WIP - Forgotten Lands

[pasis]

Removed some of the height map artifacts by using healing brush tool. Improved the waterfall a bit and added a second one. Also created new terrain texture and applied it to lower lands. Added some hills and more forest (also made forest to go partially over the rivers). And then a lot of bits and pieces here and there that I don’t recall anymore.

[Tear]

This is a brilliant piece of work already, and I can't wait to see where you take it.
It looks like a satellite photo made through a fantasy lens if that makes any sense. Or maybe something you would see in a scrying crystal ball.

The only thoughts I can offer:
Both the two little towers and the waterfalls caught my eye as being off perspective when compared to the top-downish mountains and rivers. The forests kind of get away with it, but also clash somewhat near mountaintops.

Just food for thought.

Anyway, keep up the astounding work, Pasis.

[ravells]

This is looking magical! Make it more magical!

[Redrobes]

Yeah its looking well cool. Clearing up those parallel lines helped a lot.

Edit -- Theres some funny business going on here with some black contour looking lines in the image. What do you think it is ?

[Imahilus]

Sorry for posting as the new person that I still am =P

Absolutely.. no denying it, LOVE this map.
And I thought RobA's tutorial brought amazing results, thought I loved that... ten times better o.o'
I hope it will be possible for people to use this map in private settings when its done? =)
Though with praise comes the critique eh

The grey area's do look a bit awkward, they look featureless compared to the rest of the map.

As for the black lines, I think thats heavy shadow due to 'resolution' issues.
To explain: gradients are no more than having two absolute colours, and making colours for X 'lines' to get from one to the next. The higher the resolution of the gradient, the more lines.
Heightmaps / bumpmaps by nature use colours to determine the height difference, in some cases the colour shift from a gradient can be seen as the same height or a higher difference than usual.. resulting in heavier than expected shadows (particular settings can worsen or lessen this effect).
Thats the technical aspect of it, since I'm not a graphics person, I'm leaving it up to the people who know their graphics programs to word wether this effect ever happens (and if so, how often it occurs).
You might be able to solve it by manually blurring or blending those area's slightly by hand, if this is in fact what is happening.
Sorry if the problem isn't anything like what I just explained.

[waldronate]

Much cleaner without the straight lines. While I may lack the artistic sensibilities to do real work, I can usually spot difficulties. A born critic, dedicated to throwing rocks at those doing good things.

The perspective on the waterfalls seems a bit off. My brain keeps telling me that the waterfalls are being seen from about 20 degrees above the horizon while the rest of the map is seen from 80+ degrees above the horizon. The net result is that the waterfalls appear to be falling straight down and sideways at the same time.

[Ascension]

You explained it correctly Imahilus. I get those frequently when playing with gradients for shading and then running lighting effects or bevels on it...creates that step look.

[Davros01]

Wow, Great looking map!!!

[pasis]

Thanks again for all the comments and critique, I need it to maker this better.

Tear, the waterfall and the towers are intentionally isometric. I’m trying to make this kinda between satellite and isometric. My intention is that you are high in the air just at the bottom of the image. So the stuff in the bottom should be satellite, because you are looking top down, but further up you get more isometric. I have already experimented this with forest and it’s working (in this version I have not fixed the forest though) I’m not sure if I can pull this off completely as I have not tied this before…wish me luck (and sudden boost to artistic skill).

Imahilus, the grey is an area I have not worked on yet. The grey color is from the height map I have in there.

Redropes, Imahilus and Ascension, the black lines are actually artifacts in my mountain textures . I was not able to get rid of them when making the original texture, but I will clean them up later with healing brush tool.

[Greason Wolfe]

The waterfalls look much better now and the map, as a whole, is looking wonderful. It's enough to make an old Wolfe like me shed a tear or two wanting to run wild and enjoy the thrill of the hunt.

GW