May/June 2017 Lite challenge: Scribble Rock

[Mouse]

Thank you Tony

I've been doing a LOT of detail work, and swapped a few not-working-very-well textures out for new ones. This may be better than the last one, or it may be worse. I think I prefer it this way, though

[Bogie]

I like the new textures, especially the scrub brush in the middle of the island.
I see you found my speedboat. I wondered if anyone would ever use it.

[Mouse]

Thanks Bogie

That scrub brush is a grass texture I made using Genetica.

Your speed boat? I wondered who pulled up at the jetty this morning. Highly honoured to be playing host to you, Bogie

I also have a whole load of your pontoons, 4 of your market stall parasols, a pond, a couple of tavern tables, and a couple of other Bogie boats in there too. My favourite is the sailing boat to the north of the island

EDIT: Bogie - if you want the grass texture I used I've just uploaded it into my texture album. Its called 'City Grass SD'. Its a very flat texture, but I did that deliberately because it reduces the redundancy of the texture when used at this sort of scale, and is easier to manipulate when modifying the hue, saturation and light effects.

[XCali]

You know how saying Wow fast makes it clear you are more taken aback by what you are seeing?
Well, I'm saying it mighty fast right now... WOW!

Nice one, Mouse. Wonderful job. The way you do your sandy beaches...that is inspiring. I'd love to learn how to do it like that. Really nicely done.

Though, I have to ask what textures you used for the sandy beaches, and just off the shore of the sandy beaches?

[Mouse]

Oh hey XCali

And thank you very much

The software I'm using for this map is a little bit different to GIMP. Its called Campaign Cartographer 3, and its a vector app (which means it draws things a bit like AutoCAD does, with lines and polygons, but with a few added effects to allow you to do stuff like fade one polygon into another instead of having a hard edge to each polygon).

The fills I am using here are a mixture of fills I have downloaded from Textures.com (which used to be called CG Textures), where you just have to register an account to get 15 free fills of your choice each day, and also some that I have made myself using a piece of software that some people think may have a dubious future, called Genetica.

There are several symbols in this map - the boats, parasols, jetty sections, tables and pond that come from a free symbol set distributed by Vintyri called 'Bogie's Mapping Objects' (and yes, that's the very same Bogie as our much beloved Community Leader above). If you visit the Vintyri Project you will find all kinds of other mapping goodies as well

The trees are ones I rendered from a free 3D app, called Blender, and composed in GIMP from several pieces each to make symbols (brushes if you like) for CC3. I created the buildings in Corel Photopaint - though you could probably do them in GIMP just as easily with a few bits of decent roof texture.

The sand and gravel are Texture.com textures, but the seaweed is a texture I made about a million years ago in Photopaint. The water is a native CC3 texture that comes with the software, and the rocks are another texture of my own making.

I think I've just about covered everything there

If you are looking for some of the textures I use in my maps (the ones I've made myself at any rate - and including the swirly partially transparent texture I used for the seaweed) I have an album of them here at the Guild, which you can get to by clicking the link in my signature below.

EDIT: I didn't cover how you might do a similar water effect in GIMP as I've done here in CC3 partly because I'm not entirely sure I know how to transplant it from one app to the other, and partly because it would make this comment waaaaaay too long, but I'll see about doing a little tut for you sometime if you would like that

[XCali]

Oh hey XCali

And thank you very much

The software I'm using for this map is a little bit different to GIMP. Its called Campaign Cartographer 3, and its a vector app (which means it draws things a bit like AutoCAD does, with lines and polygons, but with a few added effects to allow you to do stuff like fade one polygon into another instead of having a hard edge to each polygon).

The fills I am using here are a mixture of fills I have downloaded from Textures.com (which used to be called CG Textures), where you just have to register an account to get 15 free fills of your choice each day, and also some that I have made myself using a piece of software that some people think may have a dubious future, called Genetica.

There are several symbols in this map - the boats, parasols, jetty sections, tables and pond that come from a free symbol set distributed by Vintyri called 'Bogie's Mapping Objects' (and yes, that's the very same Bogie as our much beloved Community Leader above). If you visit the Vintyri Project you will find all kinds of other mapping goodies as well

The trees are ones I rendered from a free 3D app, called Blender, and composed in GIMP from several pieces each to make symbols (brushes if you like) for CC3. I created the buildings in Corel Photopaint - though you could probably do them in GIMP just as easily with a few bits of decent roof texture.

The sand and gravel are Texture.com textures, but the seaweed is a texture I made about a million years ago in Photopaint. The water is a native CC3 texture that comes with the software, and the rocks are another texture of my own making.

I think I've just about covered everything there

If you are looking for some of the textures I use in my maps (the ones I've made myself at any rate - and including the swirly partially transparent texture I used for the seaweed) I have an album of them here at the Guild, which you can get to by clicking the link in my signature below.

EDIT: I didn't cover how you might do a similar water effect in GIMP as I've done here in CC3 partly because I'm not entirely sure I know how to transplant it from one app to the other, and partly because it would make this comment waaaaaay too long, but I'll see about doing a little tut for you sometime if you would like that

Yeah, maybe one day I'll buy CC3, but for now I'll stay with GIMP. And thank you for offering. It would really be nice to see how somebody else goes to work with a beach.

See if I'm thinking in the right direction here. Okay those two sandlike textures in tow I brush away from the land, and with duplicate layers (and cut) I lower the opacity slowly until it fades completely, and then layer over on top of it a blue tint that gets darker the further away from the beach it gets? OR Just the last part with just making the sea darker with a brush until the deepest part.
Maybe use a more cloudlike brush paint or erase at the water's edge on the beach to avoid a hard edge?

