PeaceHeather Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 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... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mountnman Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 will this be a flat map? topo? single coloured or colourcoded? i think it might make a difference Quote SARCASM- Just one of the many services I offer free to the public. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarkut Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 Links to example images, argh! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mountnman Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 one thing that does come to mind is possibly using the lightning plugin - to create the squiggly lines , recolouring the bolts to blue and using layer/rotate-zoom or perspective to add a "taper" http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/19792-lightning-v11/page__view__findpost__p__347697__hl__lightning__fromsearch__1 Quote SARCASM- Just one of the many services I offer free to the public. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeaceHeather Posted February 14, 2011 Author Share Posted February 14, 2011 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mountnman Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 - they want me to register and all before i can look at the links- no against it but i only have a few minutes, i will look into it later, seems like an interesting problem Quote SARCASM- Just one of the many services I offer free to the public. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeaceHeather Posted February 14, 2011 Author Share Posted February 14, 2011 Oh, oops. I'd forgotten about that. Sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowman Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 Yes an example image will be helpful. As I understood you, you are trying to reach this effect in this ? start watching from 1:00 and after.Here I am pulling the brush smoothly, but you can pull it in a zigzag path, if this is the required effect then I can help you more. Quote My GalleryMy YouTube Channel "PDN Tutorials" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeaceHeather Posted February 15, 2011 Author Share Posted February 15, 2011 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowman Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 (edited) The problem with Smudge tool is that you can't see the background in it, so yes you can trace the major path of river and taper the ends with Smudge, you can add some tiny branches as with same way. To trace the path of the river: add a new layer,fill it with white color, set the blend mode to Multiply and use the paintbrush to trace the lines from the map then complete it in Smudge, use medium brush for best result. EDIT, and about the avatar, I am celebrating the Valentine's season Edited February 15, 2011 by yellowman Quote My GalleryMy YouTube Channel "PDN Tutorials" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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