TreeThing

[Jaxilon]

Looks good - this is Photoshop only, yes? Or do we have one for Gimp as well?

[Dain]

Looks good - this is Photoshop only, yes? Or do we have one for Gimp as well?

This is an external program so you can use what you get with any program you're good with. PS, Gimp, PaintShopPro, basically any software that implements layers

[ravells]

I just can't believe how terrific that looks! I'm glad you took a break from writing to become a cartographer / computer programmer par extraordinairre!

[Ramah]

Cheers Ravs.

I've uploaded a new version in the original post that fixes the bug with the "Remove Misplaced Trees" code and also fixes a bug I discovered when checking that which was preventing the program from saving all layers. :s

Hopefully everything is working as intended up to now.

If anyone finds any other bugs then let me know please. Cheers.

[RecklessEnthusiasm]

Hey guys, I thought that this tree program might be useful for a lot more than trees, so I made some (bad) experimental brushes for mountains and tried them out. The program seems to automatically downsize large brushes automatically a good bit, so the objects came out pretty pixilated--resizing them and applying a filter or two in photoshop fixed that a little bit. It would be neat if changing the size of the actual brushes would adjust the resolution of the actual output rather than being resized, (to better accommodate making a really large 300dpi map), but this is still amazingly useful.

The only peculiarity was that sometimes it applies the wrong shadow and shading to the wrong mountain, but I can't help but thinking maybe that was my fault somehow.

Basically, I was thinking about making a mountain brush set and a hill brush set as well. Then I could make a continent shape, three different masks indicating where I wanted each feature (mountains, hills, and trees) then click, click, click, I'd have a crazy-easy way to generate tolkien-esque maps.

Anyway, really amazing program, Ramah. You'll get some well deserved rep from me.

[Ramah]

Glad to see someone is experimenting. I'm especially glad someone has ventured into making their own brushes for it. And yes, I would suspect that the fault with the shading going wrong sometimes would be yours. Probably with the naming of the shade file or something. Couldn't be my fault. No way, no sir.

By the way, I have pages of notes already on how to make a MountainThing program. Unfortunately the way the current program works with placing trees really doesn't gel with how I would want mountain/hill placement to work so it means a complete rewrite of that code, which is basically the heart of the program. The good news is that it's the rest of the gubbins, the UI and implementing the various ideas on how to make it more useful that takes the longest to do and most of that will be reusable from TreeThing.

If you got a mountain range to work how you wanted it to be with the current program then you would be pretty lucky.

Anyway, it's on my to do list. Along with half a dozen other things I never seem to have time for. Hehe.

[Ramah]

New version posted up. Changes are...

New version - 0.6

1) Fixed the "Remove Misplaced Trees" function so that it should work properly now. It is customisable in the bottom bar to increase/decrease allowed tolerance of what constitutes a misplaced tree. Making it too large will probably create strange results.
2) Added a "Remove Overlapping Trees" function. This will do as it says on the tin and remove all overlapping trees. So if you want a forest with no overlapping, feel free to add larger jitters than normal.
3) Edited all the brush sets so that they now all have reverse shading. (removed original Vaniya set as shading was built in... and they were crap. )
4) Added "Merge masks" which doesn't do a lot other than to remove any tolerance on masks clipping so that if you want a blanket forest with merged trees you can use this layer and just stroke it in post imaging.
5) Renamed certain things to make way for expansion into hills and mountains.
6) Changed the filename specifications on the brush masks to "mask" instead of "alpha" as this just makes more sense.
7) Various little bits and bobs.


Edit: Forgot to add... with the "Remove Misplaced Tree" function it currently doesn't resize its parameters depending on tree size like it does for other things. So this will probably need manually adjusting if you change tree scale for now. I intended to fix it for this post but I ran out of time and doubt I'll get chance to work on it for a few days now and wanted to get this out.

[sigurdbjohansson]

how about a manual for the program? i absolutely love it, but sadly, my brain keeps farting when i try it out!

[Ramah]

how about a manual for the program? i absolutely love it, but sadly, my brain keeps farting when i try it out!

Yeah, sorry. I intend to post up a quick tutorial at the start of the thread. I'm so used to it I keep forgetting that others may need a little help in getting started with it. It is really simple to use but I know from experience with installing other programs that a wealth of options can be a little daunting at first. I'll try and get something posted up later today.

[sigurdbjohansson]

So looking forward to using it!