The World of Alteia, a High Fantasy TTRPG Setting

[Tyler Stovall]

Alteia-Map-Ver9.jpg

This map has gone through many iterations over the years to reach its current incarnation.

My Workflow
The continent shapes were hand drawn with a Huion Kamvas 13 Pro in Adobe Photoshop 2020 and textured with a keyboard and mouse in Photoshop to create a black and white Height Map.
Once the Height Map has been created, the project moves into Wilbur v1.90. In Wilbur the Height Map undergoes a lot of simulations; this includes but is not limited to erosion passes, incise flow passes, and manual terrain adjustments. The map is then exported as a Grey Height Map.
The new and edited Height Map is then brought back into Photoshop where it is colored using a combination of Gradient Maps and manual coloring. A combination of Posterization and Glowing Edges is used to create the light topographical effect. Once the base map is done, the project is saved as a new PSD and then merged into a Smart Object before work on the labels and border begins.
The border, flags, and logos were all created in Photoshop (including the 3D elements) in separate PSDs and then brought into the map. The labels are the last thing to be completed as they are the most tedious and I dread that part of map making for every single map.
I try to work non-destructively so that I can pull any element of the map into its own image. This allows me to use the Map to Globe website to create the textured globe animation as well as the map.

I hope you find the workflow helpful and this map visually appealing.

[Arimel]

That is an intimidating number of contour lines! The contours extending into the sea is a cool touch.