[Award Winner] Simple Mountains in Gimp

[Zancie]

Well, I figured it out, the channel was set to visible. Not sure why it caused me so much trouble.

Thank you Jugabyte, you got me looking for something. Anyway, great tutorial. Thank you so much.

[jugabyte]

Glad it helped. The way you had it, by the way, is how you make lightsabers.

[mad_cat]

Great tutorial. I'm going to try to reverse engineer it to use with Paint.net. Doesn't seem too difficult, I think I have a general sense of what you are doing.

[Dissent]

Hi, I've been going through this tutorial and have been very happy with my results but somehow on the very last step putting snow on the mountain tops I'm having trouble. For some reason, as I move the slider on threshold the snow or white color starts coming up from the very lowest points in the relief. Something is backwards but i can't seem to figure out what. Any ideas?

[Matthias8580]

Yes, this was a very helpful tutorial for my first time attempting cartography, many features of GIMP came to light throughout the process, thanx!!

[Erechel]

I can't make it work properly. It is a lenghty, difficult process even when I have some experience with Gimp, but I get very confused with the color curves and levels. Among my problems are:
1) the feathered selection is too small. Many of my islands (even big ones) aren't recognized, and remain plain, even when I marked them on the channel.
2) The treshold is awful to put snow on the tops.
3) One mountainside remains very obscured, to the point of 100% black.
4) the mountains remain very very thin.
5) I cannot place smaller mountain ranges, because they don't enter in the heightened area.
6) I cannot make to work felimage.
7) overall, the mountain ranges look like crap.

If someone can help me, I'll be grateful. I theotetically can upload the .xcf to the page.

Sorry if I sound rude. I'm a little frustrated (as I've tried above ten times to make it work, but I cant), but also English isn't my main language.

[Silky Johnson]

So... I saw this tutorial and swooned. So pretty...

I have been at it for a week or so with mixed results, but I feel a lot more comfortable with the software. So that is good...

I do have a quick question. The map RobA started with... In a couple sentences, how were those hills made? I am guessing a mask for the fade effect but was it bump mapping with a blurred layer for color? I mean it wasn't a pattern fill or a brush.

You might have caught on I don't know my stuff very well.

Thanks!
Silky

[blackguard]

Great tutorial thanks.
Quick question: with step 11, when I set the elevation to 30, it doesn't make the black 50% grey. Instead it gives a lighter shade. I'm assuming it's something that's changed with an update of gimp. Does anyone know the value which would give 50% grey? I think it's about 12, but that's just an educated guess.

Thank you

[eepjr24]

Trying this tutorial out in GIMP 2.10.22. Quite a few things have changed but I think I have worked through most of them. I am getting some black in areas near the mountain tops, does anyone have an idea for where in the process I might have messed that up? Posting an image below to show what I mean.

EDIT: Fixed. I had to go back and play with the levels and curves on the noise and angular. Specifically, I had toned down the noise too much and not toned down the angular enough. I ended up with a weird looking curve, but the more important bit turned out to be how the preview looks (no pure whites) versus how the curves appear. I also switched from Hard light to Overlay.
moutains.jpg mountains_fixed.jpg

[Edward Tait]

So after alot of playing around I was finally able to get results that I am happy with to move forward on getting my map done. Big THANK YOU to all of you who brought this tutorial to us.

RobA3-2c.jpg