Working on a heightmap, a short video.

[Pixie]

Well, I had promised a while ago I would eventually do this. So here it is.

I am not quite sure it is a full bodied tutorial in itself, but I tried to annotate it so that people could follow the thought process.

This video is about making a heightmap, manually. I named it "Becoming a Human Wilbur".

To make this sort of map, you need to have a file with many layers, as you will see. Each layer corresponds to a certain maximum height. You start by roughing in some shapes... then you start "carving" them. The more detail you add the more natural it will look and the video is about "CREATING DETAIL".

I bet I didn't quite explain myself in parts of the video and I suppose some folks will want to know more. Just throw your questions away and either me or someone else, more knowledgeable or more available, will probably respond...

Enough intro, the video is at... http://youtu.be/w1sf4TwfeOA

[groovey]

Again, thanks for making the video so our curiosity is finally satisfied.

It's mesmerizing watching you go like you know what you're doing the whole time! That so complicated considering how slow you have to work and how much zoomed you work. Did you have like a rought idea of the elevation map (apart from tectonic consequences) before starting, or did you make it up on the go?

[Pixie]

On the grand scale, I had some ideas, mostly from what I remembered from the maps I made 20+ years ago. Like a pair of north-south ranges in the western continent, Kane being separated from the rest of Acur by a mountain range (that's the India like portion of the central continent), a huge river covering the watershed of most of inland Acur to the gulf east of Kane, a very mountainous north part of the continent in the West... And I tried to salvage that as I was working the tectonics. Most of it is still there. But now, at this point, having done tectonics, I follow the current plan, strictly. Everything now follows, as possible as it is to me to work it out, the tectonics and rough landmasses I created with you guys some months ago.

As for the details... A lot of it is made up right on the moment, mostly the little details as how the rivers bend, intersect, etc. Because that's always down to local details which, at this scale, are "to all accounts, random". What I try to put a lot of thought into is the overall distribution of elevations. In this aspect, I'm pretty far away from where I was when I started the Palamb continent (the penguin) - by comparison to what I do now, that looks much less natural. In fact, for the distribution of mountains, mountainranges and plateus, I do work out present and past tectonics and in every case possible, I look for a place on Earth that can serve as a model.

Oh, and there isn't any elevation that isn't a "tectonic consequence". It's only that some are consequences of earlier tectonic dynamics.

Mind though, that I've been an avid observer of mountains, relief and geographical landscapes for a long time. And fortunately, I am from Iberia, which has a lot of variation in terms of landscapes one can look at, and I also travelled to very diverse locations (always observing) So, I can, to some degree, imagine how a region "should" look like.

[Azélor]

Thanks for sharing this. I did try the technique and it's working well.

[madainsel]

I'm assuming that this technique could be used as an initial roughing in to "force" Wilbur into following user defined watersheds? I have some major river systems in my world that I'd like to expand without the application replacing them, but rather filling in the upstream details.

[Pixie]

It's great to hear that you tried it and it worked for you, Azelor. I am pretty curious about your experiments/WIPs.

@madainsel: yes, the technique can be used prior to some Wilbur passes. I've tried that with a lot of success, but you need to be careful with the settings and thread carefully. That's because elevations at lower altitudes can disappear very quickly with Wilbur. Wilbur will work wonders at a scale of 100m per pixel or less, and to do a map with my technique at that scale is pure madness, so you really need to know what you are doing expanding the map step-by-step, "wilburing" gently in each stage.
The main point, though, is that Wilbur will accept a grayscale heighmap, with a linear proportion to the amount of white in each pixel. You need to work out that scale and colorize each level accordingly - then merge all layers (in a separate file, obviously) and save it as .jpg or .png.