deathoflight
24th Jan 2011, 10:45 AM
http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm1/highstresslevel/Mountain%20Brushes/tutorial-screenshots5.jpg
These brushes should be compatible with Photoshop 7 and all later versions. If you have Photoshop CS2 or newer, download mountains1.zip, for Photoshop 7 you need mountains1_PS7.zip. I haven't had much luck making heightmaps in Photoshop 7, since you have to convert to 8 bit mode to edit, and back to 16 bit to save. Those conversions leave everything slightly grainy. I don't know a way around this.
If you use a program other than Photoshop, you can download the Mountains1_PNG.zip, which has the PNG files I used to make the brushes. I know that Gimp has a way to define custom brushes from grayscale images. Other programs probably do too. I just don't know what those ways are.
To load the brushes select the brush tool and right click on an open document. The brush picker will pop up. In the top right of the pop up, there's an arrow. Click that. Halfway down, choose Load Brushes. Find the file you downloaded and open.
To use the brushes, select one of them, set the brush size to whatever you want. A brush size of ten would make a mountain ten squares across in game. So way too small to be useful. I've been staying around 200-300. Choose a shade of gray, create a new layer, and click with the brush tool. One click, one mountain.
Put your mountains on a layer above the rest of your map, so you can change the color if they came out too short, or too spiky. Only change the opacity of the layer and brushes if the land below is completely smooth, or the original terrain will show through. Adjust the brightness level instead.
Right now there are only ten brushes. I'm putting together packs with more, they should be up soon. I'll also be making some with mountains that have more creases, and mountains that have less.
If there's anything specific you want me to try and make, ask before the end of February. Dragon Age 2 comes out in March and I'll be outta here. Same with questions; not even my mother will get tech help until I crawl back out of my gaming cave.
These brushes should be compatible with Photoshop 7 and all later versions. If you have Photoshop CS2 or newer, download mountains1.zip, for Photoshop 7 you need mountains1_PS7.zip. I haven't had much luck making heightmaps in Photoshop 7, since you have to convert to 8 bit mode to edit, and back to 16 bit to save. Those conversions leave everything slightly grainy. I don't know a way around this.
If you use a program other than Photoshop, you can download the Mountains1_PNG.zip, which has the PNG files I used to make the brushes. I know that Gimp has a way to define custom brushes from grayscale images. Other programs probably do too. I just don't know what those ways are.
To load the brushes select the brush tool and right click on an open document. The brush picker will pop up. In the top right of the pop up, there's an arrow. Click that. Halfway down, choose Load Brushes. Find the file you downloaded and open.
To use the brushes, select one of them, set the brush size to whatever you want. A brush size of ten would make a mountain ten squares across in game. So way too small to be useful. I've been staying around 200-300. Choose a shade of gray, create a new layer, and click with the brush tool. One click, one mountain.
Put your mountains on a layer above the rest of your map, so you can change the color if they came out too short, or too spiky. Only change the opacity of the layer and brushes if the land below is completely smooth, or the original terrain will show through. Adjust the brightness level instead.
Right now there are only ten brushes. I'm putting together packs with more, they should be up soon. I'll also be making some with mountains that have more creases, and mountains that have less.
If there's anything specific you want me to try and make, ask before the end of February. Dragon Age 2 comes out in March and I'll be outta here. Same with questions; not even my mother will get tech help until I crawl back out of my gaming cave.