First off, Thank you for such a good tutorial. I am running into one problem though. My mountains look very weak and low. I seem to be unable to get the degree of peaks that you show. Is there a trick to this or some advice you could give me to improve the quality of my mountains?
Hi BISHDP if you have an image of what you are talking about I'd be happy to look it over and make suggestions for you. Unfortunately I probably won't be able to do so until early next week (Monday or thereabouts) as I will be giving a paper at a conference this weekend and need to keep focused on preparing for it. But post up an image and I'll reply as soon as I can.
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
Here is my first map that I did with your tutorial. I think it looks decent but the mountains don't look as high as I would like.
Hi there BISHDP, I had a quick look at the image you posted here as well as the ones you posted at your WIP thread and I do have a few tips that might help:
First about the mountains. The contrast in your height map looks about right so I'm inclined to think that perhaps there is a missing step somewhere. Did you include both the "Mountain Bumps" layer (on page 7 of the tutorial)? If not, adding this layer may help to make your mountains pop out a bit. If you have added the layer, you can always increase the opacity (which should be set to 50%) and/or duplicate this layer.
Second, about the height map. If you would like a more gradual elevation from lowlands to mountain peeks, you may want do a bit more sculpting with your height map (see page 2 of the tutorial). I've attached a larger image of what one of my height maps generally looks like once I'm finished airbrushing (BTW, this is one the most time consuming elements of the process and usually takes me several hours).
Third, I noticed that your final colored map looks somewhat grainy. This might be due to setting the Noise % in Wilbur too high. If you like the grainyness, well and good. If you want a smoother map though you may need to play around with reducing the noise settings in Wilbur. Hope that helps.
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
First off, thank you very much for you help.
I will have to try that. This map was more just a proof of concept but the one I am currently working will see the benefit of your advice. More blending and extra Mountain Bumps. Got it. Thank you again.
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...
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