January Entry: Galerius Hallow

[Midgardsormr]

Here I go! This time around I'll try to improve on the style I developed for Mennin's Hallow and adapt it for a large-format map. This one is set up at 24 X 36" at 300 dpi, leaving me plenty of room to downsample or chop it up if necessary.

Galerius Hallow is hidden in the forests along the River Galerius, northwest of what remains of the city of Kerus, which fell to the plague fifty years ago. It has a relatively high population of ~350, who are protected behind the confluence of the Galerius river and one of its tributaries, the Frostwater.

The Galerius runs through a small canyon, which is bridged by a single rope bridge and defended by a palisade. The Frostwater joins it in a small waterfall. It is smaller than the Galerius and thus more vulnerable, so it is defended by a rough stone wall.

So far I've got the forest and rock textures set up (and hidden by their respective masks), and a little bit of reference. Yes, it's very ugly. Ultimately, this will actually be two maps: the village and the region that contains it, the one below the other. If I fail to do a good job on the village, I can always cut it in half and still have plenty of pixels to print at 150 dpi.

[Hoel]

What's up with the attachment? It's just half white half green with some red and yellow lines and some very low res stuff, I think part of a label for a city...

[Steel General]

Probably just a place holder, looks like he chopped out a piece from another map and just added some simple lines, etc. to indicate what he had in mind.

[joão paulo]

The competition has already begun?

[Midgardsormr]

I told ya it was ugly! The bottom half is going to be the village map, but I haven't started on that part yet. The top half is a blown-up piece of this map:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/al...&pictureid=114

It'll look better later on, I promise!

And joão: Yes, it has begun!

[Midgardsormr]

Okay, I had some annoying stops and starts on this one, mostly because Wilbur didn't like the resolution I was trying to work in, and I was having a hard time coming up with an approach that would give me what I wanted. This isn't quite what I had in mind, but I think it will work out. So, here's the heightmap:

[Steel General]

Very een-ter-esting, looking forward to seeing more progress Midgard.

[Redrobes]

That's great starting terrain height map there. Was it completely synthetic or taken from a bit of real world height. There's some really good bits in it. It looks like a real bit of terrain, so whatever you used, whether Wilbur or DEM - its very nice.

[Ascension]

I'm loving that alluvial fan there in the lower left.

[Midgardsormr]

It's all synthetic from Wilbur. I did some touching up to get the rivers where I wanted them and to break up the unnatural ridges that Wilbur's fractal noise filter creates. Thanks for the compliments!