Reply With QuoteWhile technically correct and abiding by the laws of physics, aesthetically speaking, rivers at right angles just look funky
So I ended up scrapping that map like I did my first attempt. It was a decent map but it just felt far too crafted and artificial, so I did a great deal of searching around on here and other places, and I played around with some different apps and was very pleased with what I got from Greenfish's Relief Map Generator. By ramping the resolution up big time and tweaking the settings turning off all the names and having the land black and water white I got a good few land masses that I was able to cut up and patch together to make some nice continents. I had 9 in total and narrowed it down to the one that felt like it would suit my needs the best.
Right now I am figuring out which mix and thickness of mountains and trees feels right. I think Ive found my mountains in Ramah's Aronbor brushes and then trees from StarRaven on Deviantart. Anywhere heres what I have so far san the trees and mountains along with some of the better maps I generated from Greenfish that anyone whose interested is welcome to.
While technically correct and abiding by the laws of physics, aesthetically speaking, rivers at right angles just look funky
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Update #3, I think Im all set now, Ramah's moutain and hill brushes are sublime as are StarRaven's trees so now comes in the long tedious task of putting them all on the map. The trees are easy cause the deviations are maybe 1-3 pixels and its the same no matter where on the map they are but as can be plainly seen Ive messed up the northwest and central mountain rangers big time, the NW is way tinier than it should be and the central is far too large, I mean theyre supposed to be smaller and larger but I totally messed up on those, so Ill have to go back and redo them sadly. I dont realize how out of scale I am when zoomed in so close and then I zoom out and see how horribly off I was. Thankfully I layer like its my job so removing them will at least be a cinch. I do feel like Im overcrowding my mountain rangers, but with out all the hills and variations they feel to thin and awkward.
I'm noticing that you're using photoshop, so you might be interested in the following thread: http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ter-Brush-work
It can take a bit of effort to get the technique down but once you do, it's worth the time. Basically, it allows you to overlap the brushes without the ones underneath showing through, which can help tighten up the mountains and hills so they don't look so spaced apart, yet don't look crowded either. Assuming you have a good selection of hills and mountains (the ones you're using include a great sampling for this) it's nearly as good as drawing them out by hand.
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."
Darn I wish I could apply that to the brushes directly because that would be a handy technique to have but sadly at least right now it would be even more time consuming than things are for me since I am altering the size of my mountains/hills every time I use them. But I think Ive found my happy medium so that Im not cluttering my ranges with too many peaks and hillsides around them. But that technique seems perfect for creating isolated mountains and not ranges where you want to have a central peak with some really tight build ups from other smaller peeks.Originally Posted by Coyotemax
Update #4
So I kind of got side tracked for the past few weeks with other things and only just got back into working on the map in the last couple of days but I think I made a lot of progress and only have to do some the more finer details like little tree groves and what have you, that is if I dont go back and redo a bunch of stuff like the big forests since the pattern I made for that was pretty shoddy, though its hard to notice the blemishes if you dont know to look for them, but still. Also I found the tappering rivers tutorials and now I kind of want to do that but I dont think my rivers look that bad at all and redoing them all would take a long time, so I hopefully wont make myself do that.
I am not totally sure about the font, road markers and city/town images Im using. I could leave them as is or try and put in something better. I just really wanted to get them down for reference so Im not sure if Ill do anything more with them yet since I cant think of or find anything a whole lot better to replace them. Though I do want to find a better font to use for the town/area names than the one Im currently using for Fanavar Empire title right now.
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