... Make Well Eroded Mountains for a heigh-tmap (in Photoshop).

[Incomitatum]

I have a pretty good technique that I like. You can check out 2 examples here:

First

IcePlanet_ST.jpg

Second

BeachPlanet.jpg


The problem is this technique is procedural. That's great if you have no idea the sort of world you want. It yeilds some great results. If you want to put down some moutains in a specific area... that's a problem I have come up with a couple half assed work arounds, but remembered Bryce.

I have a background in 3d Modeling, and got my start in Bryce (and quickly moved away from it). It had a feature where you could paint blobs in it's terrain editor and then hit a button (several times) and "errode" them.

Is there a filter, or a workflow that will do the same in Photoshop? It's very important that this work with a heightmap; as that's the base of my technique (more on that later).

Any info you have is appreciated.

-Incomitatum

[Midgardsormr]

I think what you want is a little program called Wilbur. It's a free utility written by Waldronate that does erosion modeling on heightmaps. It's a little idiosyncratic and can be difficult to use at first, but if you follow the Fun With Wilbur tutorials at the bottom of that page, you should be up and running with it relatively quickly. Better still, if you have questions, just post a thread here with Wilbur in the title, and Joe will almost certainly show up to answer.

[waldronate]

Sometimes, even if you just post with Wilbur in the body of the message...

[Gumboot]

Having just used Wilbur to erode a heightmap of my regional map, can I just say, waldronate, that I am eternally grateful. It is an awesomely powerful and useful piece of software.