WIP using RobA's GIMP Tutorial

[RobA]

I like the combination, too! It generates the ridgeline that was really missing in the original style. Thanks for experimenting and sharing this with everyone!

-Rob A>

[Karro]

Yea, my first couple of attempts came out crappy also. This is one of the reasons I started playing around with some other ways to do mountain fields. Think I finally have something I like....


Try DanChops mini tut on this thread: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=2087 I really like the way this effect looks in the end. He needs to make a proper tutorial out of it.

Yep, some of those look pretty good!

Select all your water (rivers and seas/oceans), create a layer mask (optional but recommended), run the bevel tool with 1-2 px. Make SURE you turn off the "make a copy" or whatever so you get it in the same layer. This will create that cut effect nicely. Then, apply the layer mask on whatever layers(forests, etc) and they all get cut out to make room for the river. Personally, I plan to play with adding ANOTHER forest layer with just a few small "bits" on top to cover the river in a few tiny places to better simulate real terrain.

Joe

Thanks for pointing out DanChops' technique. I think I managed to make it work fairly well.

Now, stupid question time: how do you do this bevel. I looked and looked and looked, but the only reference I could find in GIMP to Bevel was in the "Filters>Decor" menu for "Add Bevel". That did not do what I was looking for.

[Karro]

That's a great run through of the different mountain methods. The second o last is looking really nice.

I like the combination, too! It generates the ridgeline that was really missing in the original style. Thanks for experimenting and sharing this with everyone!

-Rob A>

Thanks! I agree, I really like the way it came out.

Then, using DanChop's modification of RobA's forests in the big tutorial, I think I managed to get some fairly decent looking forests to go with them.

Still need to make some improvements (rivers? Bevels?)


Comments, suggestions for improvement?

[Karro]

Okay, I think I've made some great improvements, so far. I learned several cool things working on these steps, like locking the alpha chanel. Plus, I finally figured out how to do a very basic bevel--it took a while, and it's very easy to overdo it.

I'm not sure about how I cut the river through the forest. The process I used was: first I duplicated the river mask I did on the grass layer for each of the forest layers. This made the river look flat on top of the forest, so I made a copy of the mask, widened the river in the copy by about a half dozen pixels (via the grow selection), then blurred it by a few pixels, and applied the result as the mask for each of the forest layers.

I tried something else for the coastline. The bevel was making the whole coast pop. I toned this down by adjusting the opacity of the layer that was making the bevel. Then, I took an edge detection of one of the original black-and-white land masks (I happened to already have one of these), created a new layer filled with the Coastline color (the pale tan from the cities color palette RobA offers in the original tutorial) and masked it with the edge mask. I fiddled with the layer settings, and ultimately settled on Soft Light at full opacity. This helped tone down the bevel on the land mass's coast edge, but maintained the bevel for the rivers.

Then added cities and roads. I just used a round brush for the cities, chose and earthy red (since I used to make cities with red dots on my old maps...). For roads followed RobA's instructions exactly.

For this map, I also added the underwater bumpmap and the top-layer cloud overlay.



Let me know what you think!

It's been a joy so far working on this. I wish I had more time to update more quickly.

[torstan]

Those are looking great.

[Karro]

Those are looking great.

Thanks! I'm quite proud of the progess so far. When compared to the state of my maps prior to starting on this tutorial, I've come a long way in the past couple weeks.

[jfrazierjr]

Thanks! I'm quite proud of the progess so far. When compared to the state of my maps prior to starting on this tutorial, I've come a long way in the past couple weeks.

Very nice so far! 2 things, one IMO is a bit more important(first one), the other not so much:

The rivers look a bit to fat for the most part and uniform in width. I know this is VERY hard to get right with just a mouse, so I totally understand. I bought a tablet mainly for the purpose of drawing rivers with variable widths.

