The Planet Ehs

[justkae]

Hi. I've been fiddling around with various programs and tutorials for the last month or so, and for the past few days, I've started to put together a map that I kind of like. This is my absolute first real map, though there's no goal, nor any particular rules I'm working with, but most of my inspiration comes from various tutorials on here and staring at Vorro's maps in awe.

I like my rivers and mountains at the moment, but would definitely appreciate advice/light critique. My next step is biomes/climate. I'm basing it all on earth-like information (because I live there and it's familiar).

Okay. Thanks.

ehs.jpg

[Caenwyr]

Hey Kae (or Justkae?),

This is looking mighty good! Land masses seem interesting, and the terrain you have going looks plausible enough! I would probably add a few more steps between your lowest and highest elevations (you have 6 levels now - doubling that would work wonders to get this map to really *pop* out!). I'm assuming you drew each of these steps on a separate layer. If I were you I'd add one layer in between each pair of existing ones. It's a little extra work, but I think it would really help in working out the next step in finer detail.

I can see no obvious flaws in your rivers, except maybe the one in the south-east that splits into two distributaries... which is a big no-no in almost all circumstances. Just look up the term "river police" here on the Guild to get an overview of do's and don't's regarding rivers. But all in all you're doing fine on this map! I can see one other occurrence of this splitting-river-issue: the smallish river flowing north-eastwards out of the big peninsula into the large lake. But in this case, I think it might just be explained away as a delta - which works perfectly in certain conditions, this probably being one of them. Again, for more information I gladly refer to the river police topic. This one is quite useful, and this one is widely considered the Bible on river behaviour.

But in short, this is definitely a great start, and I look forward to seeing it develop!

[justkae]

omg, I was just looking at your maps and your website and now you're telling me my stuff looks good. eeee.

I was definitely thinking about adding more elevation levels (Vorro said he works on 12, but that seemed so much....). Like.... 10-12, right? Awesome.

I was hoping Wilbur would only generate plausible rivers, but I guess that's something computers can't do for us. I will adjust my rivers before the next post to keep myself from the cops.

Thank you for the critique, now I'm excited to keep working

[johnvanvliet]

wilbur can great realistic river systems

BUT the input data needs to be GOOD first



For this i use sealevel of zero and a 16 bit unsigned integer input

but for really good "amazon "type rivers using masks is still a good idea

-- all images below are 8 bit copies on 16 and 32 bit images

an example from your above map
cropped and tone inverted ( and grid removal )



used 8 iterations of "erode/dilate in a circular area - gmic gimp plugin
then ran "sharpen by synthesis" from "resynthesizer " gimp plugin


thin in wilbur - this is a small 610x610 image
one erode pass ,incise flow, two erode

[justkae]

ehs2.jpg

new version, more elevation, rivers edited. feeling really good about this one.

[justkae]

How many rivers is too many rivers?

[Falconius]

On a world sized scale? It really depends on your criteria for marking them down. Generally length and navigability is what gets them a spot on world scale maps.

[Caenwyr]

I can still see a few wonky bits in the river department. First off: every lake with at least one inlet should have an outlet as well. If not, the lake would just keep filling up until it spills over the top, which would then become its outlet. There are exceptions, but these are very rare (lakes that have such a slow influx that all of it evaporates, like Salt Lake, and lakes with an outlet below ground).

Also, there's one weird river in the central South that seems to connect two other rivers into a triangle. Unless this is a canal of some sort, I'm afraid this one belongs to the realm of the impossible

Apart from that, I must say this is looking great!

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

[justkae]

So with that weird triangle one at the bottom, the idea is that the left part (the three fingers) goes down into a bit of a pool and then starts sidling out towards the ocean on the right. The bit at the bottom is where a waterfall hits and is split by the elevation, but I suppose the left fork does seem a little... off.

But with the two lakes, I absolutely see your point. For the one in the middle, the area around it is going to be marshy and swampy so it's all running off into the ground, but the lake on the left will get it's run off. What do you suggest for the large sea?

My current map has a few less forks and I've removed some of the smaller rivers too (but the ones described above are still there and obviously still need a bit of adjusting.


What I'm going to do next is think about my mountains a bit more, and also try to figure out climatology. All of the tutorials are full of too much science so far, but I'm getting there.

ehscontourcolor.png (still has the old rivers)


Edit: also, how does one portray underground rivers? (I'm asking here, but I'm also going to google it now >.>)

[Caenwyr]

Hey Justkae, looking good!

So with that weird triangle one at the bottom, the idea is that the left part (the three fingers) goes down into a bit of a pool and then starts sidling out towards the ocean on the right. The bit at the bottom is where a waterfall hits and is split by the elevation, but I suppose the left fork does seem a little... off.

It's not just the left fork that seems off, it's the fact that it splits, which it shouldn't. Water always chooses the road of least resistance, so even a minute difference in elevation between both sides of that hill will cause all the water to pick one route, and abandon the other entirely. There are exceptions, but these only happen in very specific circumstances and then only for a short distance (20 miles, give or take) before the terrain pushes both branches of the river back together. A river actually splitting and staying separated for this distance (in glacial conditions, no less) is very, very unlikely indeed. And if it ever were to happen as a freak of nature, it would probably only happen for a short while (geologically speaking). Eventually one branch will wear out a tiny bit more, resulting in a shorter/easier route to sea, and the days of the other route are numbered ☺️