Playing with mountains

[Karro]

And three more way of combining.

[Sigurd]

They all look interesting, but none of the new methods break up the mountain ridges. Since the ridges are so isolated they look unique or unnatural. They'd make great mountains for something like the boarders of Mordor where some sort of magic threw them up They look like some sort of Ginormous Chinese character you could see from space.

What happens if you impose one image on the other after a rotation or flip? Something to spread out the ridges and make it seem more like an irregular mound.


Sigurd

[RobA]

OK-

Here is something I am working on.... The steps are all the same. The only difference is the start point. And this required NO "artistic ability" or hand painting/touch-up. There are still a few artifacts I am trying to figure out how to eliminate...



-Rob A>

[dhalsimrocks]

OK-

Here is something I am working on.... The steps are all the same. The only difference is the start point. And this required NO "artistic ability" or hand painting/touch-up. There are still a few artifacts I am trying to figure out how to eliminate...



-Rob A>

I'm liking that. Man, it's really inspiring to see how you guys work to develop these techniques.

[jfrazierjr]

OK-

Here is something I am working on.... The steps are all the same. The only difference is the start point. And this required NO "artistic ability" or hand painting/touch-up. There are still a few artifacts I am trying to figure out how to eliminate...



-Rob A>

hmm.. how about this. Note that I did this in about 8 minutes after seeing Rob's results. Also, I did NOT spend a lot of time blending everything in as I should if I was doing a full on map for presentation.

Joe

[Karro]

They all look interesting, but none of the new methods break up the mountain ridges. Since the ridges are so isolated they look unique or unnatural. They'd make great mountains for something like the boarders of Mordor where some sort of magic threw them up They look like some sort of Ginormous Chinese character you could see from space.

What happens if you impose one image on the other after a rotation or flip? Something to spread out the ridges and make it seem more like an irregular mound.


Sigurd

Hmm. I'll have to keep working, it seems. I don't perfectly like any of the results, as yet. I guess it will just take more fiddling to find something that still looks good!

OK-

Here is something I am working on.... The steps are all the same. The only difference is the start point. And this required NO "artistic ability" or hand painting/touch-up. There are still a few artifacts I am trying to figure out how to eliminate...



-Rob A>

Beautiful, naturally! You have real talent!

hmm.. how about this. Note that I did this in about 8 minutes after seeing Rob's results. Also, I did NOT spend a lot of time blending everything in as I should if I was doing a full on map for presentation.

Joe

I'm still not quite sure how you do those long snaking range ridgelines. They do bear somewhat of a resemblance to what they actually look like from sat-photos (although I also think sat photos of mountains look peculiar, but you capture that in a good way!)

[jfrazierjr]

I'm still not quite sure how you do those long snaking range ridgelines. They do bear somewhat of a resemblance to what they actually look like from sat-photos (although I also think sat photos of mountains look peculiar, but you capture that in a good way!)

Hmm.. well, in this case, I just used the same technique you used based on RobA's tutorial. I am currently working on another variation of the samething, but in this one, I just(going off of memory):

1. create a transparent layer
2. filled a random selection with a 50% gray
3. using a med brush set to high jitter, draw some white very squiggly lines (these are going to be the valleys in the picture)
4. Noise around 20-30px
5. Blur perhaps 10-20 px. You want to maintain a small bit of the pixelation but not too much.
6. new transparent layer
7. using the same technique you used draw your mountains on the new layer in the mostly empty areas between the blurred white/gray lines of the layer below.
8. use the smudge tool to clean up some of the hard lines on the edges of your mountains will help it blend in below.
9. merge down and bump map the whole thing.

I am also working a lot with the smudge/airbrush tool to try to get some vertical ridgelines, clefts, etc. while maintaining the "point" of most of the ridges. In a few places, I intentionally smudge the white of the ridge line to make not all of the mountain tops pointy.

Joe

[jfrazierjr]

I'm still not quite sure how you do those long snaking range ridgelines. They do bear somewhat of a resemblance to what they actually look like from sat-photos (although I also think sat photos of mountains look peculiar, but you capture that in a good way!)

Not quite sure what you mean by "long snaking ridgelines". I just follow RobA's video tutorial process (though I have started using white and gray instead of B/W in my gradient) and just make the mountains with plenty of twists, turns and shape variation. So far, I have been using the mouse most of the time for test stuff like this, so I could probably get a bit better results if I were to use my tablet instead. Once I have the mountain shape down, I start playing with various brushes for dodge/burn, then smudge, spread, and G. blur and then usually smudge again for the Gray/White layer used as the bump map. Takes a bit of time, but really helps sell the randomness on the "slopes" and also makes the ridges less uniform and unnatural looking by "flattening" them in a few places.

Joe

[Karro]

Joe, there was just something about the way your mountains twist and wind over the ground. But... I think I'm beginning to crack it:





Just playing around with the order and blend type of layers. I didn't have time last night, but I have a few other styles and techniques I plan to try out. One thing I'm trying to do here is separate the bump layers from the color, so I can lay colors on top of the bump and add effects like snow caps or forest on top of the mountains and hills. I will be playing with this further to see if I can make it work.

I think I've also figured out a few ways to make canyonlands work: using black on the bump-map layer instead of white to represent depressions, or conversely by raising the water-level setting on the bump map filter dialog, or by clicking the "invert" check box in the filter dialog.

[Karro]

Okay.... Some changes and updates to the style. This here's going to be an image dump, and some of these are only subtly different than the others.