These are some of my tricks:
- Easy Technique's to paint winter aspect / snowlike?
the questions are related to painting antialiased lines. Using existing tree models or winter pavement is not a problem, but painting snow?
I use (in Gimp):
- a new layer for snow
- a mask: I select all objects on the tile, then I deselect all transparecy, so that I don't risk to "dirty" it with semi-transparent pixels
- the clone tool (like a brush, but painting directly with the snow texture), with hard edge deselected; then I paint freehand giving the snow some irregular shape
- the burn/dodge (brush) tool, with hard edge deselected, giving a distinct lighting (reflections) to the jagged south edge and partly to the east one, when it seems to turn slightly towards south; I also burn parts which should be in shade
- I use snow climate official texture (i.e. that from svn) for snow on the ground, a slightly lighter one for roofs and objects
This is my specific procedure for roofs:
Inspired by mEGa, I changed my technique a little:
- I select the roof and ground area (or the whole image and then subtract the transparent parts
- I paint manually the snow using the clone tool and a soft edged brush in order to give more irregularity
- the snow is painted in a new layer for further edits
- I use for roofs a texture slightly lighter than the original one (used on the ground)
- I burn the north slope 40% darker, the west slope a 20% darker and dodge the south slope a 20% lighter
- finally I lighten or shadow manually the very edge of the roof to give the snow some volume.
- Painting antialiased lines with gimp?
how do yo do this? Which pencil adjustments do you use? Do you use layer properties?
I use often the blur (brush) tool on the edges I want to antialias.
Other times, I manage to select the edges I need (e.g. with a new layer I paint bright red lines (comic-like) on edges, possibly 2 px thick, then I use the selecy-by-color tool and hide/delete the layer and switch to the one I'm painting) and apply a gaussian blur filter, usually set to no more than 2 px.