Greetings from a new member

[Loony77]

Hello I am new to this place and I am here because I want to work on making some maps for my fantasy campaign world. I have been GM'ing on and off in it for long time and now I am about to take over as GM again after a long brake just chilling as a player.
Back in the day when I first made the maps I drew them by hand then after some time I scanned them in and modified them in MS paint but I have never really been satisfied with the result and came here to try and learn how to make cooler maps i.e. something I could be happy with myself.
I have now downloaded GIMP and tryed it with the aid of RobA's tutorial but as I am a complete newbie at it, it hasn't really worked out. I find that with the tecnique in that tutorial I lose the shoreline I want to keep and I have stopped working on it.
I have a continent map that I would love to develop into a full detail map. I dont mind spending many many hours on it but I am not really sure where to start. I would love some help from some more knowledgeable people. I like the style of the maps you get from the RobA tutorial but I have seen many other cool maps here.

I will try and attach the MS paint map I will be working from as a baseline and the map I got from trying the tutorial(I didn't finish it as I could see the shorelines where messed up)uploadmap1.gifuploadmap2.png

[Korash]

Off hand, and please understand that it has been a LOOOOONG time since I worked that tut, but it looks like there was a Land Mask that either wasn't applied, or not applied correctly......I think that because of the "bumpyness" or "balloonyness" of the coasts.

Did you start with your Paint map as a layer in Gimp and then select off of that? If you did you should be able to create a mask that would allow you to keep the coastal layout you had to begin with...I am off to bed, but i will try to find you some better instructions on how to do that later

[Loony77]

Thank you for the reply

I think your right about something going wrong. The reason is most likely that I really havent got any idea what I am doing with GIMP so I just follow the tutorial blindly. And your right that the coastline has gotten all "balloony" and that really bugs me.

I did start off with my paint map as a layer and then I traced it in a transparrent layer and filled it as per RobA's tutorial.

My goal with this map is to make a map with much better looking mountains and forests. Also to get way more details in it with more but smaller forests, mountainranges, rivers, towns, roads and points of interest. The location of these things and the coastline compared to the starting map isnt that important as long as I keep it in the ballpark.

So any tutorial you can direct me to or hint you might have as to where to go on this massive forum are most welcome.

And again thanks to Korash and anyone else who might reply

[Mateus090985]

Welcome aborad =)

[arsheesh]

Welcome to the Guild Loony77. I'm afraid that I won't be able to help answer your questions as I have not gone all the way through Rob's tutorial myself. I would recommend reading through some other more artistic/photorealistic tutorials (e.g. Ascension's Atlas Style in GIMP) to get a feel for other techniques, to see what might work for your own purposes. This will also help you become more familiar with GIMP as well.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Loony77]

Thx for the reply arsheesh. I am really pressed for time atm but I had a quick peek at some other tuts and your maps and damn they look amazing... love the forests you've done. Deffinately going to use your tut for that.

I am going to take some time over the weekend to take a closer look. I am am also considering making a mapmaking request because I also need to make all the other non-map realted work on the campaign I am about to start with my RGP group and I am beginning to feel the pressure timewise to get it done.

Cheers for everything this place really is an awesome resource