Making Mountains in GIMP

[RobA]

Normski-

That type of range is even simpler. Just add some noise to a simple linear gradient, then play with the levels and curves.

Here is a simple escarpment heightfield on an oval:
testing.png

And here is a quick render in POV:
hf1.png

From above (gimp alone):
testing_above.png

-Rob A>

[Karro]

I saw this post by Jurgen (at EN World) on making mountains in GIMP and figured I share a technique I worked out.

Hope the images all end up in the right order...

cont...

cont...

cont...

Here it is using Jurgen's grass and desert textures as backgrounds.

That's it... Hope it was helpful!

-Rob A>

I like the effect, better than that on the regional map tutorial you give. However, this is not as well explained, and I haven't had the opportunity to view the video as yet.

I gather that you draw an outline, and do some kind of color gradient, but I get lost a little later on, and I'm not positive what the b/w layer is for (maybe for generating the bumpmap that roughs it up?). How do you turn the initial color gradient into the mountains?

[RobA]

I like the effect, better than that on the regional map tutorial you give. However, this is not as well explained, and I haven't had the opportunity to view the video as yet.

I gather that you draw an outline, and do some kind of color gradient, but I get lost a little later on, and I'm not positive what the b/w layer is for (maybe for generating the bumpmap that roughs it up?). How do you turn the initial color gradient into the mountains?

Went back and added some text for you, Karro.

HTH

-Rob A>

[Karro]

Went back and added some text for you, Karro.

HTH

-Rob A>

Thanks! You've got a well-deserved reputation around here!

What does HTH mean?

[ravells]

'Hope This Helps' - I think!

[Karro]

'Hope This Helps' - I think!

Thanks. In all my time of sporadic forum-reading, I don't think I've ever seen that one.

EDIT:

Well, I tried to try the technique today, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong, and it won't work. Specifically, I can't make the Gradient Fill work. I can get a shaky-looking lasso selection that looks like it would make good mountains, I can pick mountainy foreground and background color. I can select the gradient tool and change the settings. But when I click in the selection, nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

[RobA]

Thanks. In all my time of sporadic forum-reading, I don't think I've ever seen that one.

EDIT:

Well, I tried to try the technique today, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong, and it won't work. Specifically, I can't make the Gradient Fill work. I can get a shaky-looking lasso selection that looks like it would make good mountains, I can pick mountainy foreground and background color. I can select the gradient tool and change the settings. But when I click in the selection, nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

Did you watch the video? That should make it real clear and might point out what I am doing but not explaining

-Rob A>

[Karro]

Did you watch the video? That should make it real clear and might point out what I am doing but not explaining

-Rob A>

Yeah, I watched it earlier, but when I went to try the technique, I didn't have 'net access, and I couldn't remember what I was doing wrong.

Then... suddenly, sitting here trying again, I remembered!

I can't just CLICK and have the gradient fill in. I have to CLICK and DRAG. I'm not sure if the amount of drag changes the nature of the gradient or not... about to test that now.

Thanks again!

EDIT: it looks like the length and direction of the drag has no discernible effect on the appearance of the gradient.

[ravells]

Rob, for the life of me, I can't get that initial angular gradient fill you acheived. I'm not using Gimp, but photoshop and it's angular gradient gets me a result like this:

[waldronate]

What Photoshop calls an angular gradient is exactly that: a gradient where the intensity represents the angle around the center point. It's basically the other half of the 2D polar coordinate representation (radial gradient is the first).

What GIMP is calling an "angular gradient" is what image processing folks would call an EDM (Euclidean distance metric) filter. It returns the distance from the edge of the shape.

There are plugins for Photoshop that will do what GIMP does, but the ones that I could find all seem to be part of expensive image processing plugin suites.

Wilbur will do this sort of thing (draw your selection, then use Select>>Modify>>Distance to calculate the gradient and Select>>Save Selection to save it as an image), but if you're going to involve an external tool you might as well just use GIMP.