Basic Map Making in GIMP

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Shavonne Hood
6 years ago
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1 Basic Map Making in GIMP 1

If you have Photoshop I d advise seeking that out instead, but this tutorial is meant to serve as a substitute for those who are using GIMP.

2 So Saderan s tutorial is excellent, if you have Photoshop and a bit of knowledge of how to use it. If you don t, it s a tad intimidating, and several of its features are only available to Photoshop users. If you have Photoshop I d advise seeking that out instead, but this tutorial is meant to serve as a substitute for those who are using GIMP. Step 1: Use Excel, or similar (Google Docs has a Spreadsheet option). Make a perfect grid. This will be the basis of your map. I make each cell 50x50, but if you want to go simpler you can. Make all the squares a dark navy blue, maybe black. Step 2: Set it up using conditional formatting for different biomes. You can be as simple or as varied as you like. The above example only has four biomes, (Desert, Plains, Forest, Mountains) but you could also include snow, tundra, vary up your mountains between low hills and high steppes. You could throw in some teal for swamps or have a lot of different types of desert. This is a simple tutorial so I m being lazy, but I d advise at least 7 or 8 biomes for a better landmass. Don t worry about water, just leave any water squares blank. Step 3: Once you ve got it to where you re happy with it, use PRINT SCREEN (or whatever arcane methods you use to Screencap on Mac or Linux) and open up GIMP. Drop it in. Honestly I d advise taking out the water entirely. Use the Select by Color tool to grab all that Navy and hit delete to get rid of it. 2

Step 5: Go to Filters Blur Gaussian Blur and crank it up. I put it at around 50 but you might want more or less, depending on how you set up your original grid.

You ll want a backup just in case something goes sideways. Also, now would probably be a good time to save. I like to save at various steps, so that if I want to undo something I can.

Threshold identifies light and dark sections and makes them just Black or White. See how there s a slight glow around the edge?

3 Step 5: Go to Filters Blur Gaussian Blur and crank it up. I put it at around 50 but you might want more or less, depending on how you set up your original grid. Duplicate this layer and merge the bottom blurred layer with the black layer beneath it. You ll see why in a bit. Save. Step 4: Double your layers. You ll want a backup just in case something goes sideways. Also, now would probably be a good time to save. I like to save at various steps, so that if I want to undo something I can. Make a black layer and slide it in between the two layers. Step 6: Use Threshold on the bottom layer, the one with the black background and land. Threshold identifies light and dark sections and makes them just Black or White. See how there s a slight glow around the edge? Make the top layer, the one that you didn t threshold, into a Darken Only. Now it ll darken the white portion of the land while leaving the black portion black. Depending on how much you blurred it, it might have a bit of a whitish edge. Unless that fits your aesthetic, select the black area (using color select so that it gets any internal lakes/rivers) and increase the selection size by going to Select Grow. Fill in all that area (still in the Black and White layer) with black. Voila, the white edge is gone. Step 7 (Optional): Now, you might be happy with the way the land looks now, but you might also want a rougher border. Apply a Distort Noise HSV Noise to your Black and White layer, with settings as shown on the next page. (Holdness as low as it goes, all other settings as far to the right as they go). Apply a Gaussian Blur. The more dynamic you want your coastlines to be, the more you ll want to blur. I m going to go big, to really mess up the coastlines so that it s less obviously America, so I ll set it to 60 pixels but if you just want to make the coast a bit rougher you can stop at 3 or 4 pixels. Lastly, Threshold, so that you ve got a nice crisp coastline. 3

If you want to go big, start with a massive blur to make your coastlines much more jagged and then repeat the process with a small blur to make them nice and sharp.

Apply a nice fog map to it by going to Filter Render Clouds Fog. Mess with the layer mode. Difference is usually the best way to do it. This makes your land less flat.

4 If you want to go big, start with a massive blur to make your coastlines much more jagged and then repeat the process with a small blur to make them nice and sharp. That works a lot better if you have a larger image, I don t so I won t. Step 8: Merge your top blurry layer with the layer you ve been thresholding. Step 9: Select only the landmass. Apply a nice fog map to it by going to Filter Render Clouds Fog. Mess with the layer mode. Difference is usually the best way to do it. This makes your land less flat. Step 10: Your landmasses will probably still look rather flat, even with the cloud layer. Select the landmass and do a border select (Select Border) and then feather (Select Feather). De-select where the water will be. Use the paintbrush (opacity set to 35% or so) to darken the borders. This makes the land look a little more sloped. You can do it again, tighter, if you want it to look a little nicer. 4

Step 11: Water Create a tealish blue base layer and place it at the bottom of your layers. Create two cloud layers on top of that. (Again, Filter Render Clouds Fog.) Make the fog color blue.

You can also use various tools (Colors Hue-Saturation), (Colors Curves), to get the desired effect.

Lastly, you re going to do the same thing you did to darken the edges of the land in reverse. Get a nice wide selection of the border and feather it widely.

