Workflow strategy for making a large, realistic world map

[MrBragg]

First post here, so hi everyone! I've finally decided to get started on a project I've been toying with for a while now, and wanted to solicit your opinions / ideas before I get too far down this rabbit hole.

Basically, my ultimate goal is to create an atlas style map in the vein of Thersis or Aduhr, with plausible climates and continent shapes dictated by reasonable underlying plate tectonics. I've been thinking about this for a while and I have a rough-ish idea of the number of continents and their placements / shapes that I'd like, but I don't have a ton of preconceived ideas of how things should end up. I've played around a fair amount with FT3 and can generate some interesting basic continent layouts in that program, but there doesn't seem to be a super straightforward way to mesh those results with a model of plate tectonics without lots and lots of manual painting.

So, my question for you all is how on earth should I embark on what will doubtlessly be a large and time-consuming project like this? The tutorials on here have been super helpful for learning about individual steps and jumping between programs, but I'm wondering more about what the overarching approach to this should (or could) be?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

[Falconius]

In regards to the tectonics honestly I'd draw the landmasses you want, and then fit the tectonics to them, and then after that change any land forms that theoretically don't fit the way the tectonics would indicate. After you figure out the landmasses you can work on the climates, but Azelor is probably the best here to advise how to take that from simple to detailed/complicated.

As with anything just always remember with everything simple first->detail last. In terms of regions just work on one country at a time as they pique your interests, then one step at a time your world will slowly fill up.

[MrBragg]

Thanks, that make sense. So I guess an overall strategy would be something like: have an idea of continents / shapes / positions / geography, generate tectonics that make sense and refine the continents as needed, then go back to each continent or region and build detailed geography. Or something like that?

[Falconius]

Yeah pretty much that'd be my approach at this point if I were going to make a world map. But I'm sure there are quite a few approaches to this. What I often see occur here however is people start enthusiastically building a world map, starting with the tectonics to get the land forms from that, start in on climate and then pretty much stop working on the world. They get lost in the detail and then it gets boring.

Vorropohaiah is making a detailed world atlas (Atlas Elyden) and I can't quite remember how he started it (I think he might have been very detailed in order to provide foundation for the rest of his work), but I'm guessing his success in staying at it is by mapping it region by region or country by country as they interest him. He is the only one I can think of who's done this though. I can think of a quite few people who've had more success starting as I described, and even more who just map small things as they interest them one at a time and then stitching them together later on as sort of a patchwork world. I think it really depends on how much of an outline or direction you want to give yourself at the beginning, the more detail you lay out the more boring it will likely be for you and also the more locked in you are to a particular creation, however you'll have a much clearer understanding of the overall direction of the map and of things you want to tackle next and pretty strong overall cohesion at the end (cohesion which might either be a curse or a blessing).

[MrBragg]

Yeah, I've definitely seen quite a few really interesting big projects started on here that seem to kind of stall in the middle / end of making climates. I'm trying to size things up before starting so I don't become one of those

Since you mention it--and maybe this isn't the right thread for this question--let's say I get to the stage of having continents basically mapped out on a large world map (in an equirectangular projection since that seems like the easiest to send between programs) and want to focus on only one of those continents (like in Wilbur) to work on the detail. Is doing something like that as simple as pulling that piece out of the large world map (e.g. from Gimp) and importing that into Wilbur? Or are there projection issues I'd need to worry about before exporting a section of the world?

[Falconius]

There will be projection issues. It's just the nature of world maps, all the various options will have huge issues. As they get closer to the poles equirectangluar gets nearly impossible to work with. If you are using photoshop I heard it has a utility that allows you to work on a 3d sphere that you can then unwrap. I don't know if GIMP also does. Indeed because of the difficulty of working on a equirectangular (or any flat world map) I'd recommend planning it out on a 3d sphere and then unwrapping it, if you have that option (If not photoshop and you are familiar with Blender or another 3D program this would be fairly simple, but if you have to learn how to use the program from scratch I don't think its' worthwhile (unless you also want to do that for some other purpose)). If not then just go for it anyways with GIMP or Krita, you can always fix things later when and if you have to.

I'm also pretty sure G Projector will allow you to convert a equirectanglur map and then scroll around the world and you can then take a piece out in a more favourable projection. It will also show you how screwed up your landforms might be if working from scratch on an equirectangluar map, and then you can figure out how to try and fix them.