[WIP] The Continent of Zasháve

[woodb3kmaster]

Thank you both very much for the compliments!

The climate and rivers thing is really just a nitpick, it's your world so the logic of it is up to you Just a question though, is the green outline along the desert rivers because they have a narrow fertile zone, like the Nile? Makes sense. Only other criticism is the transition between biomes eg desert and grassland is a little sharp - if you browse Google Earth these naturally blend a bit more.

Also, the rivers, are they all Wilbur generated? You do have a lot of them in the north and they're very uniformly wiggly, rivers tend to be so wiggly on very flat land, less wiggly further inland, though if its a big flat swampy region that would make sense.

You're right about the outlines along the desert rivers - and besides suggesting fertile zones, they help make the rivers contrast more against the bright desert colors. The rivers themselves are a combination of Wilbur-generated rivers and the ones I had drawn before creating the heightmap. Most of the rivers in the north are from Wilbur, though with somewhat exaggerated squiggles. I admit I may have gone overboard with the squiggliness, probably to avoid drawing them too straight, but I imagine that a lot of the northern forests are fairly swampy, not unlike much of Siberia. Given how much trouble Illustrator was giving me while I traced the rivers, I'm inclined to leave them be.

As for the texture compliment - I'll look into writing a tutorial. It's mostly a generous use of gradient maps, along with a layer of difference clouds set to Overlay, but the exact choice of colors for each biome took a while to get right.

Really beautiful, I love this style. I would agree with Robulous that rivers tend to only be that squiggly in very flat, low lying areas. However they do look nice. Also, this is just a thought, but possibly the whole landmass could benefit from a slight grain, to give it a little more texture? Or not, up to you. I also have to commend you on the shape of the continent, and the coastlines. Very very convincing.

I appreciate your vote of confidence on the coastlines! As for adding a bit of noise, I've given that a shot in my latest WIP below. The effect seems a bit too prominent, even after turning down the noise layer's contrast, but I may be able to get it appropriately subtle with a lower opacity.

### Latest WIP ###

zashave_biomes_gradual.jpg

The main change here, aside from the extra noise, is something Robulous recommended: smoothing out the climate transitions. Since the climate visibility is controlled entirely by alpha masks, it was fairly easy to just add a wide-radius Gaussian blur to the gradual transitions.

[woodb3kmaster]

### Latest WIP ###

zashave_legend.jpg

I decided to brighten the sea and darken the rivers/lakes, to reduce the contrast between them. Beyond that, the biggest change is the new legend. It only includes eight biome types because that's how many different gradient maps I used; I opted to use some gradients for biomes I thought would look similar from above (e.g. the tropical and temperate rainforests both count as evergreen broadleaf forests, as do the seasonal tropical forests). Unless anyone has any further suggestions, I think the only thing left to do is label some more geographical features.

C&C is most welcome, as always. More feedback = better maps!

[woodb3kmaster]

### Latest WIP ###

zashave_proj.jpg

Not much has changed here. The only difference worth mentioning is the change in map projection; Flexify was giving me such inconsistent results that I decided to try a different projection altogether. This one keeps distortion in the high latitudes reasonably low and is fairly easy to convert to equirectangular, which has allowed me to do a bit of experimenting:

orbittest01.jpg

Unfortunately, my efforts to reproject my heightmap using QGIS have resulted in the normal map I generated from it not aligning properly with the color map. I'll look into how best to fix this state of affairs so I can get some nice shadows off the mountains on my next render.

[Robulous]

Nice, is that done in Celestia? SpaceEngine gives much more beautiful rendering but it's fiddly to use.