[Award Winner] Using GIMP to Create an Artistic Regional RPG Map

[RobA]

Post 10:Finishing the Land (cont.)

Create a new layer on top of the blurry one, and fill it with rendered clouds, maximum detail and maximum size, then set its layer mode to Difference. This gives a noisy blaxck outline of the coast. (This is also a nice technique to make a light water effect along shores…)


Merge down the difference layer, invert it, then bring up the layers dialog and adjust it to be a wider band of white on black. This will be used as the layer mask for the dirt….


Go back to the Dirt Layer and add a layer mask, using the “Land Mask” channel. Now right click on the layer mask and select “Apply layer”. This will erase everything that is not above the land.

Go back to the noisy blended layer you had created in the last stop (called land mask copy). Select all and copy this layer (ctrl+a, ctrl-c), Then select the “Dirt: layer, and add a layer mask and just select “White”. Now with the dirt layer mask active, paste the copy (ctrl-v). This will create a floating layer. Just hit the anchor icon to drop it down into the dirt layer mask. Now you can delete the temporary “land mask copy” layer:


This can be improved by applying a Gaussian blur (Filters->Blur->Gaussian Blur, 10 px) and some pixel spread (Filters->Noise->Spread 10 px) to the mask. I also took a soft white brush with 60% opacity and coloured in the areas I want to be desert. To make this easier, I moved my original sketch up to the top and set its blend mode to burn. This let me see where I needed to fill in deserts. Lastly, I reduced the opacity of the Dirt level down to get a nice looking blend.


Here is where we are so far:


Coming soon... Mountains.