[Region 1][Map 07] - Thrubmorton Fens

[Redrobes]

Did a bit on my tile last night but didn't upload it so here it is so far...

### Latest WIP ###

[Torq]

Looking most excellent Redrobes. I love the the erosion, what did you use to create that? The beach coloured sand at the lowest coastal altitudes also looks great. Cant wait to see where you go from here.

Torq

[Redrobes]

I started by looking at the 3D height which is image 1. I found this pretty hard to deal with. I tried various erosions and flow settings but basically it has a lot of complex ripple like noise which ends up as basins which flood into big big pools and was hard to persuade it to sort that out. In any case the amplitude of the noise is very large for being so close to the sea level. Thats not unheard of and I think Croatia coastline is like that - see Zadar but its not the sort of place that people have rushed to populate either and its not the sort of map I wanted to make.

Still within that constraint I thought that what we would have is a fen land with a lot of marsh and I believe that one of my neighbors has said that they want to go that route too. The thing now was that there is no geography to generate those pools so I figured that what would be good was a long ridge running through the middle of it. I also figured that it would make for a good dynamic that the main road through the land was along the ridge line and unusually all the low lands were the dangerous bits full of marshy swamp and creatures to boot.

So I got out the original coast and lake boundaries to match up and hand made some hills by painting about 4 shades of grey in and blurring them hard. Then I added a scaled version of that as a heightmap to a scaled down version of the original so that there was some of the original texture to the final map. It was about 50:50 or so. I also fixed some key rivers in place by joining up some of the smaller lakes with some darker lines on the height map.

Then I set it off with various erosion and flow stuff in my GeoTerSys which after a while produced the map below. It took a lot of faffing with various settings and basically I put the map into an ice age and let it thaw slowly. The ice cuts some of the blockages away like a glacier and roughens up the terrain in the right places too. When the water then flows it cuts more of the rivers and you can see where it thinks some of the rivers were in different places than I had put them so it has kinda broken the flow bit but thats cool.

The beaches were all auto generated by it. Theres a bit in the program that smooths out the low to high tidal areas to create beaches. I don't have very good cliff algorithms in the prog yet.

So after that we have the next pic which is my eroded height and then the same but colored. From this point I should be able to select a section and blow it up and up res it but thats for later.

[su_liam]

Waldronate has a nice tutorial on creating realistic erosion. It's Wilbur-specific, but the ideas should be adaptable. It seems like a solution to some of the problems you've spoken of before.

I see your HF had the same nasty square artifacts as mine.

Looking good so far. I'm liking your rivers better than the FT-generated ones, too.

[Redrobes]

I see your HF had the same nasty square artifacts as mine.

I think that the horz & vert lines in the raw HF are probably induced from my scaling. Until its in a form that I can deal with in GTS then I have to do using some more brutal techniques. I was more concerned with the Z res so that the bits near to the coast produced the same shapes.

[Torq]

Thanks Redrobes. In you explanation you included a slightly isometric colour version of your map. I think the mountains in that one look a whole lot more effective in that view with the perspective than they do in the top down view. I think the mountains in the map section tend to look slightly flat when viewed from above. Is there a way you can show more height on that version?

One way is to cheat. You can make a selection the same shape as your mountains and then apply a black/white shaped (angular) gradient. Its very angular but with some blur and noise you can make it a bit rougher. Then you apply this as a bump map to the mountain range. Not hyper realism but it can be quite effective.

Thanks for letting us into you process. I cant wait to see some of the 3d views you will be able to generate.

Torq

[languard]

Threadomancy! Is there a higher-res version of this region? 1024x1024 blurs horribly when I try to zoom in to a 170x170 pixel (100x100 mile) chunk. If not no worries, I'll take my best guess. I'm looking at doing something with the Deathchaser Fen / Mere Fen area, focusing on the Ruins of Mere Fort first.

[Redrobes]

Sure, here are two images. There used to be a road going from Morton to Mullion but the waters around Deathchaser fen and Mere Fen have been slowly rising. Already with a substantial amount of lizard folk in the area harassing the Mere Fort, eventually the road became impassable and so they abandoned the Mere Fort and moved the road to the much longer route going via New Mere Fort. Its highly likely that the Ruins of Mere Fort are now inhabited by lizard folk or possibly even something more powerful and secretive because no one goes into that zone any more. Its an infestation. Only those chasing death go there

As you can see there has been one level of detail extra on the Deathchaser area which goes up to the Ruins but the Ruins are just a marker at this point and Mere Fen is still sat at base level of detail. Although Hawker point has not been mapped its very similar to Hardy point which has. So if you include anything like that then post. Morton is a large town with a stronghold and cavalry which keep part of the old road clear but not all the way to the old fort. The road from Mullion to New Mere Fort is also patrolled but not entirely safe.

Best of luck with it.