This is really a great tutorial. It is well-written and fabulously presented. It is the first tutorial I've followed beginning to end and to be honest, I've learned a lot about using GIMP with this tutorial. To be fair, I'd never used GIMP prior to this tutorial. I was admittedly daunted when I saw it described as intermediate, but the tutorial is written in such a way as to walk me through each step of the process. I've not done anything that I'm brave enough to post here yet, but as I work through it more and more, I will have to post something, I suppose.
This is the result of my working through the tutorial completely. My mountains seem to have gone awry somewhere along the way and the beginnings of some of the rivers need cleaning up. This is a land area roughly twice the size of Europe. All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable project and a lot of fun. I'll go back and rework my way through it, having a better understanding of both the steps and GIMP.
Thanks for the kind words Kaelin, I'm glad that the tutorial was helpful to you, and you've done great considering that you are new to GIMP and this was your first crack at digital cartography. About the mountains: it looks like you are missing the bump map layer, or else that the wrong layer got bump mapped. In the "Filters" menu when you select "Bump Map" (for the Land Bumps and Mountain Bumps layers), you need to be sure to select the appropriate layer from the drop down menu (labeled "Bump Map") at the top of the Bump Map window (see below), otherwise the filter will default to bump mapping the top layer in your layers stack.
Thank you, sir! I appreciate the quick response and will go back and make sure I do it correctly.
I was very inspired by the Eriond map and thought it would really bring life to my game world. I'm using a test map for the learning process. Again, I aprpeciate both the quick response and correction and the tutorial itself! I'd rep again, but it seems I have to spread it around some.
So I went back and applied the proper mask to the proper channel and also noticed that I had not changed the ppi (still at 72). I'm going to try it again but use a lower noise setting as the land bumps look more like a skin disease, otherwise, a few adjustments later and...
Sorry for the delayed response, I've been on holiday for the past several days. Thanks for the kind words and I hope you are satisfied with the end result. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
A++++++ Would Download Again
Thanks Naeddyr!
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
This is an amazing tutorial. I love it. I'm about halfway through and just have a quick question. Why do you need two different layers for placing mountains? (Mountains 1 and Mountains 2) It's just a bit confusing for me, is all. Also, I may just be missing something, but is there something specific I need to do in order to keep the pieces of mountains I've cut out inside my land area?
Thanks so much Okami! In response to the first part of your question, the reason why you need two layers for the mountains is that at a later stage you will be erasing (fading) the hard edges of the mountain pieces so that they blend in together to make a seamless whole. If you had placed all of the mountain pieces on the same layer, then you could not do this; any attempt to erase (at low opacity) some portion of the mountains would erase all of it. As to the second part of your question, well, you could always add a land mask to the mountain layers, that ought to do it.
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
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