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

[Rhotherian]

Now using the Magic Wand Tool, (making sure Sample Merged is Checked and the Threshold is 0) click anywhere in the dark area. This will define your coast. (!!!) If you want to adjust it, just undo the selection (ctrl-Z) and change the levels of the “Land Clip” layer. I wand back and tightened the coast a bit.

I'm stuck here (I got it up untill the "(!!!)").

My coast doesn't become "defined". It just stays blurry. Sample merge was checked and the threshold was zero, yet nothing happened when I clicked. =/

Infact, when I followed the steps after that when my coastline was suposed to be more varied than before, it actually ended up being less varied - smooth, actually! I even lost half my islands.

I continued anyway, but when I came to the sea part the layer-mask-thing didn't work. Nothing became transparrent.

To make things worse, I just realised that my "brushed, gradients, etc." widdow doesn't display pallets. I also couldn't fins any options to display them. -_-


I followed the instructions exactly as intructed, but I gave up at the sea part as nothing seamed to work... =(


Please help.



Edit: Nevermind, I found the "pallets" tab, so that problem's sorted.

I think I found the probelm. I think it may just be a case of misunderstanding. You see, my GIMP (2.6.7) doesn't have a "lighten" blend option for layers. The only options remotely simmilar are "hard light", "soft light" and "lighten only". The hard and soft light options gave an effect simmilar to what I wanted, but too random, having created or removed land regardless of the blur (I got islands and seas in the middle of nowhere, nowhere near the blured areas). The remaining option, "lighten only", had no effect whatsoever, shining through directly onto the origional map, blurs still showing.

This may be because of the blend mode applied to the "land noise" layer. You see, "overlay" made it invisible. Only when I changed the blend option to everything from "grain extract" to "multiply" did I get results simmilar to the ones above.

So, the main problem boils down to the layer blend options... =(

[wisemoon]

I'm stuck here (I got it up untill the "(!!!)").

My coast doesn't become "defined". It just stays blurry. Sample merge was checked and the threshold was zero, yet nothing happened when I clicked. =/

<snip>
This may be because of the blend mode applied to the "land noise" layer. You see, "overlay" made it invisible. Only when I changed the blend option to everything from "grain extract" to "multiply" did I get results simmilar to the ones above.

So, the main problem boils down to the layer blend options... =(

I had the same problems Rotherian did. When I tried to use the "Magic Wand" tool (which in 2.6.8, the version I have, is just the Fuzzy Select tool), it did not do what it apparently used to do in 2.4--either that, or I messed up some earlier step. I could not get it to select an edge close to the blurry randomized part--it just did a smooth outline at the outer edge of the blur. I'm not sure what I did the first time to get it to look right, I played around with a few different settings so I can't recall the exact thing that worked. Thus, when you repeated the technique later in the tutorial, I had no way to make it work (should have written down what I did!).

I think I got a reasonable result by changing the blend mode to "Divide" instead of what you called for int he tutorial; that seemed to make a rougher edge, and I *think* the fuzzy select tool worked with that. but I can't remember for sure. But when I got to the Mountains section, I couldn't find a work-around. Mostly because I have several separate areas of mountains, and I couldn't figure out how to get them all selected at once.
Here's a JPG of my image up to the step where you paint in the mountains in white and do the Gaussian Blur on them:


RobA, if you have updated your Gimp version, can you tell us how to do the steps in your tutorial that have to do with the TLC technique (particularly the Magic Wand steps)? I really like this style and would like to finish learning it, but I'm getting really frustrated. Thanks in advance.

[Scotia]

Here's a quick shot of what your wand options should look like:





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And I'd like to add my thanks/kudos to RobA for a great tutorial. I learned a few things about GIMP that I didn't know before.