The other big difference I noticed is that the FT map is a globe (2:1 ratio) and all "cuts" in the algorithm map to a globe. Using the GIMP noise algorithm (even seamless) would lead to pinching at the poles if mapped to a sphere. So it all depends on what you want to do with it.
-Rob A>
great find, but what... well ok i'm still new to GIMP, so I have no idea at all as to what to ask, but I want to know what to do to get that water effect. I think it looks great. Anyone? xD
And our time is flyin', see the candle burnin' low
Is the new world rising, from the shambles of the old
~The Rover - Led Zeppelin
The water effect is generated by the script-fu (the whole map is).Originally Posted by Airith
The color is provided by the palette map used from greyscale noise function, and it is (I believe) lightly bump-mapped (parameters are in the script-fu).
-Rob A>
I've been playing around with this myself. I think the Clouds filter in Photoshop is based on a 1/f frequency synthesis algorithm. In my opinion, it makes some of the prettiest topology, but it has a big problem, even for local area maps. It tiles. This is great for doing a cloudy background on a webpage, but it's a mess for a planetmap, unless your planet is a torus.
The best I can figure, both Photoshop and GIMP use a perlin noise function to render clouds. Gimp has a toggle to make it tileable or not, but I don't know about photoshop.
-Rob A>
Photoshop doesn't have the option to turn off tiling that I'm aware of. It's easily solved, however, either by rendering clouds in another document at a larger size than the map and cropping it to suit before dropping it into your map or by rendering the clouds layer and then cropping and transforming up to the full document size (that's what I do). Obvious, I know, but worth mentioning.
For planetary maps, I make a square image, then I run the Clouds filter with a white foreground and a black background. At about the halfway lines north and south I use smudge to break up the polar pinching. I then crop down till the image is twice as wide as it is high. Following that I use Flexify to move the poles down to the middle of the map. Then I use smudge and the healing brush to obliterate any remaining pinching to my satisfaction. Finally, I use Flexify to move the poles back where they belong.
Anymore, I mostly use lunarcell or planetgenesis to produce heightmaps. In any case, once I get a decent heightmap I import it into bryce as a terrain.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote