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Played with coloring a little bit. I liked one of -Max-'s gradients and tried to replicate it.
(WIP) First Willing to Post Map
As a lurker, I am going to brave the new world of posting and put up a map that I have started messing with and like the direction that it is heading.
I am still not liking my mountains, but one thing at a time I reckon.
This was done with the primary influence being arsheesh's Eriond tutorial, a little bit of me thrown in there.
Still to do:
- Place and color the rivers
- Correct some of the coloring that I feel is out of place
- Create names and locations
Constructive suggestions are welcome.
--- EDIT ---
To jump to the beginning of the new map... http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...l=1#post277614
Last edited by ltan; 08-21-2015 at 11:58 PM.
Played with coloring a little bit. I liked one of -Max-'s gradients and tried to replicate it.
Attempted to do the parchment style map...
Now is this more my style!
I like the fading between land and sea texture. Most people who use this style change brightness very precisely at the coastline... your way has a more natural feel to it.
I agree with Freodin! I can see why most first maps are done in styles like the one above (did my first attempt in the Atlas style myself), but parchment/handdrawn style maps I find more appealing.
Also Freodin has a good point about the coastlines. The fading works very good. I'm curious where you're going to take the rest of the map!
It looks like I will concentrate first on the parchment map
Some problem is the mountains brushes you used. They seem heavily pixellated and a bit repetitive at the moment.
I whole heartily agree Max. I snagged the brushes off of a larger image, and they did *not* scale well. I plan to redo them, but I might have to have my eldest do them o.0. *SHE* inherited the artistic gene... I got passed over... sigh.
Next update will have better mountains... Also more naming I think.
Second map: yeah, symbol brushes don't scale well. Make 'em bigger and you get pixellation and fat line work. Make 'em smaller and though you can gain sharpness, the lines can get uncomfortably light. You could scale up down or sideways, then TRACE the results... Even we artistically challenged mappers can trace stuff.
First map: there's a scale mismatch between your land features and your coastline. You have to figure adjacent areas would have similar detail, at least before erosion effects. Imagine raising your sea level a thousand feet - what I see onshore would not generate the thousand tiny offshore islets that your coast-generation method gave you. Assume that bay is fifty to 500 miles across and this is a regional map -- the isles are as small as a couple of hundred yards across - not that there wouldn't be some such, but a mapper at regional scale likely wouldn't place such so precisely. Onshore, your ridges and flatlands have some pretty plausible erosion, IF the map is tens of miles across, MAYbe up to 150 or 200. Thing is, those unbroken ridges look more like... Ridges :-), than mountain chains. I'd expect the ridges to be more broken up, if you're representing whole ranges. These wind up looking like the sharp single escarpment around a crater or cliff around a mesa.
When I've tried to use cloud randomness to gen rough coast & terrain, and the starting image was the least bit grainy, doing something like posterization to get prospective altitude/depth bands would give me pleasingly rough outlines, but irritatingly many islands and lakes. Since I'm never genning photorealistic topography for erosion, I just erase & fill the ones I don't want. Guessing here, but to get generalized smoothish contours as raw material for erosion procedures, some smoothing/ blurring algorithm might reduce the speckles.
It's tough to pleasingly mix strict altitude-band coloration with photorealistic satellite views. I see a satellite view and my eye wants to interpret all the colors are real land cover. I don't have a suggested solution... Just that it ought to allow for forested mountain slopes and bare flatlands alike :-).
Don't get me wrong - both versions have promise!
Oh, and do please load pix right into the forum - there's oodles of space, and later failure of your image host won't leave us with unadorned text years hence....
Last edited by jbgibson; 10-18-2014 at 01:19 PM.
jbgibson : -Max- : Et al.
I greatly appreciate any and all suggestions that will help get me to make nice and believable maps. While this is a hobby, there is no excuse for it not to be a great hobby
jbgibson: The only reason I am using an outside image host is... When I was trying to make a post for how to use a script, NONE of the images except the last one was loading. I believe this was before RobA got some spare time to look over a few issues that the site was having. With that said, I loaded everything onto my personal server upstairs and just linked from there. I can certainly start moving the images over so that they are local, but the only way that the images will go away is if something happens to me
And you called me out concerning the million of little specs along the coast. That was going to be corrected eventually, and this morning saw that change. However, I am still finding it difficult to get the mountains done to where it looks good. On a up note, I figured out why the brushes were looking pixelated and that was due to me using the Pencil tool instead of the Brush tool. I forgot that the brushes function best with the brush.
WorldPriorWT_WIP_rs001.png
I am hoping to have time tonight to attempt getting the mountains and hills done.
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