Kirach Valley

[Malygon]

Hello there.

I'm currently working on a map named "Kirach Valley" for a DnD campaign I'm working on. It is based in a world of my own creation and is the entrance for the player characters. The layout will be a crater/valley filled with vegetation with a lake in the middle.

It's also the first map I'm making so it's only natural I'm running into many problems. I'm working with the tutorial "Using GIMP to Create an Artistic Regional RPG Map" bei RobA which is definetly great but some things are just not working for my map.

1. This is a test map of the techniques used in the tutorial:



I'm not quite sure how to do the forests they just don't blend in with the grass especially there where the grass is bright and the forest is.. still dark.
What can I do to change that? Also the texture of the forests still strikes me a little odd.


My actual Map is not going to be a Island but a crater/vally with steep mountains on the edge with one or more paths leading out. The problem is while I think the mountains in RobA's tutorial look quite good I don't think they are suited for this kind of map dominated by mountains. Is there a way to create these mountains using GIMP? And how can I give the whole map a hint of descending terrain?

Also the area behind the mountains is not yet explored or the maps of these areas have been lost by the grinding stone of time. How can I show this in map?

Any tips and help is welcomed even if it is just linking me to a tutorial where things are explained. And please presume I don't know much about GIMP because that is it.

Thanks
Maly

PS: And sorry if my english is bad I'm checking everything twice but still it isn't my first language.

[Malygon]

So this will be the baseline for the final map.


You can see the lake, some grass, some dirt and well thats it so far.
The next steps would be adding the mountains and the forests but I'm still having problems with that.

[MadLetter]

I can't really help much, because my only experiences with GIMP are opening it, clicking around for two minutes and then closing it...

But, anyways, it looks good for a first try, but you might want to think about painting the brown patches with less opacity to "meld" them more into the landscape.

Also, about the forests: A bevel and/or emboss filter might be helpful, but I dont know if GIMP features any of those (as said, my knowledge of GIMP is... gimped ).

[Malygon]

Thanks for the tip with the opacity.

I tried to do the mountains with the "Simple Mountains in Gimp" tutorial by RobA and here is what I got:



I also added slightly more texture to the water and tried out something to create the effect of descending terrain but so far without success.

[Ascension]

Looks kind of like a meteor impact filled in by erosion. Pretty cool.

[Malygon]

I tried adding Wood using a different method than in the tutorial using HSV Noise on a White Map, a gradient Map with the Wood Colors and a Bump Map using some other HSV Noise.

Well here it is:



What do you think? Anything I can or should change? Not only on how the forests look but also on how they are spread over the map?

I am never satisfied with anything so any tips are appreciated.

[Malygon]

Already worked on it a little on the forests to let them more stick out and not letting them look that flat.

[Gandwarf]

They look a bit flat, you might want to add something like a bevel to the edges. I am interested in what you might add next...

[Ascension]

The shading/bump mapping you did to add some lumpiness to the forests looks great. Overall I'd say they're a bit bright, but on my monitor the whole thing looks a bit bright (that's why my stuff is usually darker than most). Progressing nicely, tho, so keep it up.

[Malygon]

Thats the kind of problem I got too. I can't really tell if something's too dark or too bright. I got 2 Monitors and every picture looks different on each one of them. Und when I print things out I often get really surprised...