Attempting to "translate" a PS tutorial to P.N - ideas?

[PeaceHeather]

Hello all,

I've been hunting eagerly through the plugins forum to gather as many nifty effects as I possibly can. I'm currently mostly using PDN to build maps for fictitious worlds, and a lot of the tuts for that kind of thing (that I know of) are intended for PS and GIMP.

I've managed to get PDN to mimic most of the effects, but I'm having a really tough time with this one... it involves building textured terrain and making the mountains really "pop". The section I've pasted here is a very small part of the overall tutorial, which includes water and forests and everything else you can think of. I'm trying not to plagiarize here.

We create the mountains in 3 different layers. In one layer we are going to have the lowest parts of the mountains, in the second we have the middle parts and in the top layer we will have the mountain peaks. The benefit of this technique is that you will be able to have different styles and effects on each layer making the mountains to really pop out.

MOUNTAINS

Setting up the mountain layers Let’s start by adding 3 new layers; mountains low, -med and –high. On each layer we add effects to it (Bevel and emboss, Contour and Texture) to get a desired look. There are no exactly right settings to use and you should experiment to find the best values for your mountains. You can even create different mountain types by creating another set of mountain layers with different settings and drawing some of your mountains to it.

Low mountains -layer Into the “mountains low” -layer I will add few effects the same way as when we were roughing up the background. I select the Bevel and Emboss, Contour and Texture effects.

Bevel size should be set to low because high bevel would create too steep mountains. Instead of very steep mountains I want mine to build up gently and to blend well with the surrounding ground. I’ll use depth 150%, size 5 and soften 0. I will also lower the opacity of the highlight mode to 30%. This will reduce the glare of mountains.

The text goes on to describe different settings on the other mountain layers, for these same effects, to get mountains that get steeper and rougher each time.

So, I might be kind of blind, but I'm searching for various plugins/tutorials to get similar results in PDN, and I'm just not finding anything. If there is such a tut or plugin, I must be using the wrong keywords. Could folks please suggest alternative methods? (Or build them, heh)

Many thanks,

Heather

[Crimson]

Can you post a link to the original tutorial, so we can see all the images as well? That would greatly help in converting the tutorial. Thanks. :wink:

[PeaceHeather]

Sure thing - I didn't post a link before because I wanted to be careful of owner copyright... but I think I hadn't had much sleep when I was thinking that.

Rising Up The Mountains In Photoshop

He updates the tutorial several times in the thread; the first one just does the mountains, and then as he adds other things to the map, he adds the "how-to" to the tutorial. The most recent version is here.

[PeaceHeather]

Hello all,

It's been a couple of weeks since I asked my question, and posted the link to the original tutorial. Has anyone made any progress, looked at the original, have any ideas, etc.?

Thanks!

[Goonfella]

I clicked on the link to the tut and was taken to a forum where I would have had to register to see it. I think this has put a lot of people off - me included. If we could see the tut without having to go through the forum you might get more help. Sorry.

[PeaceHeather]

Doh! *slaps forehead* I had forgotten that the forum did that, since I am registered there....

Hm... Let me see what I can do -- will edit this post once I have something that works for y'all.

:oops: Sometimes, I am a dork.

Edit: ARGH. Forum says PDF format is not allowed, and the ZIP I tried to upload instead is too large. I'd be happy to send this to someone with a website, if they were willing to make it available in its entirety...

[Crimson]

Well, without reading the tutorial, I can tell you this:

The Bevel/Emboss effect can be simulated by BoltBait's Bevel Selection plugin. Apply textures to things by creating the texture you want, then putting the texture on top of your object, in a new layer, then selecting the Overlay blending option. Contour is a bit harder.