Jumps

Here is a quick and dirty example that works in both Photo Shop and Paint Shop Pro. There are many many variations on how to do this and I am only describing a very basic way to do it.

Set your airbrush to some color that is slightly higher then what you want your jump to be. There is no hard fast numbers because it all depends on how tall you want the jump and what strength/grid size you are using. I recommend making a few of them with different strengths and trying them out in the game.

Step 1 - is to just paint with your airbrush a line across the track. The width can vary depending on what you want from say 3 to 15 or so.

Step 2a - is just showing that you can vary this technique a little and only blur one side of the jump at a time. When I do this I blur one side more then the other and I make it more of a rectangle on the landing side.

Step 2b - is a way to make a symmetrical jump that isn't lumpy or droopy on the edges.

Step 3 - is using a gaussian blur to blur the selected area. This example I used an 8. You can use different numbers to suit your tastes. I normally use from 1.5 to about 12 depending on what I'm trying to accomplish. You can also use motion blur to add some variety to your jumps.

Step 4 - I select the end of the jump so that I can make the ends match up with the jump without rounding the ends so that they droop.

Step 5 - has both ends blurred.

The key is to experiment and come up with the technique that works best for you. By airbrushing and blurring you can make your jumps quite variable, fine tune them to the needs of the track at that specific location, and blend them into the surrounding terrain.

Don't forget that once you have a few jumps that you like you can cut, paste, and rotate them where ever you want. Once they are placed you can customize them with this technique to make them fit better. You can even use the color/brightness adjustments to raise or lower jumps to different terrain levels and then blend them in with gaussian blur.

Bruce (AMA_DirtTwister)