The next two sections are for mountains. If you don t have any of those on your map, jump down to the section on borders. If you don t have borders either you re probably done. Congrats?

5 Step 11: Water Create a tealish blue base layer and place it at the bottom of your layers. Create two cloud layers on top of that. (Again, Filter Render Clouds Fog.) Make the fog color blue. You may want to monkey around with the layer settings for the fog layers. I like the top to Burn at half opacity and the second to multiply, but you might want a different aesthetic for your map. You can also use various tools (Colors Hue-Saturation), (Colors Curves), to get the desired effect. Once you re happy, merge them down, starting from the middle layer downwards so that the layer modes don t do wonky things. Lastly, you re going to do the same thing you did to darken the edges of the land in reverse. Get a nice wide selection of the border and feather it widely. Give it a nice white coat with the paintbrush set to opacity 15% or so, in Overlay mode. You might want to give it a few passes, especially in the areas between islands. The next two sections are for mountains. If you don t have any of those on your map, jump down to the section on borders. If you don t have borders either you re probably done. Congrats? Step R: Rivers Rivers are pretty easy. Draw a path starting from where the high point would be and leading down into the water. You can have several paths or just the one. Make a new layer. Using the trace feature in the Paths tab, trace the path twice. Make one a darker layer, a brownish green, and blur the layer a bit, maybe smudge or erase a bit too. The second line will be a thinner layer of blue. You shouldn t need to go more than 5 or 6 pixels wide. Erase at the beginning and end of the river. You may have to mess with the opacity a bit to get it just right, but in the end you ll have a nice crisp river that leads out into the sea. 5

Step M: Mountains While Rivers are easy, Mountains are a bit rough.

Go all the way back to that and select your mountain cells. Make those white and the rest black.

In the top layer, make a gradient with Shape set to Shaped (Dimple).

Make a middle layer of Noise. (Filter Render Clouds Solid Noise).

To the right are the three layers, in order.

Something like the curve map to the right should do the trick.

6 Step M: Mountains While Rivers are easy, Mountains are a bit rough. Remember how you ve got a copy of that original map from way back when it was in Excel? Yeah. Go all the way back to that and select your mountain cells. Make those white and the rest black. Blur them and threshold it. Duplicate that layer. In the top layer, make a gradient with Shape set to Shaped (Dimple). This will make the ridge of the mountain follow the center of the mountain s mass. Make a middle layer of Noise. (Filter Render Clouds Solid Noise). Blur the snout out of the last layer, the one that s just two blobs. To the right are the three layers, in order. Use the curves tool (Color Curves) to bring out the black in the Noise. Something like the curve map to the right should do the trick. Now, you ll want the top layer to be a dodge, the one beneath to be a Multiply, and the last to be a normal map. This should create the right sort of effect not unlike the one shown in the image below. You ll want very fine points of white (the peaks), so you may have to use Curves on the top layer to minimize the white enough. Once that s done, merge the three and move on to embossing. 6

Azimuth will change the direction of the light, Elevation will change how tall the mountains look, and depth will change how sharp the contrasts are between the different regions.

7 Emboss essentially makes a textured version of your layers. The lighter the color, the higher up it will be. You ll want to mess with the settings a bit to get mountains that look the way you want them too. Azimuth will change the direction of the light, Elevation will change how tall the mountains look, and depth will change how sharp the contrasts are between the different regions. Once you re happy with it, hit OK. Erase all the boring grey parts and set the layer to Multiply. You ll see that it s a little grey. Make a copy of the layer beneath, the one with the landscape. Hide it for a while, you won t need it for a bit. Use the paintbrush to lighten up the areas under the mountain. The lighter you go, the rockier and snowier they ll look. Now you ll notice that the roughness of the mountains makes the rest of the land look flat. Use emboss (with minimal settings) on that copy of the landscape. You ll want to vary up what layer mode you use to get the right aesthetic for this part. If you leave it as is, you ll have a reasonably cool (if greyscale) map. Multiply gives a reasonably realistic feel, where Burn makes it more fantastical and colorful. Hard Light makes it much lighter, which might be useful if you re going to populate your word map with lots of towns and cities, roads, or the like, which tend to look a bit cluttered if they re in there with rough mountains as well. 7

8 Once you ve decided, you ll notice that s still a bit much. Use a large eraser, set to 40% or thereabouts, to smooth out areas. Deserts and plains are a good place for this, forests can stay. 8

When I first posted this I got a request for how to forests. So, Step F: If you want to show forests on your map, you ll start out basically the same way that you did the mountains.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman would take one look at that and instantly loser her mind. Gaussian Blur and Threshold it, then blur the result. You ll want it to be very, very blurry.

Start with a nice green wash, then add in browns and green varieties. A green top should finish things off nicely. Vary up the brushes in size and shape and mode, and keep the opacity around 30%.

