[Award Winner] Eriond - A Tutorial for GIMP & Wilbur

[Naeddyr]

A++++++ Would Download Again

[Zaelkonan]

I found this website and tutorial a few weeks ago in an attempt get started at map-making. It took me a few tries to get decent results, but it's amazing how well the technique works once you get the hang of it. Thanks for the detailed tutorial, Arsheesh!

Here's what I ended up with. I went off script on a couple of things, including the rivers and ocean coloring. I'd like to have more detailed coastlines (comparable to those in MarkusTay's work in previous posts). If anyone has some advice on that, let me know.

[DM_Zandak]

Definitely going to try this now! Thank you!

[Dibyo Dutta]

Hey there! Thanks for this wonderful tutorial. It allowed me to make my first ever map.
Here it is:

I know it's not the best map in the world, but it's my first nonetheless (consoling myself)
I wanted to make it look like the map of a much smaller area, so I tried to make the rivers appear bigger (wider). That made it a whole lot uglier.
Also, I put in way too many rivers (over-did it).
Also, the mountains could have been bigger and at the top, what looks like a frozen lake - I wanted that to be a crater.
But, hey, I managed to pull something off (again consoling myself).
Anyway, thanks a bunch for the tutorial and thought you guys should be the first to see my first map in the long list of upcoming ones.
Take care and see you all soon.

[arsheesh]

Sorry for the very late reply everyone, my participation here at the Guild has dwindled over the last couple of years due to increased responsibilities at home.

Hey arsheesh

I have been trying this tut receantly but have encounter a problem. When i want to select rivers in Gimp (after importing png from wilbur) I can not do that perfectly. I mean, i have to play more with the treshold of magic wand (because 15 dosent work nicely). But whatever i pick i can never select ALL rivers. I guess the problem is that they are all different grey. Also all rivers are 1-pixel wide. Is it important to grab WHOLE length of river, or just part of them ?

Thanks

BTW. I stopped on the rivers now, but so far, very nice tut, and i have so much fun working with Wilbur (like a kid playing with new toy, haha)

Hi Voolf, yes, you've correctly identified the issue. I was never really satisfied with this technique either due to the issues you raise. Waldronate once suggested a different method to me. In Wilbur you can use the River Flow filter (Texture > Other Maps > River Flow) to isolate just the rivers onto their own height map. On the pop-up menu that appears check the box for use solid background color (which should be black by default). The image should now be black except for your rivers. Now change the color of "River Mouth" to white and the color of the "River Source" to a mid grey tone (you can also play around with the sliders till you get the amount of river branching you desire); this will give you a nice gradient that can be used in the next step. Next go ahead and export this as a .png file and then open this as a new image in GIMP. Next, on your GIMP map file create a new "Rivers" layer (above your previous layers) and fill the entire layer with the color you wish your rivers to be. Following this, create a layer mask for this new layer. Now go ahead and copy the B&W river height map you just opened and paste it into the layer mask of your newly created Rivers layer. That's it; you should now have colored rivers.

Hiya! Sorry to respond to an old thread but it still seems decently alive. So far this has been a pretty amazing tutorial, but I've gotten stuck on a part. when I try the color curve for the mountains layer, nothing happens. I'm not sure if I messed up somewhere with my layers but you've got me on this one. (could just be my art skills aren't that great) I'm pretty sure I've done well at following all the prior instructions, just not sure why this isn't correct. (doesn't show the mountainy outline in the color line menu either as you can see). the mountains layer is transparent with mountains posted in, and it was selected before I used the color line tool, just for reference. (also, tips on how it's going so far are welcome)

Huh, that is very odd indeed. I'm trying to think of what might caused this, but I'm coming up empty here. So long as that layer was selected the curves should be operating on that layer. I'm sorry to not be of much help to you here but I just dunno what the trouble is.

Hey there! Thanks for this wonderful tutorial. It allowed me to make my first ever map.
Here it is:

I know it's not the best map in the world, but it's my first nonetheless (consoling myself)
I wanted to make it look like the map of a much smaller area, so I tried to make the rivers appear bigger (wider). That made it a whole lot uglier.
Also, I put in way too many rivers (over-did it).
Also, the mountains could have been bigger and at the top, what looks like a frozen lake - I wanted that to be a crater.
But, hey, I managed to pull something off (again consoling myself).
Anyway, thanks a bunch for the tutorial and thought you guys should be the first to see my first map in the long list of upcoming ones.
Take care and see you all soon.

Hey that's pretty good for a first effort! You've pointed out some areas that could be improved, but that all comes with practice. The more you play with the technique the more you'll develop a knack for this sort of stuff. Thanks for posting!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[arsheesh]

@ Boundary Layer, that's looking better! I like the overall shape allot more, and your sculpting work has really paid off: the mountains blend into their surroundings naturally.

@ Beaumains, thanks, I hope that is of use to you.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[ZacheryGangrel]

I had fun making this and definitely had fun learning a new style. I used an older map of mine as a base, I didn't put as much work into the mountains as I would like, So I will likely go back and redo them.

I only had 1 issue, for some reason no matter what I did, the blur filter did not work on my Land Glow layer. It showed the blurring in the preview window, but whenever I applied it, there was no blur to be seen. So there is no shallow waters to be found here

[arsheesh]

Thanks for the feedback Zach. I'm not sure what the deal with the blur was. Unless of course you had the land or seal selected when you applied the blur: the selection will prevent the blur from affecting the area outside of the selection. Your mountains look pretty good (though I might add a bit more airbrushing to the land clouds layer at the base of the mountains to help them blend just a bit more. I'm not sure if it's just the resolution or not, but I couldn't quite make out the other bump-map details. Otherwise, looks good.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[TregMallin]

Thanks for this tutorial, Arsheesh. I look forward to working through it this week.

The GIMP Gradient Basics tutorial that you mentioned above is missing now.

[arsheesh]

Huh, now that's strange. I tried doing an advanced search for this thread and couldn't find it. I then did a search for the tutorial using Google and found a link to the tutorial (as posted here at the Guild), but when I clicked on the link it took me to a "No Thread Specified" error page. So I'm not sure what to make of it. Either the tutorial some how got deleted or it's been misplaced. I've written a note to the admins about it so hopefully someone knows what the deal is. If not, perhaps I'll either expand the tutorial to include the bit about Gradients, or I'll create a separate tutorial covering this info. Unfortunately I haven't the time to do either at the moment, so hopefully the tutorial gets found.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh