Krastvin - an experiment in Wilbur-taming

[Caenwyr]

Hey all!

You haven't heard from me in quite a while, and that's because I'm in the middle of a large commission featuring 9 maps which I'll be happy to tell you about later (when the non-disclosure agreement period terminates). At the moment I managed to finish 7 of the maps already, and I'm having a little break while the client works hard to clear the necessary funds.

Since I'm on a break, I decided to go back to an entirely different kind of regional mapping. Not the hand-drawn style I applied in the Tentivu Tetrarchy and many others (such as my current commission), but the topographically slightly more authentic style I played around with for a while when I did my Aran & Ilan map. I decided it needed quite a bit more work for it to become really convincing, so off I went with a whacky test map. Below you can follow my progress up to this point.

1. a really rough outline (no idea yet whether the "in" or the "out" would become the landmass)
   Krastvin_1.jpg
2. the first level of detail ("in" will be the landmass, "out" will be the seas)
   Krastvin_2.jpg
3. the final sketch (where I decided to rip apart the landmass in two separate continents)
   Krastvin_3.jpg
4. and finally the detailed coastline.
   Krastvin_4.jpg
5. I then started working on the DEM for the map, a process that would take a huge bunch of do's and redo's, until I finally arrived at a basic terrain map I kinda liked:
   Krastvin_5.jpg
6. This map I eroded in Wilbur for hours and hours on end (starting over several times because man, that piece of software is HARD!!) until I got something that looked somewhat plausible:
   Krastvin_6.png

Which I took back to Photoshop for a ton of extra tweaks, a gradient map, a couple of shaded terrain layers and a bunch of ocean colour layers, which brought me to the current iteration:

### Latest WIP ###
Krastvin_7.jpg

It might look like a big step from #6 to the current version, but it really wasn't. The hardest work was getting from #5 to #6. Wilbur is a powerful beast, but to my unexperienced mind, keeping it in hand turned out to be an endeavour of epic proportions. Whew!

[Voolf]

Good to see you are working on new map Caenwyr. I missed your work ! Looking good so far.

[Caenwyr]

Thanks Voolf!

Blast, I noticed a typo in the thread title. That should have been Wilbur, of course!

[Caenwyr]

Alright, an update for you guys. A while back I developed a conscript that I'm planning to use in my fantasy series (which I've been working on for a bazillion years now, with no indication that I'll ever be able to finish it ). Since I have it laying around anyway, I decided to give it a spin on this map. Its first steps into the real world, so to speak.

But no worries, I won't have you staring at this map without having a clue what it actually says! So I'm planning on adding small roman transliterations as well - the title being the first example of this double-labeling system.

Apart from the title, I also decreased the contrast of the terrain shading a little bit in the "green" areas, drew in the rivers, and gave the oceans a little more texture. Oh, and I drew in the borders!

### Latest WIP ###
Krastvin_8.jpg

So! What do you guys think?

[waldronate]

I fixed the thread title.

One thing to consider with Wilbur is that you can often get better results with hard-edged masks or with very noisy height fields than with nice smooth height fields. The smoother height fields make the erosion processes run straight down the slopes rather than wiggling from side to side. Sufficient noise will knock things to the sides. The amount of noise needed to get good results make it look like everything is destroyed on the first couple of passes, but it evens out fairly quickly. I also like to throw in a little morphological dilate operation to get rid of speckles and spikes that creep in.

How are you doing the lighting? Is it a straight bump map lit inside of your paint tool or is it a light map from Wilbur that's blended with coloring?

If you haven't looked at it, consider looking into the texture shading operation in Wilbur. It's based on Leland Brown's work and it can lend a nice air to the maps that basic hillshading alone can't ( http://www.shadedrelief.com/banff/texture_shading.pdf is a good set of examples; the UI elements are a bit different, but the ideas are the same). Adding a little bit of the texture shader effect to your other color modulation operations (e.g. bump mapping) in the paint program can give a lovely painterly effect that reduces the harsh lighting effects of straight hillshading.

[Caenwyr]

I fixed the thread title.

One thing to consider with Wilbur is that you can often get better results with hard-edged masks or with very noisy height fields than with nice smooth height fields. The smoother height fields make the erosion processes run straight down the slopes rather than wiggling from side to side. Sufficient noise will knock things to the sides. The amount of noise needed to get good results make it look like everything is destroyed on the first couple of passes, but it evens out fairly quickly. I also like to throw in a little morphological dilate operation to get rid of speckles and spikes that creep in.

