[GIMP] WIP: My First "Real" Attempt at Subterranean Mapping

[Sharpe]

Looking at them side-by-side, I'd say maybe you got more rowdy with the smudge and made your black thicker...

[Jacktannery]

Well I think yours looks better than mine! (I never use gaussian blur because the results are too homogenous, I just blur everything manually, so that's the main difference between your and mine). Your shadows are perfect now.

To get the water to look more like mine (if that's what you wanted) just add some pale blueish spots and mix them in with the rest. Definitely better than post 1 at least.

[Sharpe]

You're much, much too kind! Thanks so much for all your help!

I've updated it very slightly since your last post. It looks almost identical to yours now. I'm going to take a brake on the water for a bit.

Maybe stalagmites next.

Anyone have any suggestions for natural-type "stuff?"

[Neyjour]

For your dirt, you could try these: Sandy Soil

I had posted that just before everything went *poof*.

Or, you could go to CGTextures and look for a nice dirt/soil texture to make your own overlays. It works best (IMO) if you make the selections with an inside and outside feathering.

[Sharpe]

Hey, thanks! I saw those on DA!

In GIMP, what does outside and inside feathering mean? How is that accomplished?

[Neyjour]

You're welcome!

I’m sorry, I don’t know how to accomplish it in GIMP. My PSP8 is very old and not 100% compatible with my OS. Every time I try to use the crop tool, the program crashes, so I use GIMP just for cropping and I haven’t really explored it beyond that.

I use overlay pieces (and feathering in general) for my ground textures all the time now, because they allow you to avoid repeating patterns (with seamless textures) and give you a nice, natural looking transition between different textures.

Here’s a quick tutorial to show you how I do it in PSP8. It might help you with translating the steps yourself in GIMP, or hopefully someone who has a better knowledge of the program can tell you how to do it.

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1) Open a ground texture (I got this one from CGTextures) and select the Freehand Selection tool.

2) Draw an irregular shape. (You’re going to be using a large feathering, so make sure you don’t draw too close to the edges of the image. And keep in mind that the feathering is going to be inside as well as out, so if your selection is too small, you won’t have a solid texture in the center.)

3) Go to Selections > Modify > Inside/Outside Feather

4) Select Both, set your Feather amount, and click OK when you’re done. (I usually set the amount to 60 or 80, or occasionally I might go a bit higher. It just depends on what you like, the textures you’re using, and how defined (or not) you want your transitions to be.)

5) Go to Edit > Copy to copy your new selection.

6) Go to Edit > Paste > Paste As New Image

7) You’ve now got a new overlay piece on a transparent background. Save it in PNG format to preserve the transparency, and then repeat all the previous steps to create several more pieces, each one a different size and shape.

8 ) I made four different pieces and copy/pasted them (each as a new, separate layer) onto some floor tiles. As you can see, they blend together really well and you can’t differentiate between the individual pieces. You can also use each piece multiple times, and flip/mirror/rotate them before pasting them onto your map.

9) For the final step, make any colour, curves, or brightness/contrast, etc., adjustments needed. Here, I’ve changed the colour and adjusted the Curves to better compliment the colour of the floor tiles. (I constantly make adjustments like these to all my textures as my map progresses)

10) This is an example (from a maze map I’m working on right now) of how feathering gives nice, natural looking transitions between textures. And I made various adjustments to colour, brightness/contrast, and curves to each one, so they look good and blend well together.

[Sharpe]

Wow. Almost four months since I took a "break" from this project.

I remember thanking Neyjour for her assistance in the post directly above, but there was a server crash or something and we lost a couple days of posts.

Anyway, I've started again, but I have to re-learn some of my weak GIMP skills.

One difference: I've given up my resistance to using textures. Instead of trying to do everything with filters, I'm going to do like almost everyone else and use textures found on the Net.

Eventually, I'll remove the wall texture and use filters to create my own with the help of the tutorial, "How to Blend Textures for Use in Battlemapping with GIMP."

Well, I accomplished the tutorial before, but I had been playing with GIMP for a while. This time, I got stuck on the part that says, "Apply a linear blend along the edges of the road to achieve the following or something similar."

I couldn't figure out how to use the blend tool to create the effect.

However, I used the Gaussian Blur filter to produce the same result, it seems to me.

Anyway, no update because I'm still working on it. Just thought I would post and prepare the world for my return to battlemapping! ;-)


UPDATE: Just playing with textures. I still didn't figure out how I used the blend tool...

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/8955/3v3z.jpg

[Neyjour]

I remember thanking Neyjour for her assistance in the post directly above, but there was a server crash or something and we lost a couple days of posts.

I remember that. I had just posted a BIG update on my freebies thread (with lots of links), and about 5-10 mins later everything crashed, they did a rollback, and my post was gone. *cries* I never did work up the energy to re-post it. Heh.

It's really great to see my Sandy Soil textures in use! You're the first one I've seen to use them. And I love the two mucky/swampy pools. That texture looks really great.

[Sharpe]

You know, I went on a horse ride between now and when I made that post, and I got to thinking, "I never did mention that I took Neyjour's advice and used her dirt textures."

Thanks for making them! I'm very surprised to learn that I'm the first you've seen use them.

The water did turn out okay so far. All of the shadows on the whole map need re-done, though. I just doubled them so they could be seen with these new textures.

It's still far from finished.

[Jacktannery]

Big improvements Sharpe. Neyjour's textures look great here. I agree that the shadow contrast could be toned down a little in the finished version along the cavern walls everywhere EXCEPT for the water and bridge where they are probably fine (this area needs to be a bit darker than elsewhere anyway).