[WIP] Castenet Regional Map - My First Map on CG

[Montcalm]

I've been lurking on CG for years, but here is finally my first post. This is the base map of Castenet, my D&D campaign setting.

I'm a big fan of taking real elevation maps of places that I find fascinating and then stitching them together in my own way. For heightmaps I use Tangram Heightmapper, which I find amazing. In this map, you can find the Ethiopian Highlands, the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, the Carpathians and the Manicouagan Reservoir. I put it all together in photoshop and use masks to make the transitions as seamless as possible.

At first I used a gradient for the coloring, but I preferred the result I got from using thresholds and different colors. The coloring will probably be revised for the final version.

Finally, I created a relief from the topographic map with Render-Lighting Effects and color burn it over the map.

This isn't the first iteration of this map, and a ton of learning was done in the process. But I'm now trying to make an "official" version of it, and by posting my journey here, I'm obliging myself to complete the project. I have already started work on rivers and labels. I have a good idea of what I want as an end result, I can explain it in a subsequent post.

Your comments are appreciated!