Relict project (general & local maps)

[Ilanthar]

Ok, I've decided to throw myself on this project. It's for a post-apocalyptic rpg I'm working on, called "Relict".
I want a general map and more detailed ones. I'm using the techniques I've developped lately.

Here's a testing portion. The final "general map" will be about 10000 px wide. I'm working at x4 in size, the size I'll use for the more local maps.

Just the topography & water right now. I don't know if I should keep the contour lines or not.
With contours, full size & without contours
R B5 fs.jpg & R B5 sc fs.jpg
With contours, small size (general map) & without contours.
R B5 qs.jpg & R B5 sc qs.jpg
Thoughts?

[Warlin]

Without contour imo. I think that you have the feeling of the hight and the contours don't give other informations. Nice technique and a really well done job so far.

[snodsy]

I agree no contours, look awesome so far, love the land map and the water to land I'll be watching this one, nice job.

[waldronate]

I should probably put a random start on the search for neighbors in Wilbur. It might reduce those diamond-shaped artifacts caused by always running the search in the same way.

Update: nope, didn't work. A moment's thought would have predicted that, but I'm too tired to think right now. That must mean that it's time to drive 3 hours to camp overnight in bear country with a car full of food residues from the children! Hooray!

[Diamond]

My vote is to leave the contours in; for some reason I really like the way that looks. Also, you realize I'm going to have to eat your brain now, right?

[Ilanthar]

Thanks guys!

By Waldronate
I should probably put a random start on the search for neighbors in Wilbur. It might reduce those diamond-shaped artifacts caused by always running the search in the same way.

That shouldn't be a major problem since my tiles are overlapping each other. Plus, it's not so hard to correct them with cloning/erasing tools.
But, I DO NEED your good advices... I've done the tile right to this previous one, and I got a serious issue. Since the altitude goes from -150 to 2850 on the first tile and from -150 to 950 on the second, it seems there's a difference of light according to elevations... Result, the right tile is "brighter" than the left one... How could I correct this in Wilbur?
I should precise I'm loading each altitude (every 50) then run a 25 cycles precipitation erosion.

The first one & the second one
R B5 sc fs.jpg & R B6 sc fs.jpg

@Diamond : man, you're not making choices easy!! Anyway, I may keep the contour for the local maps and remove it for the global. Don't know yet. And please, believe me, my brain is not appetizing !

[waldronate]

I am away from my system at the moment, so I might not quite get this correct.

You should be able to use texture.shadef setup altitude tab to get a place to enter max altitude. That will make sharing consistent across tiles

[Ilanthar]

By Waldronate
You should be able to use texture.shadef setup altitude tab to get a place to enter max altitude. That will make sharing consistent across tiles

You're speaking of Texture > Shader Setup > the maximum altitude in the "land" part (set at 2500 by default)?
I tried afterward (on the surface after and before the 25 erosion), but it doesn't changed anything. I tried it before adding all the layer, and the only result I see is a change for underwater levels... But I'm really not sure I'm doing things correctly.

Hum, I tried something that worked out fine. I added a block at 2850 in altitude then erased it later in my other software. And it appeared that the slight difference was a mistake from my own doing... But it's quite problematic anyway, since my top altitude for all the tile will then be 5600 (the higher summit, in another tile).

Anyway, thanks a lot for the help and suggestions! I'm sure there's probably a better method than my trick...
The result for the 2 tiles :
R B 5e6 fs.jpg

I'm gonna try the same thing with a 5600 in altitude max.

[waldronate]

I'm back at my desk (the phone posting thing didn't go so well). You also need to check the "Absolute Coloring" checkbox. Normally (when "Absolute Coloring" isn't checked), Wilbur computes the absolute min and max for land and sea (altitude coloring then ranges from sea level up to the map max and sea coloring from sea level down to the map min). When "Absolute Coloring" is checked, however, land coloring applies to altitudes from land "Min" altitude to land "Max" altitude specified on the dialog and sea coloring goes from "Sea Level" down to sea "Abs Min" specified on the dialog. I don't know for sure what happens if those ranges don't overlap because I don't recall that I've ever tried not having land min equal to sea level when using absolute coloring. If you want to have coloring be exactly the same across a whole range of tiles, then you will need to:

Set "Absolute Coloring" on.
Set Altitude "Min" on the Land side of the property to your desired sea level (probably 0)
Set Altitude "Max" on the Land side of the property page to your desired maximum coloring altitude (the highest color will continue on upwards)
Set "Sea Level" to your desired sea level (probably 0, should be the same as Altitude "Min" to avoid surprises)
Set "Abs Min" to your desired lowest coloring altitude.

Why the bizarre settings? Evolution. This dialog wasn't really designed so much as it accreted features over time until I hit a set that would do what I needed to do. As an example of this evolution, there is a "Min" and "Max" on both the land and sea side of the dialog, but they mean completely different things. The Sea side Min and Max values control lightness of the sea (setting both to 0 means that you will get a perfect rendering of your sea coloring list; the default 0.3 for Max and 0.0 for Min will give lighter colors for shallows than deeps, meaning that single color value in the sea color list will generate a whole range of tones.

[Josiah VE]

Wow... looks awesome!! I have no idea how you do that.