Hi,
Firstly, my apologies if this has been asked before but I have searched through the forum using various terms and come up with nothing - possibly because 'contour' has another common meaning in paint.net.
I am creating some land and star maps for a roleplaying game and wish to add contour lines to both types of map - examples of what I am trying to do can be seen here and here . Basically, background contour lines to add a bit of extra character to maps.
I have tried a number of ways to add the contour lines and none of them have worked well. Drawing each line is not only time-consuming but I am finding it very hard to make each line have a similar shape to its neighbour - e.g. if I am trying to draw a series of curved lines next to each other to indicate a slope, each line is so different from those on either side of it that it doesn't look like a series of contours at all.
I have tried using various tools in paint.net to create the desired effect but none have quite worked. E.g. I have rendered clouds, used a Gaussian Blur at 20, posterized at 15, then used Stylize> Outline to generate an image that looks like contour lines. But the lines are understandably random, based off the rendered clouds, and I would prefer a way to create contour lines where I can at least vaguely control their position, size etc.
One option might be to draw an initial line in one layer, create a new layer, copy and past the initial line into the new layer, reposition it and change its shape as appropriate, then create another new layer, copy and paste the second line into that layer, reposition it and change its shape as appropriate, etc, etc and then merge the layers down once I have enough lines. But is there a quicker way?
Can anyone suggest a technique or plug-in(s) that could help with this? I'd be really grateful for any ideas you can give me.
Thanks,
James
