WIP using RobA's GIMP Tutorial

[Karro]

Okay... so the reason I'm here is because when I was searching the 'net for some tutorials on GIMP to help with my mapmaking, I happened across RobA's tutorial here on this site.

So, here are a couple basic maps I've started using this tutorial. I've gotten to the ocean creation step, so I've got WIPs of that, as well as edges of the land masses.

The ocean on my first round practicing


The edge of the land mass


The Ocean on my second round practicing


The edge of the land mass


Things I'm learning so far:

1. This is fun!
2. My poor laptop can barely handle this... the images are only 840x600 px but on the second one GIMP would hang up and not display the menus properly when I merge/wand selected a large area.
3. I'm learning layer blend types and various kinds of filters and how useful they can be.

One more thing... how do I post thumbnails like everyone else?

[Midgardsormr]

There are two ways: When you begin a new message, you'll note there are lots of icons above the message area. To the right of the "smiley" is a paper clip icon. Click on that, and you'll get a pop-up box where you can upload your attachments. All attachments will appear as thumbnails if they're over a certain size.

The other way is to look below the message area under the Additional Options. The second box there has a button that says "Manage Attachment" and will open the same box as the paper clip icon does.

If you're editing a message and want to add attachments to it, you'll see a button right next to the Save button that says "Go Advanced." If you click that, you'll get a format that looks just like when you're posting a new message.

If you use the Quick Reply feature, you'll see a "Go Advanced" button there, too, which serves the same pupose as the one in the edit screen.

[DanChops]

Looking good! I look forward to reading about your map as you work through the steps.

[Karro]

There are two ways: When you begin a new message, you'll note there are lots of icons above the message area. To the right of the "smiley" is a paper clip icon. Click on that, and you'll get a pop-up box where you can upload your attachments. All attachments will appear as thumbnails if they're over a certain size.

The other way is to look below the message area under the Additional Options. The second box there has a button that says "Manage Attachment" and will open the same box as the paper clip icon does.

If you're editing a message and want to add attachments to it, you'll see a button right next to the Save button that says "Go Advanced." If you click that, you'll get a format that looks just like when you're posting a new message.

If you use the Quick Reply feature, you'll see a "Go Advanced" button there, too, which serves the same pupose as the one in the edit screen.

Thanks! I was hoping I wasn't breaking a rule by posting the whole image instead of just the thumbnail.

Looking good! I look forward to reading about your map as you work through the steps.

Thanks. So far, I'm really satisfied with the progress I'm making. I'm working on these two maps primarily as practice--neither is of anyplace in particular, and the shapes and designs are just a test to see how the random coast generation method RobA describes will interact with a more or less specific coastline shape.

I'm a little concerned how this is going to go once I try to apply it to the actual world map I've been trying to develop. I have a file I had started working on before discovering cartographer's guild, but at 7200x3600 pix, it's about 50X as large as these files, so I fear I may crash GIMP on my poor laptop entirely once I start using these techniques on it....

[DanChops]

Thanks. So far, I'm really satisfied with the progress I'm making. I'm working on these two maps primarily as practice--neither is of anyplace in particular, and the shapes and designs are just a test to see how the random coast generation method RobA describes will interact with a more or less specific coastline shape.

I understand exactly what you're saying. I'm doing the same thing, only I'm using a somewhat more recognizable coastline as my base.

I'm a little concerned how this is going to go once I try to apply it to the actual world map I've been trying to develop. I have a file I had started working on before discovering cartographer's guild, but at 7200x3600 pix, it's about 50X as large as these files, so I fear I may crash GIMP on my poor laptop entirely once I start using these techniques on it....

That's huge! Mine is only 1100 x 800, and my (admittedly ancient) PC is struggling to keep up. Good luck!

[Talroth]

When editing on older hardware, one tip that can work well is to do all your layer work on smallish sections (512x512), then flatten a copy and paste it into a single layered larger image for your final product. I'm not sure how GIMP handles its layers internally, but try this trick and see how it works for you.

[RobA]

The other tip is to set your environment settings up correctly for your machine. I think the defaults are way too low.

I run on a AMD Turion64X2 with 2GB Ram. Here are my settings:

2008-05-27_011942.png

Tile Cache is the biggie, and set at 1/2 physical memory (but could go even higher depending on what else you do at the same time)

-Rob A>

[Karro]

I understand exactly what you're saying. I'm doing the same thing, only I'm using a somewhat more recognizable coastline as my base.


That's huge! Mine is only 1100 x 800, and my (admittedly ancient) PC is struggling to keep up. Good luck!

Ah yes... It looks like the corner of Africa, the Arabian peninsula, and India. It's still recognizeable, but also still random. Hopefully, that was your goal?

But yes, the worldmap I started was quite large. I wanted to have a world map where I could change the overall zoom level (to focus on a region with a moderate amount of detail, instead of just a continent) with a minimum of fuss. I also wanted to maintain a few specific, long-standing geographic features that I had first drawn on maps of certain regions of this world when I was a kid (for no reason other than nostalgia). I guess there aren't many great reasons to keep it this way, but I hope I can still use this large map just the same.

[Karro]

When editing on older hardware, one tip that can work well is to do all your layer work on smallish sections (512x512), then flatten a copy and paste it into a single layered larger image for your final product. I'm not sure how GIMP handles its layers internally, but try this trick and see how it works for you.

The other tip is to set your environment settings up correctly for your machine. I think the defaults are way too low.

I run on a AMD Turion64X2 with 2GB Ram. Here are my settings:

Tile Cache is the biggie, and set at 1/2 physical memory (but could go even higher depending on what else you do at the same time)

-Rob A>

Thanks for the pointers. My laptop isn't really all that old (it's a dual core pentium with, I think, 2 gig of RAM and a 512MB video card... but it's running Vista, so a lot of that gets sucked up by the OS; sadly the comp was a gift so I didn't have a choice in OSs), but it runs a little slow. I'll take a look at the environment settings today to try to make sure it's set up optimally.

I was thinking about cutting up the final product into chunks and see what I can do. It may not be easy, since the continents and island chains kind of make an interwoven mesh over much of the world map. I tried to make the continent placement look natural and organic.

[Redrobes]

Even with Vista that ought to be easily enough to hold a large image. 7K x 3K is 80Mb or thereabouts in memory and even if you had 10 layers and some undo that would be only be about a 1Gb. Theres probably something else at play here like anti virus or something else thats thrashing your system. You should look at your processes and see how much CPU and memory they are all burning.