Painting rivers on Wilbur-made maps

[Gallien]

Hello!

I have found recently this great site Being much impressed, i couldn't but try some of the techniques, described here.

I mean this tutorial in the first place:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/tu...lbur-gimp.html

I have made a greyscale map in Wilbur - now i'm trying to paint it. And i've found a little problem.
The rivers cannot be painted from the beginnig to their end. Only the lower reaches of the rivers can be painted with that technic. I've tried to change the Wilbur map (to make the rivers deeper), but that is not the way to solve the problem. And i am definetly not going to paint all the rivers by hand

Is there any good (and easy) solution? If not, i'll just leave the rivers as they are.

[waldronate]

The usual approach is to paint the highlands and let Wilbur find the rivers. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that Wilbur only lets you paint the lower reaches of the rivers, though. Could you post an example of the map that you're working from with some quick drawing to suggest what you'd like to get?

[Gallien]

tutorialgimp24.png
This is not my map - this is the map from the tutorial. I placed a mark on every big river where the stream ends and smth like a dry stream bed starts.
??????? ????.png
This is my map (with the same marks) - but the rivers here are too thin. I think i've lost the version with wider and deeper rivers, but anyway i can't make the rivers flow directly from the mountains.
What i want is a river bed filled with water - from the spring to the sea

[waldronate]

Torq's tutorial really only uses the Wilbur output as a height map. Wilbur can do much more for you. As an example, Texture>>Other Maps>>River Flow will let you create an image that represent actual rivers without having to rely on having the entire riverbed at sea level. Then take that map and overlay it on top of the results from Torq's tutorial and you'll have rivers as detailed as you'd like.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/ma...und-lands.html has what I consider a better technique for getting a desired set of shapes into your terrain, if that's important to you.

Using the above tutorial, I took the following set of masks
mask_coast.png mask_mtns.png mask_rivers.png

and did the processing described in the CSU Johnsondale tutorial linked above and came out with the following elements:
result_bump.png result_light.png result_river.png

In Photoshop, I used a gradient map adjustment layer to turn the bump map into a color-coded height map, the light map to add intensity (multiplied with the color image), and the rivers as a straight overlay with the black masked out to get the following:
result_assembled.jpg
(note that the gradient isn't particularly good, the water isn't textured, and the rivers are solid white, but those are all easily overcome).

This whole process took about 45 minutes, including drawing the masks, saving the images, work in Photshop, and typing up this message. The Photoshop work could all be done directly in Wilbur, btw...

[Gallien]

Thank you very much!
i KNEW the river map from wilbur somehow could be used!
Also many thanks for providing another technique for mountain shaping! I think im going to use it for the other part of my map... Its a continent (so it is much larger) - and it has got more articulate mountain ranges.

P.S. Till now i used Chuck's metod of mountain shaping [Award Winner] Photoshop Mapping with Chuck It is a good and interesting method, but not for a map of a large continent with a net of thin mountain ranges (especially if the ranges shouldn't be random). I have almost abandoned my plan to make the whole map - that is why i started with the island
P.P.S. The metod doesn't belong to Chuck, but Chuck describes it - and the link to the author of the method is dead...
http://www.jezelf.co.uk/tutorials_map05.htm

[Korash]

Well jezelf is a member here, so there is a good chance that it is here too...unless he only posted a link to his site....But a quick search of his threads pulled up this and I think you might find what you are looking for there.

[Gallien]

Wow! a whole bunch of tuturials and really good ones!
Many thanks to you all!