Thread: [Award Winner] Fast and Easy Artistic Maps in the GIMP

Firstly, thanks for this tutorial. It was easy to follow and I had fun making the various brushes. I adapted it to a pre-existing map I had and drew on top of it. It's almost complete, I'm just not 100% about doing text on curves in GIMP yet, as I come from a Paint Shop Pro background where doing them is fairly straightforward.

Anyhow, here's my 95% finished map - the southern section of the Three Rivers continent, which is the setting for a number of stories I've written and am writing.

Thank you. I used this tutorial to learn to make a map in GIMP. I'm not computer literate and your tutorial was very easy for me to follow. I did have one issue, I could never get the names to curl right like yours. In the end I just wrote them onto the map in a text layer without trying to get them to curl.

Yesterday, in a fit of worldbuilding, I joined this site and downloaded GIMP. This tutorial has been really useful, both with ideas for maps, and in getting to know my way around GIMP. Thank you!

Much appreciation for this tutorial. The tone of the tutorial was welcoming and supportive.

However, I am confused on two parts.

On page 12 of 22, the tutorial says:
"Now go to Select->Select by Color and choose one of your black lines. Little moving selection lines should show up around every like you just make. Now go to Select → Shrink... and choose 3 pixels. This will make the selected area shrink by 3 pixels from every edge. Now choose the bucket fill tool and fill in all of the selected areas with white. This will make your roads nice, parallel lines with an organic hand drawn feel."

I did as you said . . . but once I was finished, I couldn't figure out how to deselect the roads without completely deleting them. That is one area where I am having trouble.

My next issue came with the Paths step (page 15 of 22). It says in the tutorial:
"Using this tool, click once on either side of the town you want to label. This should produce a thin line, a path, across the town. Now click on the middle of the path and pull up. You should see the path bend into a curve. Try to get this curve to be where you would like the text to appear near your town. Once your curve is acceptable, select Layer → Text along Path. This will cause the path you made to contort into the shape of the name you just typed."

I placed the two purple dots on either side of the text and pulled up in the middle as it said . . . but that only created a purple fuzzy thing off to the left . . . it stared at me. I was frightened .

And I'm sure once these obstacles have been corrected, I will delve further into the tutorial and come back further confused. I'm just cool like that.

Thank you to anyone who can help me!

Wow, awesome Tut. But for the life of me I can't figure out how to make the brushes bigger or smaller! They are 400x400 pxs and even when I start with a map that is 4000x4000 pxs, the brushes are bigger than I want. Can someone help a GIMP noob?

What you need is the scale slider (or the input box) in the Tool Options dialog. This is what it looks like:

Thanks so much for your tutorial! It really can be done by novices. This is my first map ever, and I think it's actually decent.

I am having a good time reading through this tutorial, but I'm having issues right during building the mountain brushes. It looks to be really useful for what I need to do.

I'm using GIMP 2.8 on Windows.

Whenever I try to use the brush after saving it, it only uses a single cell instead of randomizing between the cells.

EDIT: I missed the ranks setting.

Originally Posted by RSIxidor

I am having a good time reading through this tutorial, but I'm having issues right during building the mountain brushes. It looks to be really useful for what I need to do.

I'm using GIMP 2.8 on Windows.

Whenever I try to use the brush after saving it, it only uses a single cell instead of randomizing between the cells.

EDIT: I missed the ranks setting.

So now I'm stuck on the text.

Whenever I try the "text along path" part it does this:



What did I do wrong?