, I'm pretty happy with the results. I've already added another forest in the north between all the mountains. I have plans for two more - one in the eastern central area and the last in the south just north of the river. Once I have all the forests generated I'll upload a new version of the map.
It must be said, Arsheesh was very helpful in answering my questions and offering additional advice and alternatives. The problems I ran into were decidedly not a failure on the part of his tutorial they were specific to me and my map. I'm grateful to Arsheesh for all the help and encouragement he offered. If I could rep him a again, I would
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