[Award Winner] Eriond - A Tutorial for GIMP & Wilbur

[Lord Aenaran]

@Freodin; Oh yes. Silly me... ahh.... nevermind. Thanks.

@Arsheesh; Oh yes, I see that.... O' my Lord..... Thanks, too.

@All; I don't know what to say...

[Dwalus]

Amazing tutorial! I must say it's my favorite on this site (and I spent hours searching through all those I could find) and definitely among the most well-made tutorials I've seen. However, I've unfortunately not been able to edit the gradients in GIMP correctly. When I try to adjust the little triangles in the gradient edit window it simply doesn't let me interact with anything. I know I'm in the right spot since when I hover over the arrow/triangle things it shows a little tool tip that says click to drag. Any suggestions? Hopefully I'm just missing something obvious here.

Here's my progress so far.

[johnvanvliet]

considering that gimp2.8 has a VERY different gui( it is almost a full rewrite of the base code to move away from gtk to GEGL )

right click on the hash marks that make up where the triangles used to be


and use the menu

[arsheesh]

Amazing tutorial! I must say it's my favorite on this site (and I spent hours searching through all those I could find) and definitely among the most well-made tutorials I've seen. However, I've unfortunately not been able to edit the gradients in GIMP correctly. When I try to adjust the little triangles in the gradient edit window it simply doesn't let me interact with anything. I know I'm in the right spot since when I hover over the arrow/triangle things it shows a little tool tip that says click to drag. Any suggestions? Hopefully I'm just missing something obvious here.

Here's my progress so far.

Hi Dwalus, I'm really glad to here my tutorials has been of use to you! Thanks for the kind feedback. Hmm, I'm afraid I'm not sure what glitch is preventing you from being able to edit the gradients, let alone how to fix it. It's possible this might be a bug affecting a particular version of the program. May I ask what version of GIMP you are using? Also, this will probably sound like a dumb question but have you tried restarting the program? I've found that some glitches are only temporary and can be resolved by a restart. I ran a quick Google search to see if I could find any other references to this problem on GIMP forums but nothing came up. If the problem persists even after a restart you might try your luck with GIMP Chat. There are a lot of people far more knowledgeable about GIMP than I am on this forum.

The map so far is looking pretty good, even without being able to edit the gradients. The only thing that looks off to me is the water, which looks black on my monitor. The ocean color in the original gradient should be dark blue. The fact that the ocean appears black might be due to a failure to properly mask the ocean area in layers above the gradient layer. For instance you might want to check to see whether the layer mask on your bump map layers (i.e. land and mountain bumps) is set to mask the area covering the ocean on those layers. Otherwise great job so far!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[arsheesh]

considering that gimp2.8 has a VERY different gui( it is almost a full rewrite of the base code to move away from gtk to GEGL )

right click on the hash marks that make up where the triangles used to be


and use the menu

Ha, now that's something I didn't know about johnvanvliet. Thanks for the assist!

[Dracozard]

I absolutely love the tutorial. But as a complete novice I am a bit uncertain what to do in the "Creating Additional Layers Masks" section. What am I supposed to be selecting here exactly?

[arsheesh]

I absolutely love the tutorial. But as a complete novice I am a bit uncertain what to do in the "Creating Additional Layers Masks" section. What am I supposed to be selecting here exactly?

Hi Dracozard, glad to here it! To create a layer mask on a layer right click on the layer and a popup window will appear which offers a host of functions. About midway down there is an option to "Add Layer Mask" (see image). Click it and a new pop up window will appear. Select the default "White (full opacity)", hit OK and a layer mask will appear just to the right of the layer. When you want to work on the mask you must first make sure that it, not the layer, is selected. To do this simply left-click on the mask and a white bounding box will surround it rather than the layer. When you want to work on the layer again just left-click on the layer. Hope that helped.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Xuixien]

I'm stuck at the mountains/airbrushing part. Can someone explain it to me? This is where I'm at so far: http://i.imgur.com/neG70ur.png I just can't get the mountains to blend in. Should I erase them a bit and make them narrower? How long should the shading take? I feel like with 3% opacity I have to stroke the same tiny area 20 times before I notice a change.

[arsheesh]

I'm stuck at the mountains/airbrushing part. Can someone explain it to me? This is where I'm at so far: http://i.imgur.com/neG70ur.png I just can't get the mountains to blend in. Should I erase them a bit and make them narrower? How long should the shading take? I feel like with 3% opacity I have to stroke the same tiny area 20 times before I notice a change.

Hi Xuixien. Don't despair, this is the most time consuming part of this tutorial; it's not just you. However there are a couple of ways you can use to help speed up the process.

First, since writing this tutorial I've discovered a handy little trick to cutting down on the amount of erasing needed on the mountain clouds layer. If you take the select by color tool and select any transparent pixels on the mountain clouds layer (i.e. anywhere where there aren't any clouds) this will create a selection of everything but those clouds. Now if you feather the selection (Select > Feather) by say 10-30 px or so, depending on the size of your map, and then click "delete" this will fade the perimeter of our clouds, effectively getting rid of any hard edges. You will still need to do some spot erasing and blending but this trick will save you a lot of time.

Second, beyond just erasing the mountain clouds layer remember to to also airbrush the land clouds layer below it. This will help to make the transition between the two layers appear seamless. In my own workflow I often go back and forth between erasing and airbrushing until I can't tell where one layer ends and the other begins. It looks to me like you've started the air brushing process but have only focused on the area directly beneath the mountain clouds. It's worth pointing out is that as in painting you want to begin with broad brush strokes, gradually building up the height of the areas surrounding the mountains (e.g. the foothills) before moving in with a smaller brush to sort out the finer details of blending. This will help the transition from lowlands to highlands to mountains appear smooth and gradual.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Xuixien]

Hi Xuixien. Don't despair, this is the most time consuming part of this tutorial; it's not just you. However there are a couple of ways you can use to help speed up the process.

First, since writing this tutorial I've discovered a handy little trick to cutting down on the amount of erasing needed on the mountain clouds layer. If you take the select by color tool and select any transparent pixels on the mountain clouds layer (i.e. anywhere where there aren't any clouds) this will create a selection of everything but those clouds. Now if you feather the selection (Select > Feather) by say 10-30 px or so, depending on the size of your map, and then click "delete" this will fade the perimeter of our clouds, effectively getting rid of any hard edges. You will still need to do some spot erasing and blending but this trick will save you a lot of time.

Second, beyond just erasing the mountain clouds layer remember to to also airbrush the land clouds layer below it. This will help to make the transition between the two layers appear seamless. In my own workflow I often go back and forth between erasing and airbrushing until I can't tell where one layer ends and the other begins. It looks to me like you've started the air brushing process but have only focused on the area directly beneath the mountain clouds. It's worth pointing out is that as in painting you want to begin with broad brush strokes, gradually building up the height of the areas surrounding the mountains (e.g. the foothills) before moving in with a smaller brush to sort out the finer details of blending. This will help the transition from lowlands to highlands to mountains appear smooth and gradual.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

How do I select the right brush type (hardness, size, etc)? Is that something that just comes from experience?