[WIP] Kingdom of Rogard

[Dumont]

Currently bouncing between three different maps, so I should post the third: This is a central region of Daxtera, the Kingdom of Rogard. (Westbar, the city that I'm currently mapping, is in the center of the open area in the west half of the map.)

Thanks to jplet for sharing his mountain technique, it was the block I'd been stuck on before feeling like I was ready to post progress images. (It was the emboss contour that I wasn't getting right.)

ss+(2018-07-31+at+03.55.24).png

[Rwexler]

Looks good so far!
Would you like to share the settings of the forest layer?

[Dumont]

Looks good so far!
Would you like to share the settings of the forest layer?

So, I start by painting in all the areas I want forest. Lots and lots of fiddling, erasing, messy brushes with lots of scatter and angle jitter, etc. This layer has a Bevel & Emboss as well as an (optional) Drop Shadow, which I tend to turn on and off depending on the scale of the map. (In this map, it's off.)

Then, I have a huge 'trees' texture that I apply as a Clipping Mask. This texture is multiple layers of fractal noise, clouds, and general texture that took a lot of trial and error and was probably influenced by half a dozen tutorials that I've read on this forum. This layer is set at about 70% fill.

ss+(2018-08-13+at+01.51.30).png

On top of that is a 2nd clipping mask with the blending mode Color, and I use that to shade the forest in different areas depending on the climate, or apply some brown/grey to areas that are supposed to be more 'dead'.

Finally, a 3rd clipping mask set to Overlay and 20% fill that's just another black and white Clouds layer, to break up the uniformity one more time.

[Diamond]

Good looking map so far, and I really like your forest technique. (Makes notes for future maps... )