A WIP aka My tortured dream.

[hohum]

After quite a bit of trial and error I got some mountains I am happy with. I am struggling with the next portion, biomes. Right now the two problems I am encountering are a hard shape edge and non conformity to the mountains below. I thought Screen was the right setting, but then lost confidence in that.

I need to go back to the Textured forest tut and ravells edges tutorial. I've basically followed a combo of RobA's regional map tut, Torq's Mtn's in Wilbur and Gimp, and waldronates Fun with Gimp Vol4 from the wilbur tutorial section.

The hills and mountains still overlap the water slightly, my mask may not be tight enough and it is the one issue I have not solved when using Torq's tut.

[hohum]

I'm back at trying to realize this project after trying out Gidde's GIMP conversion of Ascension's Atlas style tutorial. Here is the result.



I'm fairly satisfied, but the mountains seem too washed out for my tastes. I've tried adjusting the input, output and gamma for the source clouds but just can't seem to get it right. Setting the mountain layer to multiply looks more like it but then the color seems too gray (just like an embossed image). I am preparing to try Torq's method to see what I can come up with.

I am aware of the striations in the ocean, I don't care for it but am not that concerned right now. I'm thinking that the shelf opacity should be raised from 30% to 50% and perhaps reduced to 10px from 20px.

Deviations from the tutorial: Made a custom planetary gradient using the Ascension palette and the blend tool. Skipped the Hills section. Reduced the size and feathering of the mask on the mountains to 10px from 20px. I used a 25px feathered lasso to get the mountains where I wanted them.

Any thoughts?

(this is a re-post, since I apparently lost the original during the down time. It seems somehow slightly less coherent.)

[hohum]

Looking better using Torq's technique with patterns instead of colors. I did a version in color and it still didn't look quite right. Here is the pattern version.



The mountains are done in 4 layers, each with the layer set to hard light and an opacity of 85%. Each one has also been bump mapped.