Veidrheim WIP ---- From Map to Globe

[Ritterfeld]

Hey guys,

sooo, I'm new here. I'm a for now unpublished writer who has finished the first draft of a fantasy novel a week ago. I'm also a passionate world-builder and obsessed by realism. Unfortunately, this obsession developed AFTER I already began writing, did a little map work and have grown VERY fond of the continent I created. Also unfortunately, after having written the first novel, its continuation demands more continents and I have grown to pedantic to just not care about realism. So, end of the story: I want a map that will work on a globe that keeps the proportions of the continent I already drew.

After working my way through several programs, searching the internet for possibile solutions, I have found a plethora of methods for making globes, mapping on globes, projecting maps from globe to paper, but not on how to keep my beloved continent how it is and just put it on a globe without being distorted. Maybe one of you folks can help me with that? Usually, I create my maps with Photoshop, I will attach some of the singular files I'm talking about here. Hope anyone of you can help me.


Best,

Ritterfeld

PS: The maps are still work on progress, so don't mind that rivers, lakes, mountains, forests etc. are still missing.


fvG4RgG.jpg
The Third Continent. For now unpopulated. Still WIP.

fgvmDTB.jpg
One of the kingdoms. Inspired by Asia, Japan. Still WIP.

MvuJzqS.jpg
Supposed to be the entire world. Three continents, tectonic plates. Still WIP.

NmhQZRU.jpg
Main continent for the story. Northern to Southern Europe. Needs a rework in terms of rivers, lakes and settlements. Still WIP.

[waldronate]

… and just put it on a globe without being distorted

That's the problem. What you're asking is mathematically impossible (the sphere <-> plane transformation always distorts some aspect of the elements, such as shape or size).
Having said that, it is possible to find a projection that results in the plane map that you're working from and back-projection your plane map onto a sphere. There will be distortion on the spherical version, but how much will depend on the source map. Ultimately, you will need to decide which is more important to you: an undistorted globe view or an undistorted plane view.

Here's a very quick example of taking your map, assuming that it's already in the orthographic projection (that is, it's on a globe being viewed from infinity) with the bounds being set at about Europe (your second map shows that I didn't quite get it right, but I didn't put a lot of work into getting it there). Then I took that reprojected image and plopped it on top of a map of the Earth in several projections to show you the sorts of distortions that are just unavoidable.
Untitled-2.png

[Ritterfeld]

That's the problem. What you're asking is mathematically impossible (the sphere <-> plane transformation always distorts some aspect of the elements, such as shape or size).
Having said that, it is possible to find a projection that results in the plane map that you're working from and back-projection your plane map onto a sphere. There will be distortion on the spherical version, but how much will depend on the source map. Ultimately, you will need to decide which is more important to you: an undistorted globe view or an undistorted plane view.

Here's a very quick example of taking your map, assuming that it's already in the orthographic projection (that is, it's on a globe being viewed from infinity) with the bounds being set at about Europe (your second map shows that I didn't quite get it right, but I didn't put a lot of work into getting it there). Then I took that reprojected image and plopped it on top of a map of the Earth in several projections to show you the sorts of distortions that are just unavoidable.
Untitled-2.png

I'm sorry, seems like I didn't phrase it very well. I would like to have my distortion rather on the equirectangular projection rather than on my globe. Using programs like GPlates and MapToGlobe, I found the continet rather goofy looking and of weird proportions. But as I have seen you have done it already! Could you tell me how you put Veidrheim on the globe without distorting it? Which program did you use? Is it 3D or 2D? I'm asking because I would like to put all the continents in place and get an the euqirectangular projection so that all the egdes fit.

Best,

Ritterfeld

[Ilanthar]

Welcome Ritterfeld!
Until you reach 5 posts, you have to wait one of the CLs to approve your posts (it's a necessary measure to avoid spams).

Now, concerning your question, I'm not sure what software Waldonrate used, but I recommend GProjector. It will allow you to display your continent in a lot of different projections, with Earth in the background or nothing at all (if you just need the parallels & meridians).

[waldronate]

The idea is to take your map the way that you have it and tell a piece of software that it's already in the output projection that you want. Then you sample that projection back to something like Equirectangular and it's easy to feed it into any number of projecting programs.

In this case, I used my ancient ReprojectImage program ( http://www.fracterra.com/ReprojectImage.exe ) to do the basic Equirectangular map. I set the projection to Orthographic, latitude to -45, and scale to 2. Then I output it as a 4096-wide image to get the Equirectangular output, which I fed into Fractal Terrains from ProFantasy ( https://secure.profantasy.com/products/ft.asp ) with the Natural Earth data ( https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/ ) physical raster image for the Earth background.

There are many pieces of software on the internet that can do this sort of thing. GDAL should be able to do it if you're into command-line things and QGIS should also work.