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

[Zar Peter]

My three cents:
Great tutorial. I downloaded Gimp because of that and started to try two days ago. My efforts after about 7 hours work you can see below. I'm not very happy with the tree-texture but all I need now is some experience.

For me the hardest part was to translate the english terms and the inversion at the beginning (as described in Crymoons post. In the tutorial post you write "Now create a new transparent layer (Layer->New Layer) and name it “Land”..." it should be a white layer, otherwise the inversion doesn't work as shown.)

[nwelte]

First time using gimp for anything other than cropping ans sizing. Not happy with my forest or the coast line. I also seem to have messed up the color of the water. I don't have the white wisps. But I feel the map is a good start. I will have to finish the rest of the map later.

Comments? Suggestions?

[RobA]

Good effort, nwelte!

You might want to try a turbulent bump map with a larger x-size and y-size for the forrest texture. Just decreasing the opacity of the forest bump map overlay would also help make then less intense.

-Rob A>

[Airith]

"Mountains, EVERYTHING almost. sorry, just a lot of spots during mountains that were odd. Bump map area in particular.

Is there a better way to do forests?

-Rivers-, mine turned out strange several times. had to erase a lot of upper layers to get it to look right."

These are just things I wrote down while I was going through the tutorial, hopefully you can understand them

[nwelte]

Hmm I gave this tutorial another try and combined it with another tutorial I think you made. What do you think? Better than the first attempt I posted earlier? Still not happy with the mountains. And I have "dead space" on the image I need to fill. Think a compass would fill the space. Any suggestions for a a good compass?

http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/k...lte/Zurgas.png

[RobA]

Looks nice nwelte.

A little neon for my tasted (esp. the forest region) but I think it is the right scaled map for the technique. I'm also sure there is a a reason the roads are so straight (Other than curved paths in GIMP are awkward to work with )

Here is a compass I used in my quarry map:


Feel free to use it (the full image is a transparent background png).

-Rob A>

[nwelte]

I had trouble with the color of the map once I imposed it under the fuzzy layer in your paper tutorial. Found that the map was to dark and needed to be lightened. Unfortunately that created the neon look. Any suggestions on how to correct that?

[RobA]

Did you put it on the paper as a flattened layer, or is the whole thing a single many layered image?

I tend to make my maps as one image, them export/flatten them to a single layer which I then add the paper/background/weathering, etc. That lets you adjust the levels and saturation a bit easier.

-Rob A>

[nwelte]

I created the map itself as one multi layer image. I then create the paper as a seperate multi-layer image. I then copied all visible from the map and pasted it in to the paper image at the right layer.

I also think when I did the color normalization step that somehow that lightened the trees.

You have any suggests as to how to make artistic farm fields in this same style. As you can see from my map I tried to put furrows around a few settlements.

[RobA]

You have any suggests as to how to make artistic farm fields in this same style. As you can see from my map I tried to put furrows around a few settlements.

mmmm.

Off the top of my head (and without gimp at hand) and if the scale is local enough....

Create a new gradient type that goes from white to black, but make sure you set the blend to be sinusoidal (the default blends are all linear).
Select the area's you want to be fields using the pen tool to make a straight edged selection.
Create a new transparent layer, and with the gradient tool, set it to triangular repeats, and fill the selection(s) with the gradient in the size desired for the row spacing. You can do it with different selection in different directions to make the furrows go different ways.

Use this as a base heightfield for:
-bumpmap (on a 50% grey level like everything else)
-colourmap (might have to create a brown-green gradient to represent the green crops on brown dirt.. a bit of pixel spread might work well on the colour after as well.. )

-Rob A>