Abhainnath [A Cad Goleor Map]

[Seraphine_Harmonium]

Here is a new map of a region for Cad Goleor. This is of Abhainnath, and functions as both a city, and the countryside surrounding it, so there are several settlements that fall under its sway.

This is a somewhat a-typical way of doing maps for me, and it was made largely following RobA's Tutorial Here.

The Forests were made following Gidde's Tutorial "Textured Forests in GIMP"

Abhainnath1.jpg

I have yet to add a "cartouche," legend, compass, or a scale bar. I am not sure that I will include all of these, but I will add at least some of them.

[arsheesh]

Not bad Seraphine. You may want to add another layer of color on those trees (perhaps some verdant green color set to multiply) so that you don't get the bright white reflection coming off them. Otherwise good job.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Gidde]

A noise layer (Filter -> Noise -> HSV Noise set at the defaults or tweaked to taste) set on overlay mode does wonders for the plastic look of the forest. I really need to add that step to that tutorial. Other than the step I didn't know enough at the time to put into the tut, it looks great

[Freodin]

Nicely done. Something happened to your north-eastern river though... it is not as smooth as the others. Is that an artifact, or intentional, to show rapids or something of that kind?

Another point that incites my curiosity: what is the reason for that bend in the road south of Tobair Brigen? Is there something that prevented the people from simply going east to Sluisca?

[Seraphine_Harmonium]

Nicely done. Something happened to your north-eastern river though... it is not as smooth as the others. Is that an artifact, or intentional, to show rapids or something of that kind?

Another point that incites my curiosity: what is the reason for that bend in the road south of Tobair Brigen? Is there something that prevented the people from simply going east to Sluisca?

I've never been exactly sure what is meant by "artifact" in this context.

I think the roughness is due at least in part to using a more extreme bump map. The purpose of that was to show elevation where the land met the water, indicating a cliff, rather than a smooth shoreline. I suppose I could have been more selective with it, and avoided collateral damage with the river

The road bends to find level ground. The hills it winds around are more gentle than the one Dun Gorm sits upon, for instance, but that is the reason for the curve.

[Gidde]

Artifacts are side effects of the process/program you're using (i.e. the pixelation artifacts that arise from the compression on a jpg if it's set to high compression/low quality), rather than something that was an intentional effect you were going for (that may or may not have turned out the way you wanted it to be). Your theory of where the roughness came from suggests that it is indeed an artifact.

[Seraphine_Harmonium]

I wonder how hard it is to touch that up. I'll give it a shot. Worst thing that happens is I don't save my changes.