How are you doing the lighting? Is it a straight bump map lit inside of your paint tool or is it a light map from Wilbur that's blended with coloring?

If you haven't looked at it, consider looking into the texture shading operation in Wilbur. It's based on Leland Brown's work and it can lend a nice air to the maps that basic hillshading alone can't ( http://www.shadedrelief.com/banff/texture_shading.pdf is a good set of examples; the UI elements are a bit different, but the ideas are the same). Adding a little bit of the texture shader effect to your other color modulation operations (e.g. bump mapping) in the paint program can give a lovely painterly effect that reduces the harsh lighting effects of straight hillshading.

Woah Waldronate, thanks for fixing that typo, and thanks for your really helpful reply! I should definitely check that option out, it looks way more realistic (and gorgeous!). I never actually explored the shading parts of Wilbur - just exported the DEM to Photoshop and went nuts with it there. Must definitely check that out on my next map in this style.

Okay, so I'm officially a freak. The last few days I've been messing around with my script, and after a lot of doodling and scrapping decided I should just try and make a font out of it. Yes, an actual frickin' font. I'm mad. I had no clue on how to start, but I managed to turn my self-invented script into a self-invented font, which I can now use everywhere it's installed without ever having to go and draw the shapes and curves by hand. So! The labels on the northern continent are all done in the same font (the country labels in the "bold" variety), with roman subs for the countries. I'm not gonna do the roman versions of the town labels, mostly because they're absolutely ridiculous (there's a "Pointy Spot", a "Bergdorp" (dutch for Mountain Village), a "Nightrider", two towns called "Almost" and "Ready" etc).

So here you have the partly labelled next iteration of my map! If there's anything you'd like to see different, just yell!

### Latest WIP ###
Krastvin_10.jpg

[QED42]

Looking very good! My question was if you were going to be putting in any forested regions or not? Right now the green parts of the terrain lack a bit of variety to my eye, but maybe that's just me.

[Falconius]

Haha, great! Nice job on the font and the conscript, it looks great.

[Caenwyr]

Looking very good! My question was if you were going to be putting in any forested regions or not? Right now the green parts of the terrain lack a bit of variety to my eye, but maybe that's just me.

It's certainly a good idea, QED42, and I am considering it. However, I originally meant this to be an ordinary relief map (not unlike this one, although a little less overcrowded). These usually don't display forests (or any other type of vegetation) - the colours simply reflect the elevation. About the emptiness of the flats: that should be fixed once I get to add the roads, but be sure to let me know if you think that helps (once I get there )

Haha, great! Nice job on the font and the conscript, it looks great.

Thanks Falconius! I'm somewhat obsessed with conscripts ever since I first discovered these were a thing (drooling over Tolkien's books way back in the 90s) and have since created at least 10 different ones, most of which I've completely forgotten again. But this one is fairly recent, and I rather like the way it looks, so here it is!

Alright, an update for you guys. Finished the labeling bit (added a few towns on the northern continent to alleviate that empty feel QED42 talked about a little bit), and toyed around with all the layer styles. I'm not sure if the strokes around the smallest labels actually works. What do you guys think? Is it too transparent? Or is it just right for you?

### Latest WIP ###
Krastvin_11.jpg

[Caenwyr]

Alright, another quick update.

I'm still in doubt about the font for the countries. The one in the previous update was the "small caps" variant, but while that sounds like a good choice for country labels, I'm not sure it's the... well, prettiest version of my conscript . So unless you guys overwhelmingly feel like I should revert the labels back to the "small caps", I think I'm gonna use the "normal" variant instead.

Fun thing is, since this is an actual font, all I had to do was select all the country labels, hit "T" (for the Type tool) and change the font style. Glad all that silly work payed off in the end .

While I was at it, I immediately added the roads and the sea labels. And some Roman transliterations for the latter. I also added two smaller towns to the island Ishtaki Sael (in the NE corner). Apart from its capital Ishtaki it now also has the lovely towns Alice Cooper and Led Zeppelin

### Latest WIP ###
Krastvin_12.jpg

Next up: the finishing touches with a legend, a scale and a compass. I'm thinking of doing something wacky with the compass, with maybe 6 cardinal directions instead of 4 (or maybe just 3!), but if that doesn't crystallize into something concrete in the next few days, I'm probably just gonna do an ordinary compass and be done with it. Well, it's still gonna be a little bit wacky .

Thoughts?