Reply With QuoteThat's a very useful information.
I can't wait to see your revision
I found this: Avoiding polar distortion by ~Naeddyr on deviantART It looks like a better way to fix things than guess work. I ran through a test and it looked like it worked decently. I'm going to work on my real map with this and try and get rid of the distortion
That's a very useful information.
I can't wait to see your revision
You could try working with GIS. If you do your editing in a suitable projection for the particular region you are editing then it should all work out on the globe. The problem is you have to learn to use a GIS, and creating new projections isn't done much so they tend not to have great tools for it.Originally Posted by vorropohaiah
It's something that really calls for specialized software. Graphics tools just don't have the right functionality and GIS tools are designed for working with real world data, not creating whole new worlds from scratch. I might give it a stab at some point but I don't have enough time at the moment.
york84109- Glad to share! I think I finished fixing the distortion, that little tutorial worked out great, I think
Hai-Etlik- I downloaded it but upon opening it I decided I didn't want to learn another program right now. Maybe another time, thanks for sharing it though
Here is the updated image of my world, in simple black and white. I think it turned out well:
Veriel BW Final.png Veriel Poles.png
GIS isn't a particular application, it's a general descriptor like "Wordprocessor". At a quick guess, you've probably found ArcGIS Explorer which is really just a viewer app for data created with ArcGIS Desktop (which starts at 1500 USD and goes up rapidly from there) If you decide you do want to give GIS a try later, I'd recommend QuantumGIS.york84109- Glad to share! I think I finished fixing the distortion, that little tutorial worked out great, I think
Hai-Etlik- I downloaded it but upon opening it I decided I didn't want to learn another program right now. Maybe another time, thanks for sharing it though
Here is the updated image of my world, in simple black and white. I think it turned out well:
Veriel BW Final.png Veriel Poles.png
That's certainly a big improvement. If you look really carefully, you can see "jumps" in the level of distortion rather than a smooth progression but it's probably not worth worrying about. I'd suggest you keep your base map simple while placing features like cities and rivers. Once you have everything in place, run it through G.Projector to get it into a projection that works for a finished map, then pretty it up. Any fancy symbolization or labelling you do before reprojection is going to be wrecked by it.
Hai-Etlik- You were right. I did download ArcGIS. I downloaded the other one but haven't really checked it out yet. I might if I'm feeling up to it
I see what you mean about the 'jumps'. I went about fixing them earlier today but photoshop crashed on me and I hadn't saved it. That kinda made me lose steam. I'll probably try again tomorrow though.
In other news, I altered the land shapes a bit. Most of it is still the same, only moved around, with pretty much only one large section that's new. I colored it real quick because I couldn't help myself
I also fixed the distortion in the small southwestern landmass and the islands underneath it, as well as the larger set of islands in the northeast.
Veriel-Alter-Stitch.jpg Veriel-Alt-Color-Poles.jpg
I'm also thinking about what sort of projection to do this in when it's closer to finished. Right now I'm thinking something like Winkle Tripel or Robinson. Thoughts?
Sure, those projections seem nice for an encyclopedia type of look. It gives you the feeling of a globe / planet, yet shows all the continents and oceans ("both sides" of the world showing at once). As always it must be mentioned, there's distortions, and probably more distorted around the edges, but at least not giving the appearance of wild distortion. May be better if you can spin the view so that mostly oceans are on the edges, although they seem to handle continents wrapping around fairly convincingly.
I am finding it comes back to balancing "what are you looking for" with "the limitations of map projections (distortion)". When it comes to global projections, you are going to see effects of some type of distortion, somewhere on the map, possibly distorting large areas of the map, so choose in relation to understanding the effect of the projection. When it comes to regional / state / local area maps, zoomed in, the distortion has less effect and you effectively have more valid choices of various projections (though again, some projections are better for some regions, depending on latitude, scale / size of the area, and whether it is a roughly round area or otherwise, and of course what types of distortion however small you want to abide).
These are just some of my novice notes and observations. Some of the expert forum members know this stuff inside out! My understanding is pale in comparison. Respect to the cartographers who came before us.
World map that would be used for sailing / ocean navigation, and doesn't need the poles; things seem to stand up nicely in line, can look kind of old (like 1980's old, or like antique old): Mercator projection.
World map that's going to migrate through other programs like G.Projector: Equirectangular.
World Book Encylopedia / World atlas from the US type of modern-ish look: Wagner VII.
World Atlas looks contemporary: Winkle Tripel.
World map antique look: 2 stereographic maps, in circles, side by side. And you can put smaller north pole map & south pole map in the margins.
