Telperion & Taramir - First Attempt w/GIMP

[Steel General]

Uh oh I'm busted.

Sorry Steel General, I didn't mean to slam you on the Tolkien name. Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine -- had a lot of trouble with people dumping Tolkien names into one of our online storyworlds.

Seriously, though, the maps are looking good. I have a swamp style somewhere if you're interested.

No harm, no foul - I came up with that name years ago, and I'm sure it was probably influenced by Tolkein. I didn't know it was one of his actual names though.

And yes I'd definitely be interested in any ideas, etc. you may have to help me get better at this thing. Heck, I only started yesterday, I'm still a big noob!!

[Steel General]

OK, this is derived from an old, and very badly done CC2 map. There was a lot of experimentation here using RobA's tutorial as a baseline (it was a slow day at work today). I actually kind of like this so far other than a couple of things;

1. The forests need to be better - just not sure how to fix them

2. I tried following the tutorial on adding rivers, but they kept coming out looking like they were below the "Dirt" level. Also, not sure how I should add a large lake in the middle of the large forest.

3. I would like to add some tundra/icy terrain at the extreme northern edge. Couldn't find any examples of how to do that.

As always comments, critiques, etc. are welcomed.

[Karro]

1. Actually, I think the forest's aren't looking too bad at all. Could stand some improvement, but practice makes perfect.

2. I know what you mean. What I figured out had to happen was that you need to add a mask to every layer for the rivers once you've placed them. Initially, I had dirt going over my rivers too. What I did was I added the rivers as a black line over the white ground on the land mask, and reapplied this mask to all the layers.

3. Not sure if this will work, since I'm not sure if you can do a gradient from with transparent as a color, but try running a gradient from white (or whitish-blue) to transparent (if possible) on a separate layer above the land color layer (obviously with white at the north). If that fails, try running one from white (-ish blue) to 50% gray and set to Overlay (that should have roughly the same effect as the above). If all your bumpmaps are on separate gray-scale layers, this should preserve all the depth on the map. I'd try it out myself, but I don't have access to GIMP at work.

[jfrazierjr]

1. Actually, I think the forest's aren't looking too bad at all. Could stand some improvement, but practice makes perfect.

2. I know what you mean. What I figured out had to happen was that you need to add a mask to every layer for the rivers once you've placed them. Initially, I had dirt going over my rivers too. What I did was I added the rivers as a black line over the white ground on the land mask, and reapplied this mask to all the layers.

What I actually like to do is make my land shape and water and NOT apply any effects yet. Then build up my mountains add in rivers and lakes and merge down onto a copy of the sea layer. This helps to make make them look the same as I tend to have trouble getting the lakes to look the same as the seas if I do them on separate layers color and texture wise. I also save a channel with AND without the rivers for the flexibility. This also helps me from having to add a layer and then merge it (which is permanent) and then have to add a second layer to get the whole thing right. Of course, this is also one of the reasons I work on(or copy to) transparent layers so darn much to avoid a lot of this extra stuff anyway. It does not always work, but something to think about and play with if you have the time.

[Steel General]

Thanks guys, as always I appreciate the feedback and suggenstions.

I'll have to try those ideas out on that once I'm back at work (Yay me - I'm on vacation for a week!), so it looks like I'll have to play around with some different ones at home.