Part 8 - The Hillside
What I did now was add some variable texture. Where there was more slope I wanted more pronounced texture and of course where there was less I wanted reduced texture. I did this with overlay clouds and some selective gradients.
I spent quite a bit of time getting this bit right and one thing that really helped me was making a "Markers" layer. This is simply a transparent layer on which I marked out various reference lines and other positions.
1. Create a new transparent Markers layer and keep this as the top layer unless otherwise indicated. Toggle this layer's visibility off and on as needed.
2. Mark out the line that defines where the flat land stops and the slope starts going up. Zoom out on your image until you have plenty of space around the canvas. Use the Free Select tool to mark this line out, with both ends of this line being well off the canvas. If it's not quite lined up hit escape and give it another shot. Once you are happy with your line select the rest of the left side of the image by clicking outside the cavas boundaries. Stroke this selection with black at something like 5 or 10 pixels. Something that is nicely visible when zoomed right out.
3. Save this selection in a temporary Left Gradient channel for later use.
4. Create a new transparent temporary layer on top of the Markers layer. Select all and use the rectangle tool to mark a rectangle running about 600 pixels right of the line and 900 pixels left of it. Fill this with black and rotate it so that it runs at right angles to your line. Merge this layer down.
You now have a handy layer you can make various marks on for the endless retries and rework you will find yourself doing.
5. Set a darkish grey (I used 333333) as the foreground colour and a lighter grey (I used d9d9d9) as the background colour.
6. Create a new Slope Gradients layer, load your temporary Left Gradient channel as selection, feather selection 50 and go to the Blend Tool. Now stroke the Slope Gradients layer. What you want to do is start just to the right of the line in your Markers layer and stroke well into it using the rectangle as a ruler. How far do you start out of your selection? It'll take a little trial and error but it should be somewhere around the 50 pixel mark. You are aiming not to have too much dark grey where the line is. How far to stroke? Well to the end of your rectangle "ruler" to start with. If this isn't far enough scribble a little extra on the end of your "ruler". If it's too much erase a bit off.
7. Invert your selection and repeat the stroke process on the right side.
8. Select all, turn off your Markers layer and check out your double gradient.
What we are aiming for is a left-hand gradient that runs fairly evenly up the slope and a right-hand gradient that runs out of it's darkest grey fairly quickly and then peters out. And we are trying to avoid having too hard a line where they meet.
9. Set the East Land Channel to selection and subtract the Cliff Channel from the selection. Remove any extra selection in the south using the Free Select Tool in subtract mode. Grow the selection 50 pixels.
10. Add a new Slope Overlay layer, filled with background colour. Add a layer mask to this layer from Selection (Invert Mask checked).
11. Set your colours to default and create a new Slope Noise layer. Fill this with detail 4, size 8 clouds. Set the layer mode to Overlay.
12. Choose Layer->New From Visible and rename the layer to Slope Texture. Set visible off for the Slope Gradients, Slope Overlay and Slope Noise layers.
13. Select all and do a 5 pixel Gaussian Blur on the Slope Texture layer.
14. Depending on how hard a line you have at the bottom of your slope you may need to tone the lightness a bit. If so you can Colors->Brightness-Contrast and adjust the brightness up until the line in the middle has faded. This shouldn't be much tho, sometimes I used 20 or 30 and sometimes I didn't need this step at all.
15. Time to bumpmap it! Choose Filters->Distorts->Emboss (Function: bumpmap, Azimuth: 135, Elevation: 45, Depth: 60).
Now make good use of the preview here to check out the line - we want it pretty fine so the following Gaussian Blur will kill it altogethor.
16. Run a 5 pixel Gaussian Blur on the Slope Texture layer, set it's mode to Overlay and it's opacity to 80.
17. At this point I often found I still had some minor lining here and did an additional 5 pixel Gaussian Blur.
18. Set the River Channel to selection, add the Cliff Channel to this selection and do a 5 pixel Feather Selection. Now add a layer mask to the Slope Texture layer using this selection (invert checked).
19. If you like you can delete the Markers, Slope Gradients, Slope Overlay and Slope Noise layers.
Part 9 - A Cliff's Shadow
Looking a bit like a slope nowBut that upward slope with a cliff should cast some shadow to the south,
1. Add a new transparent Cliff Shadow layer. Set the East Land Channel to selection and subtract the Cliff Channel from the selection.
2. Fill this selection with black on the Cliff Shadow layer, set the layer's opacity to 40 and select all.
3. Choose the Perspective transform tool (Tools->Transform Tools->Perspective). Set Opacity to 40 and leave the other settings at default. Slide the center down and right a bit, then tweak the corner anchors until you get a shadow you think will work for your image. Make sure you consider the height of the cliff, it's upslope and the angle of the sun.
This is a good time to point out that you need to always keep in mind Azimuth. If you don't know what it is you should go read up on it and play around with it a little. So far we have been using 135 (south-east by south-east)... In a couple of cases we even used 135 when we should probably have inverted it... But those cases were fairly minor and it was easier to just be consistent
I found I had to be quite aggressive with some of my anchors to get the effect I wanted
When you think you have it right hit Transform
4. Anchor the layer and give it a 150 pixel Gaussian Blur.
5. Add a layer mask using the East Land Channel and make sure Invert Mask is checked.
Well I think we are kind of finished with the underlying geological structure of the map! Next time we'll think about where the lesser objects should be placed, build some roads and start constructing our town.
As always I'd love to heart any thoughts members have on how to improve the map, do tasks more efficiently, alternative approaches, general comments or similar.
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