Alternate Method for Mountains - GiMP [2.8.14]

[ltan]

Moderators: I have been looking through all of the How-to's without finding one that goes through these steps. If this *is* a duplicated process please remove this post and let me know that I need to have my eyes checked.



I know that there are a lot of tutorials on making mountains for height maps, but I have recently been using an old method for the creation of lightning {offsite} for making mountain ridge-lines.

The steps are:

• Apply a black to white gradient
• Apply Render > Difference Clouds { New Seed x2 | Detail 15 | X and Y size your disgression}
• Invert the Color
• Adjust Curves
• Cut and Paste on New Layer

This will give you some nice and long ranges which is something that I was needing on several of my attempted maps.

To follow along, although that will quickly become moot :Þ, I am using 1000x100 at 300 dpi. Also, I am accessing the right-click menu in all of the images below. The same commands can be reached through the Filters menu item at the top of the images as well.

Apply the Linear Gradient



The resulting gradient.



The gradient does not have to be exactly like this one. Feel free to experiemnt. I like using the Radial {cw} for making crater like mountains / volcano candidates.


Next apply Difference Clouds.


Here there will be a few options to play with. for example, if you drop the size to 3 or less you will have a single ridge-line instead of multiple offshoots similar to using the Difference Cloud on a plain color layer.


Using the values shown above, the below layer shows a single ridge-line on the left, and a few circular ridges to the right of that.


Invert the colors.


Then adjust the curves.


While adjusting the curves, adjust them as little or as much as you desire. It is your map, and if you mess it up Ctrl+Z! Or just click the Reset button



Since I like the way the curve looks above, I am going to load the image into Wilbur to show what the ridge-lines should look like after adding them to existing land.


From here it will be up to you, the reader, to experiment with these steps and hopefully create a workflow that works for you. The steps outlined above are, to me, the quickest method of generating mountains that don't suck. Albiet these may still suck compared to a seasoned Guild member.


From here, finishing techniques can be applied as you want.
Here is an older one buy RobA.
And another one by Torq with explainations and a Q/A with waldronate.

[Gidde]

From what I can tell, this is the same method as the Ascension tutorial uses, but that one is buried in the middle of how to make the whole map. It's a great method, and I don't see a problem with leaving this as a standalone for just the mountain part. Other CL's want to weigh in on the duplication issue?

In any case, thanks for the effort involved in posting a tut

[ltan]

Thanks Gidde!

I was thinking that it was buried inside of a map document as I hadn't looked over them all yet.