[Award Winner] Yet Another Mountain Tutorial Using GIMP
... or how to create mountains in less than two dozen steps.
I put this tutorial together at the request of a friend of mine, and thought it may be of interest here. This is an initial draft (I'm sure there are spelling mistakes and other brainfarts; I've got a cold and it's getting late) but I thought I'd put it up for review.
This tutorial presents techniques that are derived from RobA's 'Artistic Regional Maps' tutorial, and make maps that look like the attached.
Keith
Last edited by kjdavies; 12-05-2009 at 02:39 AM. Reason: added image showing how final image fit original scribble
Those look pretty good.
I'm not a GIMP user but I'm sure this will get a thorough workout by those that do.
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
That looks nice! Mind if I link to this post from my big 'ARM' tut?
Also a couple of tips that might help, play with them an include them if you wish...
1) with the magic want (fuzzy select) tool in gimp, click and hold the mouse button down. moving the mouse up or down will change the threshold slider and the screen will update to show you the selection! (I only found this out last week, and it is really handy. It also works with the select by colour tool)
2) another option to the mathmap noise filter is the felimage noise plugin which is what I use to avoid the artifacts the built in noise filter has. It also makes a nice forest bumpmap, btw.
3) I recently discovered a good way to draw uniform mountain ranges. instead of what you made (the big white bugs), draw the ridge lines in white using the 3 pixel hard brush, then use the Filters->Generic->Dialate to grow the white area, and crtl-F to get it 1/2 the size you want your mountain, then blur by the 2x the same amount:
test.jpg
In any case, great addition to the tutorials here!
-Rob A>
P.S. I added a few tags to your post.
My tutorials: Using GIMP to Create an Artistic Regional Map ~ All My Tutorials
My GIMP Scripts: Rotating Brush ~ Gradient from Image ~ Mosaic Tile Helper ~ Random Density Map ~ Subterranean Map Prettier ~ Tapered Stroke Path ~ Random Rotate Floating Layer ~ Batch Image to Pattern ~ Better Seamless Tiles ~ Tile Shuffle ~ Scale Pattern ~ Grid of Guides ~ Fractalize path ~ Label Points
My Maps: Finished Maps ~ Challenge Entries ~ My Portfolio: www.cartocopia.com
Absolutely not, go ahead. I'd intended to link to the ARM, but at 2:00AM, after six hours working on this with a cold and a headache, I just wanted to go to bed.Originally Posted by RobA
(It didn't work; after a couple of hours of not-sleeping I got up again, but didn't want to risk anything dumb happening so I didn't touch this.)
I'd like to review the GIMP tutorial that's here (noticed it last night) and see if it's there, first. I can see putting together a book of common tasks and tricks in GIMP; I found myself wanted to just say 'add a black layer above the $foo layer', but completeness made me do it the long way.Also a couple of tips that might help, play with them an include them if you wish...
I learned about this one recently myself (bought a couple of books on GIMP, haven't finished reading them yet). As I recall it doesn't work with GIMP 2.4 and I didn't want to complicate things any more than needed.1) with the magic want (fuzzy select) tool in gimp, click and hold the mouse button down. moving the mouse up or down will change the threshold slider and the screen will update to show you the selection! (I only found this out last week, and it is really handy. It also works with the select by colour tool)
So I see (I've read the forest tutorial).2) another option to the mathmap noise filter is the felimage noise plugin which is what I use to avoid the artifacts the built in noise filter has. It also makes a nice forest bumpmap, btw.
What I'd really like to see is a simple and usable GIMP plugin for libnoise. MathMap purports to include libnoise, but I find MathMap's documentation rather weak -- I had to ask in #gimp how to find out where to find the MathMap plugin after it was installed!
Interesting approach. Often when I do mountains I just scribble a few lines close together (say, 25-40 pixels across) and score some shorter lines across them, then go from there. This looks like it may give a little finer control over it. I'll give it a try.3) I recently discovered a good way to draw uniform mountain ranges. instead of what you made (the big white bugs), draw the ridge lines in white using the 3 pixel hard brush, then use the Filters->Generic->Dialate to grow the white area, and crtl-F to get it 1/2 the size you want your mountain, then blur by the 2x the same amount:
test.jpg
Thanks! I can't say it was fun to write (*click click click click* *three or more screenshots* gets old, fast), but I'm moderately proud of it. Except for the typos I now see.In any case, great addition to the tutorials here!
Ah, good. I didn't think to tag it before I posted, then couldn't see how to add them later.P.S. I added a few tags to your post.
Keith
A possible improvement to the process would soften the edges of the bump maps. On the bump map layers (high bump map and low bump map), add layer mask (mountain mask channel) and blur the mask by about 25 pixels. This will smooth the edges of the bump maps so the mountains don't suddenly 'spring out of the plain'.
It will also kill a couple of the smaller bumps/hills near the mountains, which may or may not be desirable. I'm not sure if this is better or not, consequently.
K.
Oh, wow.
Rob, I just reread your post on "Making Not So Random Coastlines in GIMP", particularly where it talked about using turbulent noise. Applied that (instead of MathMap's fractal noise) to a couple of scribbled 'mountain ranges', look what I got.
(First is the mountains produced, second has the 'rough ranges' highlighted.)
My initial technique kept everything inside the indicated area (you'll see this one has things outside it), but I can accept this -- deleting undesired elements created would be easy enough.
I'm going to have to remember this.
Keith
Not sure how to use what? I suspect this message ended up in the wrong thread....
K.
nice, i got reasonable results, with a few more trys i may get them looking like yours lol , thanks for the Tut
You're quite welcome, Vorhees.
Nice work on the tutorial, I found it really easy! Hopefully it will work with what I am attempting.
I am taking an 1895 map of Nevada and creating a locality map for a western RPG to show some terrain. Next step is the town map, then the full state map.
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