[WIP] Theia Project: The Duchy of Vistenia (using Wilbur and Grand Designer)

[nwisth]

Thanks, Jean-Abdel!

The ground level trees and the mountain background are added in photoshop, then blurred to give the illusion of depth of field. The waterfall is also something I made in photoshop, and the two-level river is not possible in Grand Designer either - I had to render out two different images with different water levels and merge them.

-Niels

[KCRileyGyer]

Impressive.

So, a bunch of Australians inhabited the lower area (at least), huh? lol

[nwisth]

Thanks, KC!

Yeah, there's plenty of Australian names on the map - and I'm working on adding more. So many rivers and streams to name! I figured as it is a temperate eucalypt rainforest, with a climate similar to central Tasmania, people would name things after the animals and plants surrounding them. Notice the fierce Koala on the Tamburian coat of arms, lol

-Niels

[KCRileyGyer]

Lol cool, I look forward to the next instalment.

[nwisth]

The next installment of the Vistenia series is here!

I've been working hard on Thunder Falls Castle, trying to get the general design done in greyscale.

Here's a Grand Designer render of the whole map, the way it looks before I do anything in Photoshop:

TFC-3D-unmodified-v2.jpg

Of course, I couldn't resist moving the camera a bit and giving it a bit of a touch-up:

TFC-3D-medres-v2.jpg

With that in place, I exported the textures, normal map and Ambient Occlusion layer from Grand Designer, streams and a light map from Wilbur, and took the texture from a eucalypt forest from Tasmania to try and finish the whole. Now, this 1:2 map is a lot larger than the castle itself, and there's not much other than thick forest in the vicinity, so the map might be a lot larger than needed, but at least now I have a pretty clear idea of what the place is like. Hopefully this is making me able to start writing soon.

Here's the first draft; a 4000 x 8000 pixel map covering 2 square kilometers of area:

ThunderFallsCastle-v1-50pcQuality.jpg

So, what more should I add? Are there any details missing? Should I crop away all that boring forest? Or do you have any great ideas on what I could put there instead, like the little 3D rendering? All comments are very welcome.

EDIT: I took my own medicine and cropped away the boring forest, then added a little flavor text. It feels a little more focused now:

TFC-cropped-v1.jpg

Does this work better?

-Niels

[Jean-Abdel]

How will boats come over the fall if they want to carry on their trip further upstream ? Other wise everything is perfect, but if your story takes place mostly in the forest I'm not sure you need a map of the castle.

[nwisth]

It's pretty hard to sail up the Timsbury. It is possible to reach Thunder Falls by boat - the wind usually comes from the south (bringing the ever-present rain with them), so the right crew of skilled river traders can bring goods all the way from faraway lands. Goods meant for the settlements north of Talbot's Fault (mostly flour from the mills of Parvan) have to be unloaded at the lower docks and brought up the Lifts (17), powered by an overshot water wheel (18) fed with a stream siphoned off the Timsbury (16). From there, the traders bring the goods upriver by mule train.

Most of the river traffic goes downstream, however, on cheap barges made for one trip only. The mines of Upper Parvenia send their gold ore to Parvan for processing, and the same goes for grain from the farms. The barges are stopped at the Upper Docks (8) and the goods sent down the Lifts. I haven't decided whether it would be feasible to lower the barges down the Lifts as well, or if it would be easier to simply send them over the falls and build new ones for the next leg of the journey.

The two viewpoint characters of the upcoming part of my story are outriders who live here at Thunder Falls. Much of the story will happen in the forest, as they're out on patrol, but I've outlined a lot of scenes to happen at the castle as well; it's going to be a lot easier to describe things now that I've defined what the place is like. :)

-Niels

[nwisth]

It's been six months without much cartography work, but I came across the photoshop plugin "3D map generator" here the other day, and decided to give it a spin. With all the height maps I have lying around, it was great to finally be able to put my own textures on the 3D landscape. Turned out pretty well for a first try!

Vistenia-3D.jpg

Of course, the height of the highest mountains is a bit exaggerated, but at this scale most maps would be pancake-flat in any case.

-Niels