My world - The Everlandias

[Ramah]

The second one looks better to me there. But the sea still seems to be suffering from the same problem as the rivers. It seems to be above the land, like a small amount of liquid on a piece of plastic.

[LonewandererD]

Hmm, truthfully I'm not too crazy about either map, they have their ups and downs, so I'm going to try and go for a third style that uses aspects of both, mostly the land textures of the second one with the more fantasy tyle of the first. Forests are still are puzzle though, i'm still ot sure how to make convincing jungles and such. I like my temperate forests and the texture i use for the dryer forests but ican't add them to the map in a way that looks convincing. I've seen a map that has sort of what I'm after but I've been unable to replicate a similiar effect.

I could just take the "Total War" approacha and only have smalll groupings of trees and more open spaces, playing Empire Total War was actually what inspired me to experiment, the overland maps look real good.

I think I've fixed the river problem, i changed it to an outer bevel, thnx Ascension. Now back to experimenting.

-D-

[Ascension]

The second peninsula looks very jungle-y to me or very pine-y and I like it a lot...lots of contrast. The first peninsula looks more like forests on a plains area...colors are all closer together, I like that too.

[LonewandererD]

To try and get an idea of how the continents will fit together I made a small map with both Adallia and Khazardia, both scaled down to a quarter of their original size. Sadly, looking at the landmasses together I'm not too thrilled, they don't look natural. Would anybody be angry if I started over again? I know I've already done it before but If it go back and really pay attention to getting it all done right I think it'll be worth it, I especially need to go back and work harder in detailing all of the individual areas.

Also, what software do I use to turn a flat 2d image in a 3d globe, when I've done my half of the world I want to see how it would look as if it where an actual world.

-D-

[Karro]

Up to you, man, if you want to start over. Although, I think one easy fix is to move the Adallia continent to the east of rather than west of the Khazardia continent. At least, it works in my mind's eye.

To put these maps on a globe you can use Google Earth. I think there's a mini-tut somewhere on this site on how to do that.

[basil4j]

I think you can also use bryce (there is a free version, I think v5.5 or something) which will accept a black and white height map and turn it into 3d.

[RobA]

Gimp will do it (map to object/sphere). There is a post in the forums on using google earth to do it. any 3d modeling tool should be able to do it.

-Rob A>

[LonewandererD]

In my search for better mountains i came once again to pasis' excellent tutorial, for which i will be using again when I try to tackle more believable town symbols. Anyway, here are four pics. The first is my orginal mountain type, the second is a mountain type i was going to use as low desert mountains, the third is my standard mountain type and the fourth is my cold/ash mountain type. I know I need more practice on actually drawing the mountains, I was never great at this style of mountain but chose it because it gives me more control on mountain placement which I need, but which of the textures/colours work and which don't. I am working on some more rock textures so if these mountains don't work I'll have some new ones up soon.

-D-

[Preypacer]

Wow... Very nice work!

I love this style... it's actually the style I'd like to create the world map for my own project in. I think all the little details, little corners, openings in a forest, etc... help to stir my imagination to what might be hidden away in there that some adventurous person might discover.

Are there any specific tutorials or references that you used in putting this together? I read through most of the thread, though I may have missed such details since it was kind of a lot to read and I did skim a bit :-p.

Also, I'm starting to learn GIMP seriously now (dabbled with it on and off, but always resorted back to PS), so this would be a great way to learn the software and create an (ideally) attractive map.

Thanks!