A tactical map commission

[Gamerprinter]

On question on the trees: How did you do the texture? Black-and-white Plasma and bump maps?

Essentially, that is exactly it. However, I use Xara Xtreme 4.0 rather than GIMP or Photoshop, which is a hybrid raster/vector application.

First I create a "mouse-drawn" forest shape and fill it with a properly scaled photo texture map of a real forest. Using the transparency tool, instead of a plasma, I use a Fractal Clouds filter, which very levels of transparency in a natural way to the forest shape. Using the transparency profile, I increase the contrast between transitions in transparency to help define the start and end of regions of forest. Finally I apply a heavy edge feather on the entire shape. All done in Xara Xtreme, though I'd say "texture and plasma filter" pretty much is the same thing you'd do in a raster app to get similar results.

I pretty much began experimenting with the transparency tool for this type of results only a few months ago. But I love it and use it extensively - I applied this technique to the mountains surrounding the forest as well.

GP