Experienced Country Inventor, Map Making Noob

[noodlesoupchan]

Hello Everyone!

I'm new to this forum and I'm new to making digital maps. Though I've been working on an invented island country since tweenhood, so I have drawn quite a few amateurish maps on paper and in recent years even played around with Photoshop to clean them up. My invented country constant state of development and I work not only on maps but also on history, mythology, government, etc. The longer I work on this project the more sophisticated my map needs become, hence why I joined this forum. I would love some guidance, tips, tricks from you talented contributors on how to make the map I want.

My map making journey started with just drawing random map-looking blobs, to understanding that real geological formations couldn't possibly look like that, which lead to me turning my island into a real live coastline collage: ie I'd copy/paste, flip/mirror coastines and boundaries that I liked from existing islands/countries to sort of make a realistic looking map. Then I discovered AutoRealm and saved hours of my life. So now that I have the coastline figured out, I'm moving on to mountains and rivers. In the future I might even consider putting the island on "google earth" (or my own version of it).

Otherwise I'm a 30 year old Swedish cat lady in the middle of a career change from legal work to software development. If I'm not reading or playing Civilization, I spend my time figuring out things that have to do with my invented country... My husband likes to joke that subconsciously I'm leaving my law career behind because right now my country requires me to learn computer related stuff. If that is true that I'm a bigger nerd that I thought I was.

Before joining I've been lurking reading other people's questions and studying the different tutorials, which are amazing! I've also been fiddling a bit with Wilbur, but my knowledge of math is not good enough for me to understand what I'm doing on that program despite tutorials. Besides, while the Wilbur mountain textures look great, they're not really the look I'm after for my map... I'm looking forward to having cool discussions!

[Diamond]

Welcome to the Guild, noodle! There's lots of friendly folks around here willing to help out with any questions you have.

[Pixie]

Hi there!

The majority of cartographers here at the guild go for general fantasy maps, but there's plenty a community of world/country builders... Share what you have and we'll gladly comment (and admire, for sure!). Don't worry about the artistic skills, they tend to grow over time, even for some of us with zero skills to start with.

[noodlesoupchan]

Thanks Diamond & Pixie!
So, here goes nothing:

How do I go from this:
new map3.7_17.jpg
To this?
teb_1.jpg
Here is a rough shading of the mountainous areas on the island. The green being sea level & the highest peaks being just over 2000meters/6560ish ft in magenta.
new map4.1_17-Recovered.jpg
I've inputted all the coastal cities in there. The island is 73 561 km2.
Is there an efficient way to achieve this kind of map effect without me having to "draw" it by hand? I don't have a drawing pen, and the idea of doing it with a mouse is just... urgh! Besides, I want my mountains to look organic and I have a feeling that if draw it by hand it'll look fake and bad.
Right now I've been using Photoshop.

[Pananacakes]

You can make a map like the middle one, the atlas style one, starting from a heightmap. Or do it by hand like I think Vorropohaiah, who makes a map series about a world called Elyden, does. Search for "Elyden" here

The way to get it from a heightmap is to apply a threshold adjustment layer to the hm. Start at threshold level 1 and copy that image (as in copy merged & paste it into a new image which is your map), and that will give you your lowest elevation layer. You'll probably want to smooth it and stuff cause it could be pretty rough depending on the starting hm. Increment the threshold level on the hm until you see the image change. Copy that new image and smooth or adjust how you like and that will be the second lowest elevation layer for your map. And so on and so on. Actually you can and probably will want to increase the threshold by more than 1 at a time. 1 was just an example. Also it might be helpful to prepare your hm with an exposure or levels adjustment prior to using the threshold adjustment.

I'm rereading what I wrote there and it looks a little unclear. Does it make any sense to you?

[Pananacakes]

I used the thresholded heightmap technique to make a real quick version of Corsica just now:

corisca from hm.png

The edges are a little coarse since I was working from a small 8-bit hm. Higher resolution 16-bit+ ones give smoother results. I put a 1 pixel stroke on each layer to smooth them out a bit and help with the definition.

[waldronate]

As has been suggested, make a heightmap. I am fond of the techniques described in https://cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=29412 if you're willing to use third party software and don't care too much about the exact placement of every lump in the landscape. For feeding Wilbur, the better you do at the input masks, the better the output will be (search for the "Muna Workshop" thread). If you have particular locations of waterways that are important to you, include those in your masks.

After you get your heightmap, render it as you like to get this sort of thing:

color.jpg j1.jpg

As was pointed out, threshold that heightmap to get just a few levels:

slice0.png

[noodlesoupchan]

As has been suggested, make a heightmap. I am fond of the techniques described in https://cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=29412 if you're willing to use third party software and don't care too much about the exact placement of every lump in the landscape. For feeding Wilbur, the better you do at the input masks, the better the output will be (search for the "Muna Workshop" thread). If you have particular locations of waterways that are important to you, include those in your masks.

After you get your heightmap, render it as you like to get this sort of thing:

color.jpg j1.jpg

As was pointed out, threshold that heightmap to get just a few levels:

slice0.png

Oh my God. Those look pretty darn cool. I can't believe you managed to do that with just the rasters that I posted. I'm going to study those threads immediately.

[noodlesoupchan]

You can make a map like the middle one, the atlas style one, starting from a heightmap. Or do it by hand like I think Vorropohaiah, who makes a map series about a world called Elyden, does. Search for "Elyden" here

The way to get it from a heightmap is to apply a threshold adjustment layer to the hm. Start at threshold level 1 and copy that image (as in copy merged & paste it into a new image which is your map), and that will give you your lowest elevation layer. You'll probably want to smooth it and stuff cause it could be pretty rough depending on the starting hm. Increment the threshold level on the hm until you see the image change. Copy that new image and smooth or adjust how you like and that will be the second lowest elevation layer for your map. And so on and so on. Actually you can and probably will want to increase the threshold by more than 1 at a time. 1 was just an example. Also it might be helpful to prepare your hm with an exposure or levels adjustment prior to using the threshold adjustment.

I'm rereading what I wrote there and it looks a little unclear. Does it make any sense to you?

This might sound like a dumb question, but how does one make a heightmap? 0.0

[Pananacakes]

That's not a dumb question, it's more like the key question. You can make them with various programs like Wilbur, Worldmachine, or L3DT, or GeoControl2, or Fractal Terrains, etc. Check out the forum thread "Software Discussion" here. You'll probably have to look up tutorials on how to use each one of those since they're all different and mostly complicated. Alternatively you can take pieces of real-world heightmap data, like SRTM data, and stitch the pieces together with a graphics editor.

I guess you could paint a heightmap completely by hand too but...my mind collapses in on itself at the thought.