Faladriand - a large work in progress.

[tatteredglyph]

@ladiestorm
Thank you for pointing all that out again. Definitely when I get back to that point I'll be using all the advice given in this thread. That being said, I'm probably gonna try to stick to the rules as much as I can. Because first you have to understand the rules before you break them. And I want to make sure I understand the nature of rivers, lakes, etc. before breaking rules on them. Even if I go back eventually and change rivers on this world, I'll at least know more than I do now, and will know how to "break the rules" if I feel that's necessary.

@PaGaN
Ahhhh, my problems just don't end. But, I'm doing better than I was this weekend. Almost 100% again - keeping busy with my map is helping me, so. It's all good. That said, I honestly have no idea what equirectangular means. I kinda cheated with this map, mainly because I wanted a sense of scale and size. What I did for this map is I took a large scale map of the world (the canvas is 3500 x 2360) and used that as a sort of "scale". It's not exact to Earth's, but I'm happy to have a scale and understand how a map can wrap around a sphere. So, the canvas itself is perfect for wrapping.


I'm 100% sure I'm ready to start the terrain. Though before I do I might play around with locations of the landmasses. I'm happy with their shapes, but I'm not 100% on the locations.

EDIT: Actually, due to everyone being about tectonic plates and such - I'm probably going to spend a bit of time on that. PaGaN's own thread offered some nice insights and a program (GPlates) to help with that, so. I'll probably be doing that. I don't wanna build my terrain and THEN worry about the plates.

[PaGaN]

I don't wanna build my terrain and THEN worry about the plates.

Probably a good idea TG. Whilst i didn't get to terrain, after messing around with GPlates last night I already know that my landforms for Aerlaan are going to be signifincantly altered and probably A LOT smaller. If you want a wild ride in Tectonicsville then you should read Charerg's thread here. He really put the hours in and knows his stuff which we all now get to benefit from.

[tatteredglyph]

So my personal crisis has finally been resolved. This was one hell of a weekend.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand! So, I'm really sucking at the idea of polar distortion, I played around with the landmasses and couldn't figure out how to make things accurate. I keep looking at the globe, and I can't seem to figure it out. Maybe it's because I'm sleep deprived, so the top portion's that are being pinched will probably *not* be the final product. I'm being a bit of a perfectionist, but, hey. I want an accurate and well-done map. If anyone has any advice on how to prevent the pinching to the degree it's being pinched, I'd honestly appreciate it.

Anyways, this is the latest work in progress. No tectonic plates yet, those will be coming tonight though! Slow but sure progress on this.

faladriand - wip (4ba).jpg

[PaGaN]

Hey TG.
Good progress, and I know how frustrating those poles can be.
Have you tried Kacey's tip and tried drawing on the polar region whilst actually in the 3d work space? When you flatten it back down you should end up with a pole that works.

[PaGaN]

Hey TG

Just checking in. Hope the world building is going well. Don't let those pesky tectonics or polar pinches get to yo!



PaGaN

[Mouse]

Life can get busy sometimes, but I hope that getting down to the gritty with the polar distortion so quickly hasn't put you off.

Please don't let it kill your pleasure in mapping. If you look around you will see that a lot of fantasy maps pay no attention whatsoever to whether their extremities are sufficiently distorted to map to a globe. In fact I think that is why regional mapping is extremely common. That way, a fantasy cartographer can get to enjoy the drawing of a map with all its mountains, rivers, forests, and deserts without getting bogged down for several weeks each time with all the technical issues. These are, after all, fantasy maps

If you are absolutely determined to create an entire world all at once, there are other ways you can do it. I can see from what you have done so far that PS has a nice tool you can use to work interactively on a globe map, and that you have flirted with a couple of other apps as well, but they are not the only pieces of software you can use.

I use Fractal Terrains 3 (FT3). Its a random world generator you can get from the Profantasy Website. I will let you read the info yourself rather than fill this thread with it and give you no choice in the matter

Here is a world I generated in 30 minutes, and an animated spin view image sequence I compiled from the individual shots in GIMP (I'm sure that PS would do just as well). These are extremely low res images, because this is your thread, and I am only showing you what is possible - I shouldn't really be uploading images to your thread anyway, but here they are so that you can see what I'm talking about.

Example world.jpg Example.gif

The reason I think FT might be one possible solution for you is that although it doesn't do plate tectonics you can if you wish either edit your chosen world (I edited this one to take out all the larger inland lakes), or start with a completely blank world and paint it into existence with brushes that automatically take polar distortion into account. In other words - you could paint your own world above onto a blank canvas and make it right without too much more hassle (other than learning the FT3 basics). Then you could either continue working on it in FT3, or export it as a jpg and go back to PS, or another app.

I could go on about all the different map projections you can generate from a single FT3 world, but I think FT3 does a fairly good job of selling itself

[tatteredglyph]

I'm still not feeling 100% physically. I think it's stress related (unrelated to map making). Either way, I'm just posting a small update.

@PaGaN
Thank you for popping in! I'm still doing this. Just due to not feeling well, I haven't been making much progress. But yeah, I was gonna play around with it until I just read you guys post. Polar distortion is clearly not my forte - but that isn't discouraging me from continuing to do world maps.

@Mouse
!! That looks like a brilliant program! However right now I'm not able to buy it just yet. Maybe as the month progresses and I see where I can spend a little bit of extra money.


That said, there's not much I've done due to being physically ill at the moment. Here's the progress shot anyways:
faladriand - wip (4bb).jpg

I'm hoping to be able to catch up on the map this weekend, so expect more progress in the next image~

[Mouse]

Oh I'm sorry - my bad. I forgot to say that if you want to try FT3 out before you lay out the cash you can try the demo version here. As a demo version there are certain limitations on resolution, but it should be enough for you to work out if its what you really want.

Your world map is beginning to show tell tale signs of polar distortion as an equirectangular map, so that's good

Hope you get better soon!

[PaGaN]

Hey TG

Sorry to hear you're still under the weather, hope you feel better soon. The good thing about the progress you've made is it'll still be there ready and waiting when you're fighting fit

PaGaN

[tatteredglyph]

Thank you for the well wishes! I'm slowly feeling better each day.


Okay! So, Fractal Terrains 3 is pretty cool looking. I got the demo and I played around with it a bit. I might look up some tutorials to see how to make my own map. (It didn't look like I could paint my own landmasses on a blank canvas.)

That being said, I'm working on my ocean depth, etc. This is the basic outline of it so far:
faladriand - wip (4bc).jpg

Will be adding textures and such soon. I just wanted to get the basic outline.