Reply With QuoteI did another small group of islands, I think after this I'll start working more generally on the coasts of the rest of the world map.
WIP Tharkas, IMW-ish Style Test
I've been trying to create a detailed mapping style somewhat reminiscent of the IMW as part of a very long-term project of mine; I think I've probably settled on something that works but would like some additional feedback. This a series of tropical islands with the smaller map being the more northernly of the two (while still being technically fully within the tropics). Land contours are set at 300' (91.44m), sea at 150' (45.72m). Sadly none of the water features/hydrology are notated yet with the exception of the (single small) lake at the southern portion of the larger map. Graticules are set at 1 degree intervals, and the map is projected in Alber's Equal-Area Conic with a scale of 100 pixels to ten miles (about 16.1 km).
I did another small group of islands, I think after this I'll start working more generally on the coasts of the rest of the world map.
There is a lot of crinkly detail on those contours that screams "synthetic" to me. Perhaps a median filter on the heightfield before generating the contours would help? Or maybe a simplifying operation on the contours if you're getting vector elements. It will largely depend on your production chain and tools, of course.
I think that helped a lot. I feathered the edges of each elevation layer by three (except for the coasts, which I didn't touch) and then sharpened the edges and redid the color fill and contours. Should I be more aggressive with the smoothing or leave it as-is?
That does look much better. It doesn't strike me as obviously synthetic.
One thing to watch out for in the real world is that different areas have different characteristics and that will show as variations in how crinkly the contours are. A silly trick that you can try (depending on your particular software and workflow) to represent some of that variation is to increasingly smooth the non-coast contours as you get closer to sea level. It should be a pretty subtle effect, but it's intending to represent the idea that land closer to sea level tends to be more soft sediments then the harder rock in the mountains. Again, it should be a very subtle effect and may well not be worth the effort.
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