The finished test.

[Carnifex]

Tried some new techniques (borrowed some ideas from a tutorial).

The map took about 5 hours to make (not counting preparations).

5200x5300 pixels. The "correct" size to see the map would be about 1/3 of this size (map made for print).

One pixel is 10 metres.


Used mainly layer styles for this map (+ some shadowing etc).

Comments welcome as usual. I know there are some minor errors on the map but I have to start my mapping my project.

EDIT: fixed some minor stuff on the map.

[Rythal]

Looks very good! I especially like the farmland. Other than the fact that the roads are going over the red dots, I can't see too much wrong with it.

[Jaxilon]

I have to agree with Rythal, I love the way you did the farmland. I'll have to see if I can figure out something like that someday.

[ravells]

Looking great I like the colour choices.

With the forests, it looks like you've used a hard round brush with scatter and a bevel layerstyle. It may not make any difference at the scale the map is meant to be looked at, but after a lot of recent experimenting, I've found the effect looks much more pleasing if you use 5 or so layers each with fewer dots on on each layer.

The repeat on the texture of the foothills is visible (again this may disappear when the map is zoomed out), looks like you've used a layerstyle or a pattern brush for that. If it's a layerstyle, maybe one more layer on top of it with a similar texture and a cloud mask to break up the repeat?

I really do love the colours you've used and the mountains look great.

Rythal & Jax, the farmlands are a tiling texture and you should be able to find it (or one very much like it) on the mapping elements subforum.

[Carnifex]

Oh... the farmland... they are actually hand drawn. I really tried to make them as a layer style but it didn't work out as well as I had thought. Next map I will make a stamp out of the farmland so I can just paint it on the map.

And the map took about 3,5 hours... did some miscalculation.

Edit: updated the map.

[Carnifex]

Looking great I like the colour choices.

With the forests, it looks like you've used a hard round brush with scatter and a bevel layerstyle. It may not make any difference at the scale the map is meant to be looked at, but after a lot of recent experimenting, I've found the effect looks much more pleasing if you use 5 or so layers each with fewer dots on on each layer.

The repeat on the texture of the foothills is visible (again this may disappear when the map is zoomed out), looks like you've used a layerstyle or a pattern brush for that. If it's a layerstyle, maybe one more layer on top of it with a similar texture and a cloud mask to break up the repeat?

I really do love the colours you've used and the mountains look great.

Rythal & Jax, the farmlands are a tiling texture and you should be able to find it (or one very much like it) on the mapping elements subforum.

Thanks for the input. The forests are made as a layer style with "built in" tiling texture. When I painted it I used a scatter-type brush. I'll try to figure out some way to add more variation. The foothils are a layer style and I think I will make my own texture for that one next time to get it exactly right.

I will do some experiments to make forests with a single tree as a brush and then variate the colours automatically (with the brush). Has anyone tried this?

[ravells]

check out this thread, particularly Ascensions posts at the end.

[Eilathen]

I like it! Very nice landshape. The forest is a bit coarse-grained for my taste. Have some rep.

[arsheesh]

That only took you 3-5 hours to create?! Jeeze, now I'm depressed-it took me forever to create my map. A few tiny blemishes notwithstanding, I am totally impressed that you created such a quality map in so little time. As others have said the map has a very pleasing color palette, and the towns are quite nice. I also like the font you've chosen and the block shadow effect that you've placed underneath the text. I am also intrigued with the forest/trees method that you and Ravells discussed, I'll have to play around in GIMP sometime to see if I can duplicate it. Overall I find this map to be attractively parsimonious. Great job. Here's a bit of rep.

Cheers,

-Arsheesh

[Carnifex]

The finished map: Next Generation

I did some more work on the (finished?) map. The initial 3,5 hours that it took to make the map has now been substantially increased to 10-15 hours or something

PS. The image below is now about half the original resolution (from 5200x5200 pixels to about 2200x2200).