9 When I first posted this I got a request for how to forests. So, Step F: If you want to show forests on your map, you ll start out basically the same way that you did the mountains. To make it easier I just copied my original Excel Document again, but I changed the settings so forests are now this ghastly shade of orange. My gods. Charlotte Perkins Gilman would take one look at that and instantly loser her mind. Gaussian Blur and Threshold it, then blur the result. You ll want it to be very, very blurry. Now, this is the fun part. GIMP has a lot of fun brushes and you ll probably use them like, once in a hundred projects. Make a forest. Cover the whole map. Start with a nice green wash, then add in browns and green varieties. A green top should finish things off nicely. Vary up the brushes in size and shape and mode, and keep the opacity around 30%. Eventually it ll be a nice noise of green. Blur it a bit and use Color Hue- Saturation to finish off. Now, right click on the green layer and select Add Layer Mask. A mask tells the layer how translucent to be based on the lightness. With the mask selected (It will have a white border), copy and paste the layer you made from the forest cells. This will make the green layer transparent everywhere you don t want forest. You will probably have to select the landscape (from one of the older layers) and delete all the non-landscape parts, as it will probably blur off of the map a bit. Multiply Grain Merge Set the green layer to about 50% opacity and then to either Multiply (darker) or Grain Merge (brighter), depending on the general aesthetic you re going for. 9

I also got a request to do cities and roads, so here s Step CaR: Cities are quite easy, at least the way I do them. In a new layer, make a black circle, and then put a white circle on top of it.

Then again, there are a lot of ways to do cities, from detailed drawings to a coat of arms representing the ruling house/family of the region/city/nation.

Roads can be achieved with a simple path tool. Connect the cities. Not all cities need to be connected.

10 I also got a request to do cities and roads, so here s Step CaR: Cities are quite easy, at least the way I do them. In a new layer, make a black circle, and then put a white circle on top of it. I drop the size of the brush by 2 pixels, but you might want to vary by more or less depending on your aesthetic. Then again, there are a lot of ways to do cities, from detailed drawings to a coat of arms representing the ruling house/family of the region/city/nation. I like this version for a map of a larger area, as it keeps things from getting too complicated. Set the layer opacity to about 60%, that ll make it a little smoother. Next, roads. Roads can be achieved with a simple path tool. Connect the cities. Not all cities need to be connected. There may be only one major road going along the coast, and only one real road to the city up in the mountains. If a city gets lots of traffic, it will be located near a major waterway, or both. Roads will rarely be straight, they will probably have squiggles and arcs, to follow the curve of the land. Once you ve got the roads lined up, trace them into a new Layer. I use a brush at 2 pixels wide, white. Make that layer semitransparent and set to Overlay. Now you ve got a smooth roadway. Be careful that you roads are visually distinct from your national borders and from your rivers. Getting them confused can be annoying for cartographers but a nightmare for whoever has to actually read your map. That s why transparency helps out quite a bit, it makes it clear that this is something more ephemeral than the national borders. (Which is odd, as borders are an imagined idea with likely no actual physical marker beyond a signpost or milestone, whereas the road is something tangible that would outlive border shifting. However, as we spend time on roads traveling we think of them as more fleeting than they are. /Filler.) 10

Step 11: Country Borders are fun. Start defini them by selecting an area. Make that selection a path. Repeat the process until you have the whole area filled with countries.

Remember that in general, territory borders end at rivers and mountains, and that civilizations form along the water.

Plains are good places to fight over, and passes between mountains are often border areas because of how defensible they are, and thus easy to hold.

11 Step 11: Country Borders are fun. Start defini them by selecting an area. Make that selection a path. Repeat the process until you have the whole area filled with countries. (or not, if you want to leave some areas country-less). It helps to select an area then use CTRL+I to invert, so that you don t select an area twice. Remember that in general, territory borders end at rivers and mountains, and that civilizations form along the water. Larger empires usually have either water or a mountain range on at least one side. Plains are good places to fight over, and passes between mountains are often border areas because of how defensible they are, and thus easy to hold. There are a lot more things to consider but that s a topic for elsewhere. Step 12: Make a new layer (or two or three. Stroke all the country lines. GIMP has a lot of fun options for the line stile. I m partial to the series of black dots, but a single line can work. If you do use a pattern of some kind, it helps to use multiple layers, so that if two borders clash you can erase one layer along the borderline. Merge the layers later and no one will ever know. 11

I hope you ve enjoyed this tutorial. Share it around, and happy map making. 12 Because I hate an unfilled page, here s the skinny on how to make your map look cool and old-timey.

12 You might want to run a trace around the land where it meets the water, if only to make it look a little nicer. But after that, there s nothing left but to throw on some place names and you re all done! This is the finished version of the map. I decided I didn t want to leave the river in, it felt a bit off. I hope you ve enjoyed this tutorial. Share it around, and happy map making. 12 Because I hate an unfilled page, here s the skinny on how to make your map look cool and old-timey. Just make an entirely tan layer, place it on top of any relevant layers, and set it to Saturation Mode. It looks weathered and drained of color, but not quite colorless. Old-timey looking maps are a good idea if you want to imply age and power, but colored maps are better to imply a living, breathing fantasy world.

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