Photoshop 3D Tools

[stormweasel]

Well, being a dummy myself I am not sure. It is not friendly for me - I'd prefer something like the level makers in some games where you can just paint the maps- but one way basically you can

-render clouds
-use the freehand selection tool and Shift key to select multiple areas you want to be mountains
-feather a little
-Menu: Layer/New/Layer via Copy
-Menu: 3D/New Mesh from Gray Scale / Plane

You get your mountains.

You can also apply the 3D effect to the entire cloud layer but will need to resize or crop as you'll see the transparent edges as it 'shrinks' when the mesh is rendered.

Either way in your Layers panel you will see the 'Depth' map which you can open and add layers to (best), or modify then when you save it will render the new map (so you can cut rivers in this way).

Under Menu: Windows/3D if you open the 3D tools you will see some basic tools to rotate.

Here is an example where I opened the depth map and used a brush, Sharpen and Burn.



Sorry looks crappy but on my lunch break at work and rushed it off.

I guess it might be useful at that. I would be more comfortable with a more painting type solution - for a visual artist type I think a tool to paint and view landscape live is all I would want; perhaps just simple 'erode' and the like but too many buttons and I burn brain cells. Thanks for that link going to post something in a second.

Ok I poked around with this a bit more before lunch ended and found that you can edit the depth map live which makes it interesting. I think I will put up a short tutorial after work.

EDIT: I did a very quick video showing the very basics used here http://www.cartographersguild.com/tu...-3d-tools.html