Making maps with Gaea

[Turambar]

Since posting a brief tutorial on how I made the heightmap for my April-May Lite Challenge map, I have been continuing to experiment with Gaea, trying perfect its use for heightmaps. Rather than continuing to post on the tutorial thread, it seemed more appropriate to start a thread in this forum where I can document my progress. If others are working with Gaea, feel free to post here as well.

I have been continuing to experiment using randomly generated continent and region shapes as masks, using Gaea's File node. To prepare a shape to be a mask, just make sure it is 1) on a square canvas, and 2) has sharp edges (its probably easiest to keep it in two colors - I just used Posterize on GIMP to clean up the shape. Here's my latest effort:


1. Original shape file

Randomly generated from Asgars generator.

Ayadupia 2022-04-01-23-43.png


2. Final Heightmap

Based on some tips which I came across, I made a few changes in my workflow to achieve this heightmap (you can see my original two attempts on the Tutorial thread here). The first is that I used an inverted Apex node to create more contrast between mountains and flat areas. The second is that I used a series of masks capturing a spectrum of different heights to add more noise and variation to landscape.

I also used a swirl node, to give the continent a bit more interesting shape than the original generated continent.

Ayadapedia heightmap.png

3. Texturing

For fun, I did some basic texturing withing Gaea. I will be honest, I am brand new at this aspect, so this is pretty rudimentary.

Ayadapedia_colored 4x v2.png




If anyone wants the original Gaea file to see what I did, let me know. For some reason the forum won't let me upload the file directly here.

[Turambar]

I've been continuing to experiment with Gaea to try an make continents. I finally have solved one of the problems I had been having which was getting the shores of the land to shape more realistically to the map mask (downloaded again from Asgar's generator in this case). Before this, I was struggling with jagged coasts as land was pushed up against the edges of the landmass mask.

I still have not solved my other major problem though, which is getting true continent scale. I need to get better using the new tilling features, perhaps that will help. Alternatively, I may resign myself to using Gaea to create realitic DEMs and then paste them together to create a larger heightmap in Gimp.

Anyways, here's the latest experiment I did today. More of a large island than a continent.

Courdeau 2022-04-04-16-28.png


Cordeau 2 eightmap_0.5k.png


Cordeau 2_2k.png

[Turambar]

Over the past few months I have continued to dabble with trying to make more realistic continent-scale heightmaps using Gaea. The program is at its best when doing smaller areas or local terrains, but I think I have made some substantial progress. Here's my latest experiment. Still some areas for improvement, such as varying the coastline erosion at different parts of the coast.

Screenshot 2022-06-27 233056.png

Screenshot 2022-06-27 233125.png

[Falconius]

That is starting to get much better. Good work. The scaling of Gaea seemed very specific when I tried it out, so overcoming that like you have is a serious achievement.

[Turambar]

That is starting to get much better. Good work. The scaling of Gaea seemed very specific when I tried it out, so overcoming that like you have is a serious achievement.

Thanks!

I thought that originally about the scaling, but it is actually not true at all. Gaea is fully procedural, and as such is infinitely scaleable, with resolution being the main constraint. The trick is that you have to change the scale settings on many of the nodes, especially on the erosion nodes, as well as the overall terrain scale. I'm still refining my process, but I have realized Gaea is equally capable for large scale maps as any other heightmap program out there, and I think will be even easier in future versions given that the team seems to be receptive to the growing cartography community using Gaea.

Edit: In addition to modifying scale and precipitation in the Erosion nodes, another trick that helps when it comes to texturing (and this applies to any scale terrain, but especially large scale) is to you autolevel on whatever masks you use (e.g. protrusion, slope, height) to make some of the colors and textures pop more.

Here's another more region style, but still large scale, experiment I did as a test while I was working on the continent. The test was of a new mountain technique which was kind of a fail, but I like the landmass shape a lot (lower resolution since I didn't want to wait 30 minutes to render something that was a simple test):

Screenshot 2022-06-28 191559.pngScreenshot 2022-06-28 191617.png

[Turambar]

Screenshot 2022-07-01 005133.pngScreenshot 2022-07-01 005728.png

My most recent iteration on the continent heightmap workflow in Gaea, Finally getting mountains that look more realistic at this scale.

[Jganzie]

Screenshot 2022-07-01 005133.pngScreenshot 2022-07-01 005728.png

My most recent iteration on the continent heightmap workflow in Gaea, Finally getting mountains that look more realistic at this scale.

I recently came across this thread while trying to figure out Unreal Engine map sizes. I was wondering, how big is your continent? Im trying to figure out the limitations of gaea and would love to be able to make a 3000km^2 map for a game world

[Turambar]

I recently came across this thread while trying to figure out Unreal Engine map sizes. I was wondering, how big is your continent? Im trying to figure out the limitations of gaea and would love to be able to make a 3000km^2 map for a game world

Sorry I just saw this. For this one, I rendered in 4k. As for km, Gaea is technically infinite in its scalability. The only limitation is resolution. For example, this map even at 4k still won't be super detailed when really zoomed in. Luckily you can export up to 8k, or with tiled builds even larger (assuming you have the pro version of Gaea). I have found though, that for continent scale Gaea takes a lot of work to look right, so I have reverted to using Wilbur or else Wilbur + Gaea. Gaea is excellent for region scale heightmaps though.

Edit: Gaea 2.0 is supposed to come out sometime soon, and is rumored to have features that make QoL improvements for largescale maps. Crossing my fingers.

[Plasmaportl]

Good to see software with erosion capability. I tried writing some erosion code a while back but never got past the buggy stage.

[waldronate]

I tried writing some erosion code a while back but never got past the buggy stage.

Hold on... There's a coding stage that's past the buggy stage?