Krastvin - an experiment in Wilbur-taming

[Voolf]

The font is indeed awesome.

I am not fond of those mountains though. I thought you will still do something with them. At this point i feel like they are too bright. Lowering highlights may help? But maybe it is just me and you should not worry about that.

[Caenwyr]

The font is indeed awesome.

I am not fond of those mountains though. I thought you will still do something with them. At this point i feel like they are too bright. Lowering highlights may help? But maybe it is just me and you should not worry about that.

Hey Voolf! No no, your opinion certainly counts! When you say the mountains are too bright, do you mean the contrast between shadow and light is too harsh? Or should I tone down the brightness of the mountains altogether? Or maybe it's the gradient that's acting up? (could be the difference between the green and the yellow is too sharp - this should be easy to fix).

You know what: here's a quick rendering of the same map, but without the green-to-red gradient indicating elevation. Does this seem at all easier on the eyes for you? If not, we can already rule out the gradient as the culprit.

Krastvin_12_grey.jpg

Thanks for your feedback man, I really appreciate it!

[Voolf]

The greyscale version indeed looks better.

The biggest problem is colours, but i am not sure whether it is the contrast between them or generally oversaturated colours. They darken the land quite much and made light too bright. I would first try to make the colours way subtle. If that doesn't work then lower the highlights.

Overall i somehow don't like the render of the mountains, but you can't do anything about that, it is just individual preference

Good job, please don't be discourage because of my bluntness

[kacey]

This looks way better without all the flashy colours, to be honest I wasn't a big fan of them, but this is a big improvement. Overall the map looks nice, I really like the land shapes, reminds me a bit of Arsheesh's style on the coasts, but I agree with Voolf that the mountains are lacking, I think they need more detail, to me though the placement is good they look too solid, like one big line if that makes any sense. I feel like if you broke them up a bit or made them seem more jagged and eroded this map would really stand out and become spectacular.

Sorry to be so critical, but it seems the maps with the greatest potential get the most nit picky comments...I don't think it would take much to push this into a really outstanding piece.

[Caenwyr]

Good job, please don't be discourage because of my bluntness

Sorry to be so critical, but it seems the maps with the greatest potential get the most nit picky comments...I don't think it would take much to push this into a really outstanding piece.

Heh no worries guys, you're absolutely right! I guess it's back to the drawing board for me, at least for the terrain map. I'm working on one already (well, not right now - I'm at work, but I should be able to get some work done on it during my break). I'll post my progress in my next update

Thanks for your critique people, it really helps me dig deeper!

[Caenwyr]

Alright. I messed around with Wilbur a little bit, and seems I hit some of the right buttons (and many of the wrong ones, probably) this time. Mountain ranges are far more defined this time, plus, they look a lot less fuzzy for some weird reason. And those weird old-river-artifacts have gone as well.

I did however use a mask based on my existing rivers in order to minimize my need to redraw everything (not just the rivers themselves, but the borders and towns alongside them as well), and I think it worked nicely.

Thing is: the labels now seem very garish and huge on the new terrain, so for the time being (and to ease your decision process) I removed all of them in this evaluation version.

So this is the stripped version BEFORE the changes:
Krastvin_13_before.jpg

And this is what I managed to make from it:
Krastvin_13_after.jpg

What do you think - better?

[Voolf]

I think that looks better, but again, if you colour it with dark colours i have a feeling, it will be good idea to tone down a bit highlights.

[Caenwyr]

Okay. I'm not sure I understand what you're going for completely, but I tried my best to play around with the contrast etc of the bump map. Still have to try Waldronate's suggestion regarding texture shading (I found the setting in Wilbur under Texture > Gray Maps > Texture Shading..., but I can't seem to get it to export the resulting image the way I see it on screen. It just exports the DEM. I'm probably an idiot but there you go).

Anyhoo, here's my current progress! Added the rivers, re-added the towns and cities, re-added the roads, and added a series of ship routes as well. Mostly coasthugging ones, but some are pretty daring, all the way across the high seas. Imagine the bravery of those crews in a time when every other sailor stays within sight of the land.

Krastvin_14.jpg

Turns out my country labels are far too large now compared to the more detailed terrain, and my previous borders aren't neatly lined up with it anymore, so I'll have to work on those a little bit before I re-add them again as well.

[waldronate]

(I found the setting in Wilbur under Texture > Gray Maps > Texture Shading..., but I can't seem to get it to export the resulting image the way I see it on screen. It just exports the DEM).

When using File>>Save As to save the file, select one of the file types with "Texture" in the name to save the texture channel. There may also be a "Save Texture As..." option at the bottom of the "Texture" menu, depending on the version that you have (I don't recall if I've released one with that particular feature or not).

[Caenwyr]

When using File>>Save As to save the file, select one of the file types with "Texture" in the name to save the texture channel. There may also be a "Save Texture As..." option at the bottom of the "Texture" menu, depending on the version that you have (I don't recall if I've released one with that particular feature or not).

Alright, I managed to find how to save a texture. Man, was it hidden deep in the options! I had to go all the way to [Texture > Save Texture as...].

So it worked! And when overlaying it with the bump shading, it definitely added a touch of detail that lacked in the bump-map-only version. Thanks Waldronate, you're a life saver! I'm sure I'll learn to tweak both effects to perfection some day in the distant future, but for the time being, I guess I'll have to be content with what I have - which is pretty okay already.

Plus, I re-added the borders, redid some of the rivers (the texture shading helped point them out a little better, so some of the ones I drew turned out to be just wrong), and played around with the country labels until I felt they were acceptable again. Oh, and I tweaked the roads a little bit too.

So these are the shaded relief (left) and the texture shading (right):
Krastvin_15_shaded-relief.jpg Krastvin_15_texture-shade.jpg

And this is the combo:
Krastvin_15_shaded-relief+texture-shade.jpg

Putting everything together, the most recent version of this map looks like this:
Krastvin_15c.jpg

I hope it's starting to look somewhat acceptable at this point, but if not, yell!