February 2022 Challenge: Edha

[Turambar]

I am going to attempt a redo of a region map on a my world of Edha, which I made awhile ago. I think I will try to redo this as a realistic topographical map.

Edha-scaled.png

A little background: Edha is a tidally-locked planet, meaning one side always faces the sun and the other side is always dark. The substellar point is to the west on this map, while a perpetual ice cap is too the east. When I was was first designing this world a few years ago, I did a lot research to calculate the habitable area based on atmospheric thickness, ocean-size, and continent placement and came out with area covering about 30% of the planet which would be habitable.

[Turambar]

### Latest WIP ###

Edha topographical WIP 1.png

I am going to experiment with different water I think. I would welcome any tips on the blending of biomes, its always challenging for me.

[XCali]

Hi!

Yeah, I think the water needs to be a little less prominent. It almost steals your eyes away from the land. But! Good on you for experimenting. That's the way to learn these things.

On blending the biomes, I don't know what program you are using, but for something like GIMP or Photoshop, the method of using a soft edge brush on lower opacity to paint over the border of the biomes with their colors, works quite well. If you don't understand, just ask away. Good luck!

[Turambar]

Hi!

Yeah, I think the water needs to be a little less prominent. It almost steals your eyes away from the land. But! Good on you for experimenting. That's the way to learn these things.

On blending the biomes, I don't know what program you are using, but for something like GIMP or Photoshop, the method of using a soft edge brush on lower opacity to paint over the border of the biomes with their colors, works quite well. If you don't understand, just ask away. Good luck!

Thank you for the tips! I created the landmass in Wonderdraft and am editing with GIMP. I was struggling with the water until I realized that in most satellite maps you can't actually see much texture in the water itself, mostly just a deep blue with an overlay of clouds. So I think I will try going that route.

[Turambar]

I did some work blending the biomes and updated the water based on a satellite image to get a more realistic look.

### Latest WIP ###

Edha topographical WIP 2.png

[Eowyn Cwper]

These mountains are very mysterious and charming! Love them!

[Turambar]

These mountains are very mysterious and charming! Love them!

Thank you!

[Turambar]

And now to put it all together....

Here's my latest WIP. I am not happy with the title lettering... I will need to work more on that for the next iteration.

### Latest WIP ###

Edha Map WIP 5 resized.png

[Turambar]

I've made some more progress on the map, and decided to add a few extra elements to flesh out the context of the world. I'll post some full images of a few of the components here and the add the latest WIP in a further post.


As I mentioned in the initial post, Edha is a tidally-locked planet, meaning one side always faces the sun (the substellar point) and the other side is always dark (covered in primordial ice caps). Edha orbits an M-class red dwarf star, the most common type of star in the galaxy, which is why the habitable zone must be so close to star as to cause tidal-locking. A permanent storm constantly swirls over the substellar point, and winds coming from the day side of the planet also cause devastating storms as they meet the cold air from the night side around the "twilight zone." The habitable area of the planet includes about 30% of the surface, including the main continent.

Planet.png

This map of the planet was created by wrapping an equirectangular version of a global map of Edha onto a globe using a site called Map to Globe. I then used GIMP to add atmosphere and lighting. The image below, centering on the planet's substellar point, uses a times map projection of the same global map. This was also created using Map to Globe's wonderful assortment of map projection tools, and then edited in Gimp for the finishing touches and lighting.

Edha view from space (Times).png