Reply With QuoteStill not sure where to go with the Political map ... anyone got any recommendations for a political map for use with the old D&D supplement Birthright ?
Well that all took longer than I hoped!
The good news is I managed to recreate the results Waldronate got in Wilbur and generate some lakes and rivers successfully. Although I kept on getting straightline rivers eventually by experimenting with higher and higher values of noise finally managed to get some wiggly rivers!
I pulled two things out of Wilbur, first there was the rivers (click on image for more detail): -
The reason the rivers are against a black background is so I can easily extract them by selecting the colour black and deleting it, leaving just the rivers.
Then there were the Basins, destined to become lakes. (click on image for more detail): -
Once again to ease extraction they are against a black background.
Obviously there were far to many basins, so after some pruning I arrived at what I considered to be a reasonable number of lakes as you can see in the next image: -
From that point on it was merely working out how to represent them on the Terrrain map and the Contour Map as you will soon see.
I simplified and reduced the scale bar on the map and was happier with the result, and finally I bordered the maps to finish them off.
Here is the finished Contour Map: -
Click here for the full size map (2.5mb)
There was slight shadowing on the rivers to make them stand out and the Lakes also had a minor photoshop treatment to highlight their edges.
Finally the Terrain map: -
Click here for the full size map (2.5mb)
The rivers in the terrain map are only visible in the unforested areas (as one would expect) and can be seen better in the lower south easter section of the map.
With these two maps complete, I have to consider the policital map next. This will be especially critical as I am planning on using Birthright rules to run a "meta" campaign and control all the countries.
I still am not quite sure as to a good example of map style to adopt for the political map, if anyone has any examples or recommendations I would be interested.
Brennall
Still not sure where to go with the Political map ... anyone got any recommendations for a political map for use with the old D&D supplement Birthright ?
Hmm thats odd .. I made a post with some updated maps last night and it isn't showing, yet it just showed my comment about the political map.
Are all image postings subject to some kind of moderator review? ... or did something else swallow my post ?
Well in case it was lost ... Here are the two latest maps
If the "lost post" ever turns up there are details about how to get "wiggly" rivers in wilbur and taking the basins and making them into lakes!
I also added a border and changed the scale to something more in keeping with the rest of the work.
Last edited by Brennall; 12-18-2009 at 06:19 AM. Reason: Added more detail ..
If it's any consolation, I've noticed that sometimes my posts get eaten by the Void as well. You're not aloneI haven't noticed a pattern yet, I started thinking maybe there's some kind of backup or restoral that my posting times crossover with (I tend to do a lot of stuff after midnight, when most people are doing maintenance type stuff).
That having been said, nice maps! i like'em so far.
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."
It was indeed after midnight ... if it doesnt show up by tomorrow I will redo it over the weekend.
We've been having this problem for about two weeks and we have no idea what's causing it. The one on the left looks really good to this ole sat-style mapper.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Thank you Ascension, out of the two its my personal favourite also. However at an analysis level I can "use" the contour map more. It did make me think a bit about maps as artwork compared to usability, I came to the conclusion I had done the terrain map because I wished to "feel" what Cathava was like, while the contour map was to help me generate more information about Cathava. Basically a mixture of emotional content and intellectual content, both leading to a better understanding in their own way.
Hmm and that last paragraph was way too deep ...
If the other post has gone the way of the Dodo ... I will throw in some of the images I had taken showing the deveolpment of the rivers and basins/lakes.
There are three images, the riverssmall.jpg shows the succesful conclusion of experimenting with Wilbur. Waldronate may take a couple of minutes to produce that information, it took me a bit longer to be honest. The key discovery was the use of higher noise values to generate the "wiggly" rivers look I was after. When I used the recommended setting of about 10, I didn't get the look I was after, but around 14 or 15 and it fell into place.
The rest of the instructions supplied worked very well as did the tutorial referenced and got me the basins.png view you can see below. I then cleaned this up and decided to keep a number of the more pronounced lakes. Which led to the creation of finallakes.png.
Using photoshop I blended the lakes into the terrain map with subtle drop shadow, glow and bevelling. Theses blended effects were for tiny amounts in the 1-2 pixel regions and served to give a slightly pronounced edge effect to the lakes. A similar effect was produced for the rivers to make them stand out, after they were stripped out of the black background and placed on a seperate layer in the photoshop document.
Those are beautiful, and about as fully-realized as I think anyone can get! Nice job.
Thank you ... and finally the "missing" post appears above ... sorry for the duplication !
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