Where should I start? I'm new to mapping.

[Jkaen]

I don't quite use RobA's method anymore, maybe you will find the solution I adapted from his slightly easier to follow:

First sketch out your landmass in white against black, as shown in picture 1.

On a sperate layer above this generate the noise layer (picture 2) and set it to overlay.

Select the landmass layer and apply a gausian blur (to arrive at picture 3)

Merge the 2 layers together (image doesn't look different) then select colour - threshold and move the slider until you get the landmass you like (picture 4)

Does that make things any easier? (The amount of blur can be varied depending on how random you want your coast to be compared to your sketch)

[Karro]

I don't quite use RobA's method anymore, maybe you will find the solution I adapted from his slightly easier to follow:

First sketch out your landmass in white against black, as shown in picture 1.

On a sperate layer above this generate the noise layer (picture 2) and set it to overlay.

Select the landmass layer and apply a gausian blur (to arrive at picture 3)

Merge the 2 layers together (image doesn't look different) then select colour - threshold and move the slider until you get the landmass you like (picture 4)

Does that make things any easier? (The amount of blur can be varied depending on how random you want your coast to be compared to your sketch)

Nice variation on RobA's method. I think this is probably a little easier to use, too, once you know where the tools are!

(which... learning these tools was the beauty of the original tutorial!)

[RobA]

I am having problems with the overlay stuff. The cloud texture does not want to show through very well. The picture that I have attached is what my shoreline looks like with the land mask and the land clip layers invisible.

Can you zip and upload the .xcf?

-Rob A>

[RobA]

I think it is a variation on this one.

Jkaen's suggestion is fabulous so long as you don't need a residual heightfield for the land terrain. The reason for the TLS method was to be non-destructive.

@Jkaen - you should post this in the thread I linked to!

-Rob A>

[jfrazierjr]

I think it is a variation on this one.

Jkaen's suggestion is fabulous so long as you don't need a residual heightfield for the land terrain. The reason for the TLS method was to be non-destructive.

@Jkaen - you should post this in the thread I linked to!

-Rob A>

Yep, that's the one I tend to use cause I like the fractalization much better then the one in the Regional Map tutorial.

[Steel General]

That method will also work in Photoshop (if anyone was wondering)

[Human Jackalope]

I had to prepare for a couple of meetings over at the church and had to duck out immediately after my post. Just reading these without opening Gimp back up I think I know where my hang up is from some of what you have said.
The exact place that I am getting hung up is immediately before post 7 and the work on the ocean begins. Using Jkaen's post pictures as a reference I cannot get something to look like picture 3. That caused problems when it came to making the oceans too. I am going to piddle around for a little bit and will try to update where I am before going to bed tonight.

I appreciate the help and encouragement.

[RobA]

So (if I understand) you aren't able to get something like this (from step 4):


The normal reason people get stuck here is because they didn't blur enough in step 4, image 4, relative to the size of the map. The exercise map was only 800x800 and I blurred it 50+ pixels. The "noise" of the coast will be contained within that band, so a narrow band (5-10 px) will barely do anything...

-Rob A>

[Karro]

So (if I understand) you aren't able to get something like this (from step 4):
The normal reason people get stuck here is because they didn't blur enough in step 4, image 4, relative to the size of the map. The exercise map was only 800x800 and I blurred it 50+ pixels. The "noise" of the coast will be contained within that band, so a narrow band (5-10 px) will barely do anything...

-Rob A>

It's for this reason that I developed an alternate method to get jaggedy coasts when I have a reasonably firm idea of where I want those coasts to go.

Instead of blurring and using the cloud noise to give me fractalized looking coasts (which can require a lot of blurring to get a coast with enough fractalization, but which can really muck up the coast I was originally trying to follow), I used the 'jitter' feature on the brushes. If I select my area and stroke along the edges with brushes of different sizes on a high jitter, I can achieve an aesthetically-fractalized enough looking coast without losing too much definition on the original coastline. And I can manually correct any errors I see relatively easily.

I can get the heightfield effect back by copying and blurring the layer and overlaying clouds, and using my fractalized coast as a mask for this new version of the land.

[RobA]

"Jitter! Bah - when I was a boy, we didn't have no jitter!"

Great suggestion! Can you write up a little tut showing your process?

-Rob A>