PeaceHeather
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Posts posted by PeaceHeather
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I'm working on a piece right now where I would like to have the main impression be that the picture was drawn in wet sand with a stick. I've made decent progress with colors and Effects > Noise > Grain, along with some Engravy/Embossy goodness, but so far I'm only able to reach an impression of sandstone. I'm trying to figure out a way to generate a few lumps of sand along the edges of the drawn lines, and possibly add a glistening wet look to the overall image.
Suggestions?
Many thanks,
Heather
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Yellowman, two things:
1. You. Are. A. GENIUS. Oh my goodness, this looks freaking *perfect*! I will try it as soon as my kid is asleep and let you know how it goes. It looks like you need to start with something roughly half the eventual length of the system, is that about right?
2. If you're Yellowman, why is your avatar red?
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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Oh, oops. I'd forgotten about that. Sorry.
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Oooooooooh, pretty...
I can't give you a tutorial, since this is way beyond MY abilities, but I'm seeing some sort of fractal or fern generator, definitely use of gradient mapping, and beyond that... I got nothin'.
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Just wanted to let you know that this is nearly the single most useful plugin I have. If there were a way to organize plugins into a "favorites" folder, it would be near the top - my maps could/would NEVER look as good without it. You freakin' rock for building this.
One question, though - for some reason I'm having trouble seeing the top color of a gradient in my image after I set it up. For example, I have an "ocean" gradient with several shades of blue on up to white (for use near shorelines), and the white is often just not there in the image, unless I make a huge adjustment to the gradient - as in, I make sure the top third is dedicated to white, and then it will just barely show up. I'm applying this to rendered clouds with transparent cutouts, selecting "preserve alpha", but... *shrug* I've tried turning Wrap on and off, I've tried applying to just the selected clouds and applying to the whole layer; nothing seems to make a difference.
I don't remember it doing this with the previous version I had of the plugin. Do you have any idea what *might* be happening? If not, it's no tragedy or anything, since I *can* make it work. I'm just curious about the change and what might be causing it.
Cheers, and thanks again for a terrific plugin.
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This thread at the Cartographer's Guild is where I'm posting the work in progress.
Mountnman, I did fiddle with the lightning plugin somewhat last night, but it isn't *quite* right. It's really close, but the shapes are off no matter how I adjust the settings. And then I tried quad/reshape or whatever it's called, and got some interesting distortions with *some* taper, but again, not really what I was looking for.
Sarkut, if we keep this up the holiday police will come after us. International Talk Like A Pirate Day isn't until September. Matey.
Anyway, if you follow the thread over yonder, the most recent image I have was done by flattening my basic "land" layers into a .png, loading that into a terrain thingy called Wilbur, and using it to calculate where water *would* flow, hence where the valleys and rivers would form. But I still run into a problem: even though I can bring that back over into PDN, and I know how to bring it in as a layer in my current map, I can't figure out a decent way to get those rivers in place on my land without hand-tracing them all (in which case they still look, well, painted on) - and I'd prefer to be able to do the whole thing in PDN anyway, rather than rely on some other program to draw them in for me. It's kind of a thing with me, being over on a forum dominated by GIMP-users - no matter how friendly and helpful they've all been.
I don't mind having Wilbur do the calculations if I have to, but I'd rather be able to make PDN do the drawing rather than borrowing Wilbur's picture, if that makes sense.Anyway, I really appreciate you both taking a look at this for me. I'll try just about any suggestion you offer, and let you know how it goes.
Cheers!
Heather
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I want believable rivers on a map I am making in PDN. I don't know of a way to get good, squiggly, tapering rivers in the right places that don't look like they were plunked down by a chimpanzee. Your suggestions or, heaven forfend, a tutorial, would be deeply appreciated. Virtual cookies, or beer, or whatever. I make a mean virtual Brandy Alexander...
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PsychoHarmonic:I agree with AmadeusX absolutely stunning.
This is my first 100% PDN render. I guess it's not too bad for my first planet. I followed a PS tutorial, man was it a pain trying to come up with the same effects with PDN
Gorgeous. And I know what you mean about tutorials, I'm over on Cartographer's Guild and most of their stuff is for Photoshop, GIMP, and who knows what all else, but not PDN. So I occasionally publish translations.
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Thanks, I'll give that a shot. Being able to adjust the angle will be the biggest help. You know, I browsed the plug-in index earlier this week and downloaded a ton of stuff, but I don't remember seeing that for some reason. Oh, well. I already have a pile of them that I don't use and should uninstall - my menus are getting really cluttered!
Thanks again.
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Step 1:
Open a new document at 800 x 600.
Select orange for your primary color. Render clouds at these settings in the picture below.
May I ask - why orange to start?
Absolutely freakin stunning effect, btw.
Heather
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I can do that - I just didn't want to irritate people by constantly saying, "see this thing at the Cartographer's Guild that I want to do?" ...even though, come to think of it, that's pretty much what I'm after.
I have a feeling that most of these will be solved with a "download this plugin (*mutteridiotmutter*)"...
Currently I'm trying to decipher Simple Mountains in GIMP - specifically steps 6 and 11. I'd also like to figure out how they did the forests that are already present in the starting image, but I can wait on asking that one.
Cheers!
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There are no equivalents - PDN stands tall; above the rest!
Har har...
