Torentine Empire: my li'l corner of a fictional world

[a2area]

I was somewhat perplexed at how i was going to simulate the terrain for my upcoming topography map since i now had a visual of the torentine landscape to match. I was trying to see if i could just overlay the satellite image or something but that wasn't going to work.

A bump map was what i needed but i wasn't about to go cutting and pasting bump map info from NOAA for the various places i used in the satellite image. I had to make a bump map.... UGH, I thought.. HOW can i cheat this? Well... i was able to actually use some of the information from the satellite collage but i had to do a lot of manipulation in order to get it to translate. Basically I just posterized a black and white version of the sat. image and used the magic wand tool for placement of land features. The "convenience" ended there.

After a bit of manipulating I was able to get a decent result so now i've got an official topography of the Torentine landscape to reference which will come in handy. I am going to go in and retouch this so it's nice and smooth before i colorize it for the atlas Topography page but i wanted to post it in the mean time. This also shows the updated river system.

[a2area]

This is turning out to be quite a little project within a project. I was happy with my previous bump map results for about a day... then I broke down and tapped into the topography data at NOAA. I managed to piece together nearly all of my map. Quite a large project to get to this point even compared to the satellite map, like an insane puzzle. Still a few details to add then it will be ready for an artistic smoothing and colorization, names and the rest. Oh yeah.. i forgot about the seafloor... so it will be a little while before it's done (0:

I think the results are much better.

[Ramah]

That looks really good. Looking forward to seeing that coloured up.

[moutarde]

I don't think I can even conceive of how much patience you must have!

[a2area]

Believe me.. i didn't know i had this much patience either.. luckily i was able to put my layers and masks in photoshop to good use (from my satellite map document) or i'd never have been able to reproduce it this closely and likely would not even have tried.

The hardest part is getting the different overall elevations (which aren't apparent in the satellite images) to blend somewhat seamlessly. This means a lot of playing with levels to darken or lighten the greyscale NOAA topo data to similar shades.

This will be the most labor intensive map because it will be the primary topographic reference which will dictate placement of a lot of other data down the road.

[zhar2]

Wonderfull map, dont know if u recognise me from somewhere else though.

[wordsmith]

Wow. Now all we need is a how-to and maybe some layer packets
5/5

[Jinatsu]

I love your work But now I want to learn your trade Any suggestions as to where I could start??

[a2area]

yes zhar2.. i recognize you!

I love your work But now I want to learn your trade Any suggestions as to where I could start??

well it's actually not my trade.. i guess the only thing i can say is start with a focus of interest.. for example a place that you want to convey as real in a map. Then check out some tutorials here. There are a lot of good tools to making maps look good and while yours might not look exactly the same just play around with things until you get something you like.

Also.. if you don't have one already, i'd advise getting a good vector and raster graphic editing program. Photoshop and illustrator are great... but some good free alternatives are inkscape and gimp.

[BabyJ]

new here myself. really great though man. gonna go have a looksee at the tutorials you speak of now too...