Greyhawk: Rift Crag

[Anna]

Hi

Here is my first ”real” posting to this forum with a screenshot of what I’m working on right now. after a summer with way too much work I now have some time for serious mapmaking again

After surfing around this forum I’m in awe of all the great work and ingenious ideas you guys come up with. To try and keep up with that tradition I’m going to try and keep you posted with screenshots, thoughts and explanations on what I’m working on.

Right now I’m mapping an area of Greyhawk called “Rift Crag” which is deep gorge or valley or simply an enormous hole into the ground. On the screenshot you can see part of Eric Anondsons beautiful map of the area, which I use as a guideline along with lots of text based material. The fact that I’m trying to visualize someone else’s creation creates problems as well as shortcuts.

Right now I am in the terrain construction phase. I have chosen most of the textures and the general layout of the area is mostly done. Now is the time to bring the finer tools and sculpt details where they have to be. I have all my Greyhawk terrain in one Bryce-file (currently it’s 800mb in size). This so I have the option to make 3D views of the whole Flanaess or close-ups of any part later on.

To make the actual rift I’ve cheated from this rule and made that in a separate Bryce-file rendered it and put the rendered image in. It was a bit hard to cut a hole through my sea-level that is an infinite layer. I’ll try and see if I can solve that later on for future rifts and deep valleys.

What I find the hardest is to be an “effective” mapmaker. To be able to make not only map that looks acceptable or even good, but not letting that take forever. I want to make the whole Flanaess in 3 years or so which means I have to finish make a fairly large area every month. I’m about to start a campaign using Fantasy Grounds 2 which means I will need adventure maps. So now I’m deciding an working process that let me make descent maps at a good rate.

When I look around on the forum I can see many of you who are way more talented than me when it comes to drawing and the artistic and many of you are very talented using various applications. I think I’m lacking in both these areas but make up for it a bit by being stubborn and visionary. I have an idea and a vision and then I try, try and try again until I somehow figured out how to make the maps I envisioned a long time ago.

Anna