Card's Tutorial for Terrain Generation

[cardenaglo]

Intro.

I’d like to start off by saying that the updated tools by the dev team have allowed many people to join the ranks of mappers. I’m one of those that joined in on this new boon of mappers but I saw that the tutorials only went over the process of map making but not really a way to quickly create the base images. Thus, my process here is going to go in depth on the process and it’s a process that will give out many uniquely shaped maps.

Tools:
Paint.Net is the only program we’ll be needing and it’s entirely free for use. This tutorial is being developed with Paint.Net in mind but that does not mean that you couldn’t follow this process in Photoshop or other similar tools.


Results
Now you’re probably wondering what type of results you’ll be getting. Thus, here is the map of Southern Gaia, the map I’ve been working on.


Step 1: Terrain Generation

Let’s start by making a brand-new file and for now let’s stick to 300x300 pixels. If you feel like you’ll feel comfortable making a new map, then go ahead and make a larger file however make sure that its in intervals of 300px. Each cell is 300x300 pixels thus if you want a 3x3 cell map then you’re going to want to make it 900x900 pixels.

We’ll want to set our colors to black and white if they’re not already before we continue.

Now we’ll want to render clouds next. To do this you’ll go to Effects, then Render and finally Clouds. You’ll then get a popup for scale and roughness, just hit Ok for now. We’ve now got clouds that are black, gray and white.

In this next step, we’re going to be treating black as water and white as land.
We’ll want to go to Adjustments and then Levels. This will help you create landmasses or a single landmass with water.   On the pop up screen that appears called levels adjustment you have two histograms. The left one, the input histogram, is the one we care about, the output histogram we can leave alone. The values will need to be the same. The higher the value the more white you’ll have and inversely the lower it is the more black you’ll have. Try to find a balance you like and if you cant find a perfect one just find a close enough match as you’ll be able to change it a little more manually. If you have black or white spots you don’t like just grab brush and clean them off.


Step Two: Terrain

We’ll be using the magic wand tool next. First select it and then at the top change the flood mode to global and tolerance to 0. The click on the black. Now all the black on your map should be selected. Change the flood mode back to contiguous and use the fill tool next and use the following color values for the correct blue: 0, 138, 255. Your black has now turned blue and you’ve got water done.

You’ll want to choose your coast color next. By this I mean the color you want the land around your water to be. I’m going to choose the color for sand as I prefer that to be around my own water but dirt and light grass work well too. Let’s fill in the color values for sand which are 210 200 160. Lets get our magic wand tool again and make sure that our flood mode is changed to global and select the white. Now we’ll replace the white with the sand.

At this point you should not have any white or black on your map. The only two colors should be the sand and water colors.

Let’s now return to our default colors, black and white and create a new layer. This layer will be temporary so let’s head back to our land and water layer. This time select your sand, make sure that the flood mode is still global, and then go back to our temporary layer. We’ll want to head up to Effects -> Blurs -> Gaussian. The next popup window will ask what size radius you want. This will be how large you want your coast to be. For now let’s select 8. We should now have a slight blur going inland. Still using our magic wand tool select the portion of land that is not affected by the blurry rings. Now lets head back to previous water and sand layer and fill this new selection with a new color, 145 135 60 , which is used for light grass. We can now delete the temporary layer. Lets now select our new color and render clouds. This time we will not use levels, but rather posterize. A new screen will show up with three adjustments lines. Change the values to 3 and your image should have white, gray and black. No more than that. With that done select okay.

Using our magic wand friend, let’s select our white and replace that with the light grass color. Lets select the grey next and fill that with the new values of 117 117 47 which represents medium grass. Let’s then select our black and use the dark grass values, 90 100 35, to fill it in.

Congratulations, you now have the base image for your map. You can now follow RJ’s tutorial from here on out and place your dirt paths and roads to fit your wants and needs.

[cardenaglo]

future tutorial

[cardenaglo]

future tutorial

[cardenaglo]

future tutorial

[Ciber Ninja]

When I experiment with mapping I like to keep a master .pdn with every feature on its own layer. Not just each terrain type, but each feature. for instance I generate the forests as though nothing else is there. Then I have a seperate layer with planned building foundations, and another layer derived from it by an outline and distort to determin the vegetation around foundations that needs to be removed. 

This way I can make major changes to things like road layout without having to compleatly regenerate my veg map or fill in lots of gaps.

 

My basic rule is to seperate every operation into a new layer and only delete them if I absolutely know that I will not need them later.

Edited February 22, 2017 by Ciber Ninja