You may want to consider using a noise layer set to overlay just over top of your grass and below rivers, forests, etc and masked with the land mask. This will get you a bit more color variation in your green grass layer with no manual painting and very little over all effort. If you feel like it, you can play with it over your dirt also, but I don't know how if that will look good as I have not tried it myself. Take a look: http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...3&d=1212462223
between the two big forests for an example and give it a try to see if you like it. I think for "mine" I actually did two different overlays with differnt noise settings to get something l liked.

Joe

[Karro]

Very nice so far! 2 things, one IMO is a bit more important(first one), the other not so much:

The rivers look a bit to fat for the most part and uniform in width. I know this is VERY hard to get right with just a mouse, so I totally understand. I bought a tablet mainly for the purpose of drawing rivers with variable widths.

You may want to consider using a noise layer set to overlay just over top of your grass and below rivers, forests, etc and masked with the land mask. This will get you a bit more color variation in your green grass layer with no manual painting and very little over all effort. If you feel like it, you can play with it over your dirt also, but I don't know how if that will look good as I have not tried it myself. Take a look: http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...3&d=1212462223
between the two big forests for an example and give it a try to see if you like it. I think for "mine" I actually did two different overlays with differnt noise settings to get something l liked.

Joe

Thanks. I'll have to work on the rivers issue. I agree that they look a little strange, atm. In order to have the river thin as it branched into headwaters approaching the mountains, I used progessively thinner brushes. But to vary the width of the river in different spots, I'm going to have to go back and adjust the layer masks manually, darkening up the edges here and there to thin the river out a little in places... I guess that means also redoing the bevel... Didn't have time to try this yet today.

Here is an update to the above image (without new rivers yet) with some labels.

The place-names are intentionally whimsical/silly, a reminder for me that this is a practice map of nowhere in particular.

[jfrazierjr]

The place-names are intentionally whimsical/silly, a reminder for me that this is a practice map of nowhere in particular.

As a young man, I was given a treasure map to a land of untold riches. I gathered an expedition and travled from the Great Placia Mountains down the Placia River. We passed through Capitalica into the ocean, turning South. We finally tacked South East after passing Cape Somewheria. After several weeks for travel our ship veered northward and on to Port South Placia. After a few days, we left port and plotted our course, ending up in Itty Bitty Island Village, where we looted the gold in their temples and captured a hugh ape creature. After returning the back to Capitalica, the great ape escaped, climbed wizards tower where our Griffon Guard pestered him until he fell to his death. No one has been back to Itty Bitty Island Village again and the King has outlawed importation of any animals from other lands.




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On a side note, if I had not said it before, I really love your forests. They look great!



Joe

[Karro]

As a young man, I was given a treasure map to a land of untold riches. I gathered an expedition and travled from the Great Placia Mountains down the Placia River. We passed through Capitalica into the ocean, turning South. We finally tacked South East after passing Cape Somewheria. After several weeks for travel our ship veered northward and on to Port South Placia. After a few days, we left port and plotted our course, ending up in Itty Bitty Island Village, where we looted the gold in their temples and captured a hugh ape creature. After returning the back to Capitalica, the great ape escaped, climbed wizards tower where our Griffon Guard pestered him until he fell to his death. No one has been back to Itty Bitty Island Village again and the King has outlawed importation of any animals from other lands.




------------------------------



On a side note, if I had not said it before, I really love your forests. They look great!



Joe

It's like the legend of Donkey Kong!

I suggested to the fiancee last week that I was looking at ebay to see if I could get a reasonably-priced tablet.

She asked "wouldn't you rather be writing than drawing? Or finding a new job?" She's got a point, she does. I'm more of a writer than an artist; it's why I make maps in the first place. And I do rather despise my current job... I do want one, but I realize now is not the time for me to get one, as I have other priorities for the foreseeable future.

Still, I'm getting good results without it for now. I didn't have time all weekend to work on this, it was quite busy, but I'll try to work on some updates soon