Inkscape - Fun with Filters

[Xeonicus]

I've been goofing around with Inkscape testing out some techniques, and I was pleasantly surprised by the custom filters you can generate within Inkscape. It already has some awesome pre-built filters, but making your own is even better! Here are a couple of the bits I just created.

desert3.PNGicy4.PNGforest5.PNG

Here's what I did.

tut2.PNGdesert1.PNGdesert2.PNGtut4.PNGtut5.PNGicy3.PNG

From the desert to the icy mountain, I just changed the turbulence type to fractal noise and played around with the frequency. I slightly tweaked the specular lighting options.

The forest was my favorite so far. Here are the settings...
forest1.PNGforest2.PNGforest3.PNGforest4.PNG

All I did was start with a simple filled polygon (no borders), that's all!! Easy peeezy, insta-forest. If you play around with the effects or add some new ones, you can do some fun things. It's easy to create ravines, wetlands, grasslands, and a variety of terrain. Look at some of the existing filters and see what effects they use and borrow from that as well.

I'm going to go create some canyons and glaciers now... Cheers.

-Addendum-
So, I couldn't find any way to save or import custom filters. Turns out I didn't look hard enough. Apparently, if you make a custom filter and want to save it, you save the file as an SVG file. There is no special export function or file type specifically for filters. Then, copy the SVG file to .\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\inkscape\filter s (that's for Windows 7 or Vista). You'll probably have to create the "filters" folder since it won't exist. The location is slightly different on XP and OSX. See here: InkscapeForum.com ? View topic - How to save a customized filter?