Cloth Map (Needs Improving)

[Snarky]

he made it FOLLOWING a tutorial that is LINKED. Gash!

True, though I didn't follow the tutorial slavishly.

What I'll gladly do is explain how I did the squiggly coastlines, since that's an original technique (albeit based on the fraying edges example in the tutorial). Here's a step-by-step animation/demonstration:

• Draw a simple outline of your map
• Fill in the land with black, the sea with white
• Filter>Brush Strokes>Spatter... (Spray Radius 21, Smoothness 6)
• Make 2 copies of the layer
• On the first copy: Filter>Artistic>Smudge Stick... (Stroke Length 2, Intensity 10)
• On the second copy: Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal, then smudge stick (Ctrl-F), then flip back
• Invert both copies (Ctrl-I)
• Set the layer mode of the topmost copy to Multiply
• Merge the two layers (have the topmost layer selected, Ctrl-E)
• Invert back (Ctrl-I)
• Filter>Stylize>Find Edges
• Play with the levels (Ctrl-L) to get rid of the noise on land (actually, if you put it on a textured background, that noise makes for good shading)
• Run a slight (0.5) Gaussian blur followed by levels (Ctrl-L) to soften and clean up the outlines
• All done! Follow this tutorial to do the rest of the map.

That tutorials was too hard to mee, i tought that maybe he can make more simplified version.

It's not that complicated, once you see what's going on. In order to get the map effect, you have to do a few things:

• Make a kind of shadow around your lines, which we do by copying the layer and blurring it.
• Make the background texture. In the tut they did some stuff with rendering clouds and the sandstone pattern. I simply used a photo of a piece of fabric. The shadows in the photo also gave me a distortion map for later use.
• Add dirt, stains and other shit to make the map look old and worn. In the tut they used some grunge brushes. I also made some stains by rendering clouds, blurring them and playing with the levels.
• Make it the right color. In addition to the Hue/Saturation layer used in the tut, I added a Color Balance layer in order to get more control over the hues for different values.
• I added a distortion (from the other tutorial posted) at this point to make the map look less flat. But the result (as you can see) wasn't overwhelming.
• Make the edge of the map frayed. The tut explains one way, but I'm not really happy with the result. I added some tweaks (similar method as for the coastlines), which looks great for paper but not so good for cloth.
• Burn the map around the edges. The tutorial overdoes this quite a bit. I used a lower setting with (I think) better results).

I also added a thin edge around the map, a background and a drop shadow (distorted to give a 3D feel, again).

[Synthetique]

and here's a quicker way to do it:
---------
1. draw outlines and fill them

2. filter>brush strokes>spatter
... any values you like

3. filter>noise>median
... play around a bit

4. skip this one if you like. looks good anyway.
    filter>brush strokes>spatter
... just adding some small jiggles to it

5. filter>stylize>trace contour
... any value could work. i used "upper" at level 255
---------

[Cluey]

Excuse my french, Holy shit, that is awesome, and it is such a shame that it doesn't fit with the cartoony style.  But kudos to you anyway.

One question, where did you get that LOTR style font.

The funny little symbols are markers to indicate areas of wierd scaryness and the like.

Unfortunately I dont have a scanner, though hopefully I'll get one, it would make working on the DS so much easier.  Oh, and a graphics tablet too.

And everyone else, thanks for the help and tutorials.  I'll try em out and post back here.

Later.