Thread: [Award Winner] Creating Realistic Coastlines

Hurray I got it to work....I was being dumb (not unusual for me) .... the extra explanation about the threshold slider made it all make sense. I took the liberty to amend your tut to just add that contigous should be checked on the selection and unchecked on the fill....hope you don't mind as that threw me for a bit.

What a super tutorial. It's the fastest, simplest coastline method I've seen yet and you don't get the 'lakes at the edge of the coastline' effect.

I've rated this tutorial a straight 5 and hope that others do the same so that it gets the award it so richly deserves.

I've added this tutorial to the quickstart mapping guide.

I've been away for awhile. Thanks for the kind words. I'm so glad someone found it useful.

Wow. I really love this tut. Huge thanks to OldGuy for posting it, and kudos to RobA as well, for translating it into GIMP-speak for us GIMP-newbs (well, not really newb, but not pro either...). I love what this has done to the coastline of my continent-map project. I began with a rough hand-drawn sketch on paper, that grew itself, and then once it was put onto the computer, it was transformed into something I was pretty impressed with via a sort-of version of RobA's 'creating coastlines' tut. But then what this did... wow. It was really easy to follow, and easy to play around with. I ended up selecting various regions of the map to give slightly different coastlines (the north being much more glaciated at one point, and given to fjords, and then going more minimal down south), and then even did a smaller, finer noise/modification on top of the original northern fjord-work to give the "fjords" themselves a more realistic, detailed look.

Love, love, love. Have some rep! And a rating.

Thanks : )

This is very good information.

The tip about starting with a smaller image to get more bang out of adding the noise and then scaling up worked very well for me.

And, because I can't leave well enough alone, I turned this tutorial into a PDF and added some screenshots for the interim steps and dialog boxes. (I like having these handy when I'm between WiFi hotspots...) All credit for the original process belongs to OldGuy.

Thanks for making the pdf. I was too lazy to create the step by step screenshots but I think they help explain the process. One change though. Instead of reducing the image resolution, adding the noise, and then increasing the resolution back (which could lose some detail), You might try creating a second drawing at the reduced resolution, applying noise to that, increasing the resolution and then cutting and pasting that layer from the second drawing into the first. That should accomplish the same effect without sacrificing any detail in the original.

I haven't tried this in Gimp but it should port over. Also, I believe Gimp has the ability to scale the noise directly.

Glad you like the technique. Thanks again for the pdf!

Excellent and simple way to make awesome coastlines! Thanks!

Don't forget to rate the tutorial so it can get the award it so richly deserves! ten 5 star ratings (I think) is what is needed.

PS. good to see you still about Still Cypher (I need to incorporate your amendments into the City Design tutorial)....haven't forgotten!