World map for an RPG game: Icosahedral (which can be a Gnomonic projection on an icosohedron, like a 20-sided dice unfolded to triangles, then add hex grid)
World "map" (or globe?) types I really like --- when you're talking globe map, I like to see a globe in action. I like the blue marble, the way the Earth looks from space, especially if you can rotate the planet and see the same view perspective from all longitudes (spin the globe around the equator), or better still: rotate the globe in all directions including up and down (spin, roll, tilt). For my visual preferences, the globe is by-far the best way to understand the world, compare continents, see where oceans connect (usually making "the global ocean"), see where everything is relative to the equator and the poles, and start to imagine continental drift / plate tectonics, ocean currents, wind, and climates.
1. World map spin around the equator view (cannot be printed because it is moving, but can be shown on webpages): Make several orthographic projection maps from every perspective (say every 10 degrees longitude, keeping the same latitude constant, would make 36 orthographic maps). Now assemble these orthographic maps in sequence (let's say in Photoshop) and save as Animated GIF. It's at least a fun toy version of your world that looks almost 3D, and it maybe an educational-informative view. In conclusion I like the Orthographic map projection because it looks like seeing the world from space, however, one lone Orthographic projection map is not a "world map" because it cannot show the entire surface of the sphere from this projection perspective. If you put maybe 4 orthographic hemisphere maps on a paper map, you would start to get a 'world map'. Best used for the spinning GIF, I think.
2. World map that you can spin, roll, tilt, rotate, by hand at will: Google Earth (KMZ). Very fun. To import map to the free program Google Earth, you have to make the map a KMZ file, which contains an image file that happens to be equirectangular sphere-map. (Also if you want to share this type of map, to show others, you would have to give them the KMZ file with its enclosed image file -- this option is for home learning about your world, not really good for printing, and not great for sharing). The program Fractal Terrains exports a KMZ file, this is what I used to do it sof ar. Without FT3, I have not learned how to make a KMZ yet. I'm not sure if you can do it with a plain equirectangular map from photoshop that doesn't have geographic information embedded. It seems like maybe you could since the only geographic info you really need is that the map goes from 180 degrees to -180 degrees, however I'm not sure how you write this into a Google Earth KMZ. Might be something to look up. Google Earth gives you lots of fun features like seeing an "atmosphere" effect, day light and the shadow of night coming around as you timeline the hours of a day, and seeing the world in an obtuse angle like you're a satellite orbiting over the planet.
For a regional map of a continent or a state (zoomed in) in the northern latitudes -- I got a tip earlier from Hai-Etlik on using LCC (Lambert Conformal Conic), and I'm finding it works nicely with the right settings. BookOwl, I don't know if you are doing zoom maps of different regions or just focusing on the whole globe for now. Hope these thoughts help.
Last edited by Gold; 03-09-2013 at 04:36 AM.
Gold- Thanks for all the info
In google earth you don't have to have a KMZ file to put an image in there. You can just use a regular png/jpg file. In google earth you choose 'image overlay' and then go to your png/jpg/etc. image and it'll load it over the globe. Just resize it over the entire globe and voila! That's how I've been doing it anyway
Right now I'm just focusing on the entire globe. I have to finally pin down the land shapes before I can do anything regional, though that is definitely in the future
Good to know. So just a nice equirectangular PNG will import to Google Earth? I will try that soon. Have you found what the maximum resolution / pixel size would be, for importing PNG to GE? I am thinking that the higher resolution image gives more zooming ability, detail at greater zoom levels. I think that you get more abilities for this in Google Earth Pro (ability to have it load a more zoomed map when you zoom in). I will only be using the free version access on GE, so it's just the one world image, you can still zoom infinitely, it just starts to lose detail at some point. Also I have been seeing a LOT of "artifacts" (noise, messed up little triangle areas and lines) on my Google Earth maps, have you seen that? Was not sure if this was a problem with my resolution, my image, or just a normal quirk of GE constantly reprojecting my equirectangular base image.
Have you named your world, any continents, or named your oceans yet? Finding what bodies of water constitute a different ocean, is a fun process. And learning about the global ocean, fact that all the oceans are eventually connected.
Gold- Yeah, equirectangular should do. I uploaded a 25mb jpg image at 10000x5000pxls and 300dpi and it didn't protest too much. I haven't hit any limit yet. The only problem I can think of is that using an image overlay, if you zoom in way far it will eventually go through the image overlay and into the ocean beneath it. But you can zoom in pretty dang far nevertheless. You'd have to have a monstrous image to keep any detail before it zooms to underneath the overlay.
Well, the world name is Veriel, for now anyway. I thought up that name because I was tired of calling it 'the world' or some such so I don't know how long it'll last. I have named the continents, may need to change a couple after altering the land like I did but maybe not. I have many country names but they're all generally on the east side of the large western continent, I've also named one or two oceans. I'll be putting labels on this things before it's all said and done.
I haven't noticed any pixelization in my google earth (also the free version).
