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

[Seraphine_Harmonium]

Hey! I'm new here (and mainly because of this tutorial), and it's really a lot of fun and well written. However, I do have one thing that's not working out well (might have been addressed already somewhere in the depths of this thread, but I though I might ask before I read through the 50 pages): the rivers. On what layer am I supposed to draw them? It says the grass layer, but then the screen shot looks like the land layer. When I draw on grass, it doesn't go through the dirt, and also makes brown stains on the sea, but drawing on the land layer (or a duplicated land layer) doesn't seem to have any effect. Anybody knows what I am talking about and knows the solution?

I put my rivers in the land layer, and try to do this before I make the Land Mask. Then when you are making the grass and various other things, your rivers show through right away. And I keep the land mask layer around, so that I can handily also use it as a bump mask, giving the rivers a beveled edge and making the land rise out of the water a bit.

[wisemoon]

Okay, so I am working on revising this tutorial, as I posted earlier. Unfortunately, I have run into a bug/problem at the "create ocean" section of the tutorial! I can't seem to get the gradient map to work right. Instead of filling the layer with a gradient from light blue to dark blue (I have the foreground and background colors set to the correct colors), it uses a black-and-white gradient instead! I have fiddled with a dozen or more settings and cannot for the life of me figure out why it is not working. I have used this before and it worked fine, but that was long enough ago that I have no idea what is going wrong or what I did differently in the past.

Anyone else run into this problem? I would really appreciate it if you could help me out, since I can't even finish this revision project until I can get the gradient map to work right.

Thanks,

wisemoon

[Seraphine_Harmonium]

Unfortunately, I have run into a bug/problem at the "create ocean" section of the tutorial! I can't seem to get the gradient map to work right. Instead of filling the layer with a gradient from light blue to dark blue (I have the foreground and background colors set to the correct colors), it uses a black-and-white gradient instead! I have fiddled with a dozen or more settings and cannot for the life of me figure out why it is not working.

Check that your foreground and background are the right colors, and that your try messing with your gradient tool. Maybe check your Gradient tool that it is on a linear, foreground-background gradient fill. Because I think that changing the gradient tool settings will change what the gradient map will do.

[wisemoon]

Hi! Thanks for your tip. Actually, the things you mentioned were all correctly set, but I tried using the Gradient Tool instead of the Gradient Map, just to see if it would work, and it did a grayscale too. So then I checked the color mode (Image>Mode) and for some reason the layer or image was set to Grayscale! So I reset it to RGB and it worked fine.

wisemoon

[wisemoon]

Hello again,

I have finished Part 2 of the revision of RobA's tutorial. Part 2 covers coloring in the landmass to create grass and dirt.

Please let me know if this revision is clearer and easier to understand.
EDIT: Corrected some errors in the PDF.





wisemoon

[pogre]

I found it helpful. Thank you.

[Game Master Toolbox]

Hello again,

I have finished Part 2 of the revision of RobA's tutorial. Part 2 covers coloring in the landmass to create grass and dirt.

Please let me know if this revision is clearer and easier to understand.
EDIT: Corrected some errors in the PDF.





wisemoon

And I found the answer after I post. Thank you wisemoon.

[yyhung]

Thanks RobA for this tutorial.
Recently I am considering to begin with GIMP, since it's free and so many people recommend it.

[ZevesdroX]

Hi, complete newbie here with both mapmaking and Gimp. First off, awesome tutorial but I can't get the mountains to work. I have the TLS ready but can't make the mask and the colour layer to work. Any ideas?

Thank you!