Make Rough Walls in Photoshop

[JFJohnny5]

Does anyone have any ideas on how I could make "rough walls" for cave maps using Photoshop? And just to be clear, I'm talking about the actual outline of the wall itself, not the fill or any kind of texture issues.

In the example I've attached, I'm trying to get something similar to the top half. I can use a grid and the pen tool to reproduce the straight walls form the bottom half of the map with little to no problems. But I can't figure out how to use the same pen tool and grid application, but then come out with the rougher cave walls. I could of course use the pen tool to individually make every bump and recess, but yikes! I can't help but think there has to be a way to make a straight line and then add "the noise" so to speak. I guess I'm looking for something similar to the fractal line tool from CC3.

Once I can get the wall outline, I'll be creating various masks and using effects such as stroke and bevel to get the final look. I'm just stumped on step 1, making the wall outline itself.

[Midgardsormr]

Look around for the random coast tutorials that use threshold. You should be able to adapt that technique to make rough walls. I'd try it out myself right now, but I'm really supposed to be doing something else.

[Sigurd]

I think a really cheap way to do this sort of thing quickly is to copy a section onto a new upper layer. Then distort it, (ripple, wave, whatever). When the upper layer is distorted erase anything you don't want wavy to reveal the original room.


I don't know that the method is good enough for a regular work flow but it works for spots... I think mechanical distortion is going to let you down if you have to work with too many layers at once.

If you can work with just the wall outline. You can blur them, maybe mod them a bit, and then remove the fuzz to re establish lines.

There was a good tutorial around here that spoke of this sort of bump adding in response to changing scales. - I have a terrible memory for names. The author diserves more recognition because its a good tutorial.

Sigurd

[jfrazierjr]

Displace can be used to do some of this.. I used it to take a rough shape and add some slight distortion. Of course, the more closely packed your gradiations are you are using the power the distort, the more likely if you turn up the pixels that you will get "broken" lines instead of random changes to it. As others have said, using the threshold method is also a good way also and uses some of the same techniques as distort.

[RobA]

I'll second jfrazierjr and siguard. The displace filter would do a great job. Just use a displacement map of fairly dense rendered clouds.

-Rob A>

[RobA]

Here's a step by step using the random coast method.

Start with the areas blocked out:
rough1.png

Select the areas you want to have rough walls and blur:
rough2.png

In a new layer set to Overlay, fill with turbulent clouds with as much detail as you can get:
rough3.png

Copy visible, paste and apply curves (serious S curve) or threshold to get the shape (or in photoshop use a threshold adjustment layer, I think):
rough4.png

Pretty it up:
rough5.png

-Rob A>

[JFJohnny5]

See. That's why I love this forum. I'd been messing with this problem for hours, and you guys had the answer in no time. Displacement maps are the PERFECT solution! Here's a really quick test and the method I used, for any interested.

What I did was first draw straight walls with the pen tool. Then apply a displacement map of Render>Clouds. Magic wand select the "wall" areas and expand that selection by half the width of the brush I had used to stroke the pen path (to eliminate the anti-aliasing "halo") and make a mask from that. I then inverted that selection and made another mask to represent the room and hallways. I filled those respective layers with some textures and applied a few choice effects. 2 minutes. Tops.

When I fine tune the displacement map to get the specific wall effect I'm trying to duplicate, I'll post the displacement map file along with a mini-tutorial on how to use it.

[JFJohnny5]

Here's a step by step using the random coast method.

Awesome! Your method works just as well if not better than what I just described!

[jfrazierjr]

Here's a step by step using the random coast method.

-Rob A>

This kind of makes me wonder if you can do something like this as part of your dungeon script as an option to mess up the walls a bit...

[Ascension]

The method I use is similar to RobA's but instead of blurring I use Crystallize (once at 6, once at 3) to break up the shape into something jagged, then tweak the contrast to remove the grays, then carry on with the rest of it. Not sure what the Gimp equivalent of crystallize is.