Those are pretty mountains! Additional thought for mountain brushes in photoshop... the clone stamp technique is good. Using the history brush tool can also be useful at times, especially if you want to put something into the middle of a mountain range you've already placed.
Wow, thanks! I mean, I'm certainly proud of the tutorial, but hearing things like that is a big boost of my confidence!Originally Posted by LampitosGames
Care to give us a rundown of that process? I know the history brush can do some cool stuff, but I've never taken the time to get to know it.
Last edited by Midgardsormr; 08-26-2013 at 06:04 PM.
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
Sure, or at least I'll try... I'm not that great at explaining things... wordy and roundabout
The basic concept is that the history brush tool works like the history panel... you can go back to a previous state, but because it's a brush tool you can do it much more selectively.
You choose the history brush from the tool panel and pick whatever brush settings you want; I often use a grungy brush with some texture to get a similar look to what you can with lifting pigment when watercolor painting, but for my previous suggestion with the mountain brushes I'd choose a hard brush at full opacity to get a clean edge. Add thought, it's a good idea to save any brush settings or other tool you like as a preset (tool presets panel, create a new tool preset button) so you can get it back without fussing endlessly with settings.
Okay, so the history brush is useless without setting the history point, which you do in the history panel (there's a column of squares on the left side). Pick the point you want to use as your backup. Note that the history tool is somewhat layer-existence specific, so it won't work if you choose a point then create a new layer and try to use it on that layer.
Once you've figured all that to your liking and you have your history point set, let's say it's at the present, latest point just to illustrate how this works... Paint a stroke with the regular brush tool, or erase a stroke with the eraser, then pluck up your history brush and go back over it. Only the section that you touch with the history brush will be affected back to the point that you chose. Very useful for making little fixes to individual strokes.
So, in context with the mountain clone stamp (assuming solid mountains), you could put an additional mountain between two existing ones by setting your history point to the present, stamping your new mountain in the place you want and then using the history brush to erase the bits where it overlaps the mountain peaks that belong in front. Of course, if you don't want to use the history brush tool or your intended history point has elapsed for some reason, you could just stamp the mountain onto another layer and mask or erase the bits that don't belong, then merge the layers.
All make sense? Anyone have a more interesting use for the history brush tool?
Thanks for the history brush tips, came in handy quite a few times today.
Anyways, quick update before I go to bed. This is what the mountains look like so far. I'm debating whether or not to add some faded color to the mountains, trees, deserts, etc. As always, any critique is much appreciated, suggestions as well; I want this map to be epic!
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