[Mouse]

Yeah, maybe one day I'll buy CC3, but for now I'll stay with GIMP. And thank you for offering. It would really be nice to see how somebody else goes to work with a beach.

See if I'm thinking in the right direction here. Okay those two sandlike textures in tow I brush away from the land, and with duplicate layers (and cut) I lower the opacity slowly until it fades completely, and then layer over on top of it a blue tint that gets darker the further away from the beach it gets? OR Just the last part with just making the sea darker with a brush until the deepest part.
Maybe use a more cloudlike brush paint or erase at the water's edge on the beach to avoid a hard edge?

On the first point - ok, Ill do one for CC3, and see if I can work it out for GIMP as well - despite the software differences - but it might be a while in coming!

On the second point - that's certainly one way of doing it, and since I don't even know how I would do it if I had to do it in GIMP instead of CC3, then for now it would seem to be the best way to do it. You could also try starting with a solid opaque layer of blue, or an ocean texture, and fading the edge with a very large soft brush.

If it helps any, this is the map with all the effects turned off (I've also taken away all the layers above the rock base of the island so that the picture is clear of any unnecessary complications):



First there is a background layer of sand. All the rocks and weed are drawn as patches of rock and weed texture on the next up layer. Over the top of the rocks and weed there are three layers of ocean texture. The most extensive of these is the green layer (at the bottom of the stack of three), which in CC3 has a multiply mode effect on it and a gradation of opacity from 60% at the edge to 100% in the middle. The second ocean layer is blue, and has a normal blend mode, the overall opacity is set to about 50%, and there is a similar edge fading effect on this sheet as there is on the green layer. The third and topmost layer is the same blue texture as the second layer, but the colour has been altered to make it darker and more blue. This layer is also about 50% opacity, and also has an edge fade on it.

As you can see, since there is no such thing as an Edge Fade Inner in GIMP, I will have some difficulty translating this to a usable method for non CC3 mappers! LOL!

[XCali]

On the first point - ok, Ill do one for CC3, and see if I can work it out for GIMP as well - despite the software differences - but it might be a while in coming!

On the second point - that's certainly one way of doing it, and since I don't even know how I would do it if I had to do it in GIMP instead of CC3, then for now it would seem to be the best way to do it. You could also try starting with a solid opaque layer of blue, or an ocean texture, and fading the edge with a very large soft brush.

If it helps any, this is the map with all the effects turned off (I've also taken away all the layers above the rock base of the island so that the picture is clear of any unnecessary complications):



First there is a background layer of sand. All the rocks and weed are drawn as patches of rock and weed texture on the next up layer. Over the top of the rocks and weed there are three layers of ocean texture. The most extensive of these is the green layer (at the bottom of the stack of three), which in CC3 has a multiply mode effect on it and a gradation of opacity from 60% at the edge to 100% in the middle. The second ocean layer is blue, and has a normal blend mode, the overall opacity is set to about 50%, and there is a similar edge fading effect on this sheet as there is on the green layer. The third and topmost layer is the same blue texture as the second layer, but the colour has been altered to make it darker and more blue. This layer is also about 50% opacity, and also has an edge fade on it.

As you can see, since there is no such thing as an Edge Fade Inner in GIMP, I will have some difficulty translating this to a usable method for non CC3 mappers! LOL!

Definitely food for thought, thank you.
There is a lot of little gems in that explanation. Nice going! Even with GIMP a lot of it can be translated easily enough. For us non-CC3 people with the edge fade... Off the top of my head, maybe a gausian blur would do it(maybe even with a duplicate layer or something). OR with the erase tool on low opacity one could just use a cloud like brush to trim the edges into a random fading effect. There is probably more ways it can be done. But as I said, off the top of my head.

Again thanks for all the little details. You are awesome!

[Mouse]

Definitely food for thought, thank you.
There is a lot of little gems in that explanation. Nice going! Even with GIMP a lot of it can be translated easily enough. For us non-CC3 people with the edge fade... Off the top of my head, maybe a gausian blur would do it(maybe even with a duplicate layer or something). OR with the erase tool on low opacity one could just use a cloud like brush to trim the edges into a random fading effect. There is probably more ways it can be done. But as I said, off the top of my head.

Again thanks for all the little details. You are awesome!

Glad to be of some assistance

I used to get very frustrated trying to make things look the way I wanted them to look back in the beginning, but it gets easier over time as you get used to the software you are using. The secret is to just keep trying out different ideas until you get there - or at least somewhere a lot closer to what you want than you were in the beginning.

I started to mess around with doing a GIMP version last night, and ended up making a new thread over in the general WIP forum here.

The method I've been working on is only good for top down maps, though. I'm all at sea... ... thinking about how to convert it to ISO view.

EDIT: I was going to export all the layers as individual pngs on that thread so that people could rebuild the GIMP file and have a closer look, but I think I have at least one full layer (the sand base for a start) that would count as redistributing a texture that isn't supposed to be redistributed, even though I could legitimately sell the map as a flat image. So I'm afraid its going to be down to asking questions if you don't understand what I've done with it. Sorry!

[industrygothica]

Definitely food for thought, thank you.
There is a lot of little gems in that explanation. Nice going! Even with GIMP a lot of it can be translated easily enough. For us non-CC3 people with the edge fade... Off the top of my head, maybe a gausian blur would do it(maybe even with a duplicate layer or something). OR with the erase tool on low opacity one could just use a cloud like brush to trim the edges into a random fading effect. There is probably more ways it can be done. But as I said, off the top of my head.

Again thanks for all the little details. You are awesome!

Seems like a layer mask would be a little less destructive. That eraser tool can get you into trouble sometimes. Well, it's gotten ME into trouble many times... ymmv.