November/December 2024 Challenge: The archipelago of endless wrecks

[Redrobes]

I don't usually have time to enter a challenge and this one might still be another that I start and end up throwing on the dump of unfinished attempts but often as the yuletide season approaches it can go quiet and I can work on something. These shapes to make a map challenges are usually popular and no doubt I will be among stiff competition but its a bit of fun to try anyway.

A long time ago I did a lot of islands for the Ansium co-op world and I still have the shaders from that to use. So if it is possible that I can massage the starting image into something 3D then I can have a go at using them to colour it for me.

Looking at it then I think that the black looks like land and white is sea. Theres a lot of black at the top so that might prove interesting to get that mountainous but somehow it will have to be. I like the right side better so I will do a square map.

My normal method to make something 3D is to use my zebra method but this map has a lot of detail and the zebra method involves using a pen to create contours. This time I think I will try to layer up copies of the map which have been blurred and then merged together with layers so that we blend up from the coast to the top of the map. I usually work with white as the high ground so first thing is to invert the map and then add all of these layers.

I need some height information below the sea level too some I have to do the same process to create some fake bathymetry. Once all done then I have a greyscale image with 8 bit per pixel shades going from 0 to 255 brightness which at some undefined point in the greyscale needs to look a lot like the original image. That grey value needs to get mapped to sea level and then I must convert the shades higher than that into heights above sea level and those shades darker to depths under the sea level.

After I have them mapped into "float" heights as a digital elevation model then I will need to find some height mapped mountains and blend them into the very high ground.

So after an hour or so here are some starting WIPs.

NovDec_02.png NovDec_03.png NovDec_04.png

NovDec_05.png
### Latest WIP ###

[Chashio]

Nice looking start what 3d software are you using?

[Redrobes]

Thanks - the greyscale height generation stuff so far has just been using a paint package with layers. I did successive blurs, used the curve tool to get the brightness adjusted each time and then layered them all up and merged them all back together.

Then I have a greyscale image which has a bit of height and depth but its not very controlled. But its a start. At least with something I can expand it or pull it up and rescale it etc. I will add some height mountains and hills etc and it will look a lot better, more realistic, less blobby.

To add this mountainous height maps to the blobby landscape thing will require my 3D utilities. All they do is take in some DEM inputs and multiply them or add them and then spit out the array of floats in DEM format again.

You can do that in a paint package too but its all in 8 bit which causes all of those steps which is the 1/256 greyscale height resolution. So although its more visible and easier to see what you are doing, its easier in DEM floats to do it then you dont have to worry about the limitations all of the time.

This 3D view above was done in another of my apps and this one is the debugging tool to show the height maps and I can see what it looks like. This app is a windows exe (or WINE in linux) and I gave it away a while ago so if you want this one just PM me and ill email it over. It can take in a bitmap for the height (or a float DEM) and a colour bitmap too and it shows it then you can spin around it and have a look.

[Chashio]

Oh, interesting. I use Blender for most of my 3d stuff, though I haven't tried loading a height map in it yet, I have used it to sculpt and model a few maps from scratch.

[Diamond]

Very cool start, RR! I'm looking forward to lots of shipwrecks.