I meant, did anyone else have questions about PDN equivalents/workarounds for features in GIMP or Photoshop, or whatever? I've got two more: light sources, and shaped gradients. I *think* I know how to do a linear gradient inside a shape, and have it reflect outward from the center, but I don't know if I can get a gradient that follows a crooked line a la mountain peaks or canyons. Or rather, I don't know if I can do that and be able to dictate the shape of the crooked line.And I'm not totally sure about getting a light source to shine where I want it, either.
Cheers!
Heather
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Try it out.
Make some Clouds with Difference blend.
Then hit Ctrl+F a few times.
You can see the difference.
Ahh so, isn't this nifty...
Many thanks!
Now, is anyone else curious about Paint.NET equivalents? I'm good for now.
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Instead of curves, I used Effects > Color > Color Aberration, cropped the result to remove streaks around the edges, then added a third layer with an offset Drop Ripple. This is what I ended up with:
Heather
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Everything apart from the basic texture is all PDN. I supose it could be possible to even create a basic land texture in PDN to work from.
Yes, it is completely possible to create a basic land texture. If you make several at once, you can build a world map with rougher and smoother terrain as well, which is how I build my maps all the time. It's a little involved, using Clouds, Levels, Threshold, Alpha Mask, Gradient Mapping, and if you want to, Shape 3D. (And yes, I promise I'll post it, I just need to check on a kid and make sure she's asleep first.)
I have to agree with someone else who suggested that this isn't really a tut for how to make a "texture" - but I do really like your ideas for crafting maps. They work!
Cheers!
Heather
ETA: You know what, it's easier just to give you the link to the tutorial I posted back in 2009 over at the Cartographer's Guild. Pretty much everything is identical, so it should still work just fine.
Cheers!
Heather
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This is gorgeous - great tutorial! I bet it'd be pretty easy to make something like, oh, snakeskin or alligator skin with this method. Snazzy, snazzy.
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*facepalm*
Yeah, I read that elsewhere right before I left for dinner, then when I came back I saw Sarkut had messaged me and you were kind enough to reply as well. Oy.
ANYway... lessee here. Hopefully this will give you an idea of what I'm looking for. I had to shrink it pretty far to get it to upload, though.
I *think* I know something I can try but I haven't had a chance yet to test it today. If it works I promise I'll tell you how I did it!
Cheers,
Heather
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Hmm... I'd forgotten originally that you could change the blend mode in the Clouds dialog - but wouldn't running it twice just re-render the clouds?
Sorry if this is sounding dense - I just want to be sure that what you're suggesting will do what the GIMP folks are describing. I really appreciate your help!
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Render > Clouds
With Difference Blending mode.
Wow, that was fast!
So, if a tutorial in GIMP says to "run difference clouds twice"... would I just do two new layers and merge them to get the effect?
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Hello all,
I mostly use PDN to make fantasy/fictional maps, and I'm really enjoying it. A site called the Cartographer's Guild has a bazillion tutorials on mapmaking of all kinds, but they're almost exclusively written for users of GIMP, with some for Photoshop or something else, and about three for PDN
. While I enjoy being part of the tiny minority of PDN users on the site, I pretty much always need to "translate" their tutorials to make sense for me. Usually this is no big deal, and translating is just a matter of "same feature under a different menu heading", but occasionally it means "PDN doesn't have this feature but here's how to mimic it with something else".So, to my question: if anyone here has used GIMP and can tell me - what the heck are "difference clouds"? Does PDN have, if not this exact feature, some way to mimic it? I'm nearly always able to use PDN functions or workarounds to get results that are comparable to the fancy-shmancy programs, and I'd love to be able to do the same here.
Many thanks,
Heather
PS - I'd be perfectly willing to let other people use this thread to discuss their own PDN workarounds or "translations" of features from other programs, too, if anyone is interested. Cheers!
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I'm making fantasy maps, and I have oceans that I'd like to give a sheen to, just over the surface - you know, a bit of wet reflection?
Forum says I don't have permission to attach a .pdn to my post (wtf?), and the upload image dialog is being a pain, so at the moment I can't even give you an example of what I'm getting at. I don't want an object that has a reflection, I want the water itself... I think I have something I might be able to try but I'm not sure just yet. Any suggestions appreciated!
Cheers,
Heather
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I'm REALLY looking forward to playing around with this - thanks so much for making it! One question, though: Does anyone here know if it's possible to create something like this that lets you specify a beginning and ending point for the lightning bolt, or maybe adjust its width or something? I'm thinking of using this to create realistic looking rivers, and being able to dictate somewhat where it goes would be beyond awesome... but since I'm not a programmer I have no idea whether that's even theoretically possible.
Anyway, like I said, nifty-looking plugin, can't wait to apply it!
Cheers,
Heather
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Sorry to dig up an old topic like this, but I had a question: I see where you explain that this plugin is based off of GridMaker, but does that mean I need GridMaker also to get GraphMaker to work?
Many thanks.
Heather
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Did anyone answer Mike Ryan's question? I'm on a downloading spree today, but I don't want to actually be redundant if I can help it.
Also, for some reason, Mike's link comes up 404 - I've had several of those today but I don't know if the forum is down for maintenance or what.
Cheers!
Heather
I don't mind having Wilbur do the calculations if I have to, but I'd rather be able to make PDN do the drawing rather than borrowing Wilbur's picture, if that makes sense.
Another how-to question: Wet Sand
in Paint.NET Discussion and Questions
Posted
Thanks, yellowman - that definitely looks promising. I think it may need one or two tweaks to get it exactly where I want it, but you've put me on the righ tpath and I'm already pretty sure what those tweaks will be.
Cheers!