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| HOW TO: cut boards for a floor tile in GIMP http://www.worldworksgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=12813 |
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| Author: | mproteau [ 02-16-2015, 10:19 AM ] |
| Post subject: | HOW TO: cut boards for a floor tile in GIMP |
I was fiddling around making a new floor tile with a stock image of a floor. To make the 1" and 1.5" grids, I made sure that the floorboards lined up with the grid well enough that I could draw a somewhat think line between the boards to emphasize the 1" or 1.5" positions. With the paint tool, I just used a feathered round brush about 7 pixels wide, and I enabled a small amount of jitter (.2) to make the line wiggle a little bit. Do yourself a favor and draw your lines on a separate layer. This makes cleaning up mistakes easier, and gives us more options for making the lines look better later. That left me with a tile with LONG boards running the length of the tile. To finish the grid system, I wanted to cut the boards so that they ended roughly on the 1" or 1.5" mark. Drawing black lines certainly can bring out the grid. If you look at the Thoumont's or Friar floors, you'll see that they typically do this with every other board, alternating so it's not just a straight line. Next step is to make the black lines a little more subtle. One trick is simply to drop the opacity of the layer. It's quick and dirty - it doesn't really look right, but it certainly only takes one click. Here's something a little more time consuming. Duplicate your floor texture layer, and hide all other layers. Put the one inch grid lines layer right above it. Select the floor texture layer and use Filters > Map > Bump Map... Use your gridlines to apply a bump map to the floor texture. Fiddle with the controls and experiment. You can always cancel or undo what you try! The preview window is your friend. I found that increasing the depth a little bit and increasing the ambient value a little bit gave a nice highlight and shadow effect. After the bump map was applied, if you turn off the line layer, you'll see the nice embossing effect. We're not done! Turn the line layer back on and select the layer. Alt-click on the layer thumbnail to select only the lines. Shrink the selection by 1 pixel, invert the selection and hit the delete key to strip off a little bit of the line. Voila! That should leave your dark lines behind, but now they have nice highlights and shadows. Feel free to knock the opacity of the lines layer down to 85% or so, and you'll find that the harsh black lines might blend in better. |
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| Author: | Ninevah [ 02-16-2015, 10:41 AM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: HOW TO: cut boards for a floor tile in GIMP |
I'm not sure I'm following all of this 100%. A video of you doing this would make it SO much clearer. Or, at least a few pictures. |
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| Author: | mproteau [ 02-16-2015, 11:41 AM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: HOW TO: cut boards for a floor tile in GIMP |
I'll see what I can do about doing some videos - never tried that. Photos are such a pain, mostly because the forum does me no favors. |
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| Author: | mproteau [ 02-16-2015, 12:25 PM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: HOW TO: cut boards for a floor tile in GIMP |
Any recommendations on screen capture software? I've tried two free packages so far, and both do NOT play well with GIMP. I'll try the trial version of Camtasia, but I'm not spendin' no $300 to make video tutorials. |
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| Author: | Ninevah [ 02-16-2015, 12:35 PM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: HOW TO: cut boards for a floor tile in GIMP |
You got me. I've never tried to capture video from my monitor like that. |
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| Author: | mproteau [ 02-16-2015, 01:08 PM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: HOW TO: cut boards for a floor tile in GIMP |
Camtasia seems pretty slick - it better be for $300! Anyway, the free trial will get me far enough to make a little video. |
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| Author: | mproteau [ 02-16-2015, 01:17 PM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: HOW TO: cut boards for a floor tile in GIMP |
Well, it's being uploaded to Youtube even as I type. Once it's done being processed, it should be available for viewing. Hmph. Embedded video here is hard to follow. Feel free to watch it over on youtube. There's no sound, but hopefully the spirit of my Morgan Freeman-eque narration comes through in the text, however unceremoniously grafted onto the video it may be... |
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| Author: | Ninevah [ 02-16-2015, 01:47 PM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: HOW TO: cut boards for a floor tile in GIMP |
You make it look awfully easy. I don't think I could have come up with that completely on my own. Thank you, sir! You are a gentleman and a scholar! |
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| Author: | mproteau [ 02-16-2015, 02:11 PM ] |
| Post subject: | Re: HOW TO: cut boards for a floor tile in GIMP |
Getting familiar with the bump map feature is a great way to achieve etched and carved patterns in stone and wood. It's a little clumsy (as is a lot of stuff in GIMP) but a few things make your life easier. For example, move your bump map layer to the top of the layer list, and name it something easy to recognize, like %%%. That'll make it much easier to select. |
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