Regional map somewhere in 1200 CE Japan

[Ascension]

The forest green looks pretty good (the darker green) but the land needs something like a brown or tan streaks to break it up. Really cool though so far.

[Jykke]

Thanks for the good feedback. I'll try to put some of the tips into action.
Rendering a higher resolution version image of the map at the moment,
but Bryce 5.5 is damn slow especially on high end settings. I had
planned also to render few different versions of the landscape and
do a composite image with them. I'm not sure wether I should also
participate on the monthly challenge with my map, because I had
thought about adding some Clan territory markings and small towns..
maybe with some clan flags. But it all depends if I have time to complete
the whole map in time.

[Jykke]

Higher res.. still not satisfied with the results

[ravells]

Ah I thought you were using Bryce. Have you tried saving the camera position and making making multiple renders with different textures, importing all the images into photoshop and then using layer masks? I had pretty average results until I tried it. The results can be pretty good. Here is my effort which with more work could have looked pretty cool.

[Jykke]

Ah I thought you were using Bryce. Have you tried saving the camera position and making making multiple renders with different textures, importing all the images into photoshop and then using layer masks? I had pretty average results until I tried it. The results can be pretty good. Here is my effort which with more work could have looked pretty cool.

It has crossed my mind.. The only problem is that I'm not very good at using materials in Bryce 5.5, and most of my bump-maps just don't work the way I want them to. What I would need is to get those forest -sections look like actual dense forests, and not just some land that looks like a camo-pattern The scale of the map is also a small problem, its something like 60km x 40km, so the trees etc shouldn't pop out too much ( can't really duplicate the terrain, lower it and use spikes to create forest look). I have been using Bryce for a week now and I actually almost gave up before seeing the great results you have had with Bryce. So maybe I'm going to check some tutorials and give it a new try.

ps. If you haven't already done a tutorial about this topic, maybe you should consider it just one more time.

[ravells]

I'll give it a go, but the problem with the way that I approach things is that I fiddle about so much, with lots of undos etc I forget how I get to any particular point. From what I remember about the one I did though it was purely a case of:

Render the terrain with about 5 or 6 different materials.
Render the terrain using a height mask and then again using a distance mask.

Put all of the images into photoshop as layers (use the hight and distance masks as layer masks) and then just use layer masks to bring out what you want.

Don't forget you are not beholden to using Bryce materials, you can use imported pictures of textures too.

[Jykke]

I'll give it a go, but the problem with the way that I approach things is that I fiddle about so much, with lots of undos etc I forget how I get to any particular point. From what I remember about the one I did though it was purely a case of:

Render the terrain with about 5 or 6 different materials.
Render the terrain using a height mask and then again using a distance mask.

Put all of the images into photoshop as layers (use the hight and distance masks as layer masks) and then just use layer masks to bring out what you want.

Don't forget you are not beholden to using Bryce materials, you can use imported pictures of textures too.

I managed to get good results with bryce materials, but when I started combining them in photoshop, problems started to emerge. Somehow it didn't look natural at all.. and In my case, I have to plot some open areas and forests, which really makes everything a world of pain I did some experiments with trees (with adding noise to the terrain.. and getting some "spikes" representing trees), but the problem is that I can't make it look natural with layer effects.. theres even some color tone differences which just ruin the whole idea.. and masking all the forests & other terrain detail.. it is just too much work. I don't really know if 3d map is really worth all the trouble

[ravells]

LOL, well the one I did took many hours. Although I think it would take a lot less time now I have a better idea of what I'm doing. As I said earlier, use the height and distance masks in Bryce (in the render options) to make your ps layer masks for you. Bryce trees are horrible. I can't think of anyone that uses them. You're better off just using a picture of a tree on a 2d plane and alpha masking it, and then replicating it.

[Jykke]

The first one is the "tree layer".. not the final version (if I am going to complete the map).. but still I intended to mask off all the open areas and parts of the mountains (which are pretty much covered with trees on this particular picture).
Next picture is the forest base layer.. I think.. and what we're missing here is the open area layer.. and the mountain layer + any other layer that I might have forgot to mention.
EDIT: And the last one would be something like the end result (on a small area).. except there's no mountain texture etc..

[Ascension]

The first two here look pretty great but the third is a lil dark (I know heresy from me). It could be that all of the white surrounding it on my monitor forces my pupils to contract which sort of obliterates it so it may be fine if I had a smaller monitor