Looking for Tips on new World Map Landmasses

[Khaalis]

Hello all you map experts. So, I am attempting to generate a new world in Fractal Terrains. This is what I've gotten so far and I am looking for suggestions on how to make the base map better. Especially tips on where it needs more work painting land offset raise & lower, such as tips on how to make the mountain placement/height better, whether I should add more or less coastal islands, etc. Any tips or thoughts would be appreciated.

Also, once I get this to a usable point, what are the best tutorials for moving the file into Wilbur for more tweaking? I know about 'There and back Again' though it seems mostly about the actual process of moving the files rather than what to actually do to modify the world in Wilbur.

Much appreciated.

Karrakys 2.0 WIP1.jpg

[Naima]

Hello Khalis.
The shape looks already interesting and nice, full of opportunities ... I can already see sprawling ancient civilizations and realms around...

Did you completely generate it or you painted it?

Anyway for sugestions it really depends what you want to achieve, if you want to go for a full geological plausibility , then you have a lot of work to implement , like designing plaques, continental drift, age of planet, gravity and all other stuff that you can find in the Pixie WIP-tutorial

But in all Honestly its a lot of work that you can skip simply by placing plausible mountain ranges, and biomes... After all what you want is a belieaveable world to play and not spend the next months on it , if I am not wrong of course...

The shapes are to me already very good and belieaveable, the mountain ranges already can design big collisions of plaques especially in the right continent.
The left one seems instead having received a pretty big erosion or perhaps is younger ... may be is made of plaquest that are separating from each other ...
Consider that there can be also a lot of other reasons why a continent might feature less mountain ranges ...
That said I wouln't stress too much on it , because the placement of mountains seems already plausible to me .


Now on the map itself I would make a more rugged coastline on north , with fjords , smoothen the large coastlines of continents that are separating from each other, or accordingly to what might seem to you the actual movement of plaques...
Imagine the continents float over a sort of dense liquid and that liquid shifts around the continents that are not solid but malleable and deformable , so they can change their shape according to twists , stretchs, compressions and movements.

apart that its all fine and apart some minor fixing here and there like adding or removing some lands you can pass to the excellent tutorial of Israh


Wilbur tutorial


For biomes you can follow this tutorial

Good luck with your project .

[Khaalis]

Thanks again Naima. Informative as usual.

To answer a few points.
1) I used Fractal Terrains to generate a world till it had the vaguest representation of what I was looking for (it was much more a series of stringy mountain islands to start with). I then just went to work changing water level and then painting via raising and lowering the Land Offset. I also did global smoothing and filling basins a few times to get to this point. It is still basic and I haven't really done any up close detail work.

2) You are correct, I don't want to spend months doing a truly 100% scientifically accurate globe. As long is it is believable and close to scientifically plausible I'll be happy. That means Mountain Range work is the most important aspect right now as it has so much affect on everything else. Currently I can look at the map and see general patterns of where continental plates would be, but it still seems "off" to me, especially the left one. I'm not sure where to go with it to make it look more "correct". I think it needs more heighmapping - more mountains or at least more roughness. I'll do a quick hand-drawn of plates and get that posted when I get the chance and maybe you can give hints on how to tweak it.

As for the specific suggestions:
Which continent are you suggesting the fjords? The larger landmass (left)?
Also if continents are separating, doesn't that often cause a lot of islands? Or mountain ranges if the plates are sliding against one other?


3) Thank you for all the tutorial links. There are a LOT of them on here and its often hard to suss out which ones are actually useful for what I need.

[Naima]

Something like this

https://i.gyazo.com/b648951267892a84...0ecd98820c.jpg

As red line is the first striking Oceanic dorsal I see , I see also some colliding plaques but I did not draw couse the position of the mountains is a bit difficult to design simply looking at first sight without a more accurate tectonic study , though I think are plausible and can be justified somehow .

I added the areas I would refind with Fjords or islands .

As for Islands it depends , consider that Plaques might change over time , long time and perhaps some lands or islands are residual of previous tectonics that are now no more active ... like the ancient plates of Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates

Also there are many microplates that can justify islands and other formations ... so all in all , if you want to find a justification , I think its always possible .

[Khaalis]

Thanks again Naima! In the intirem, I had tossed this together as my first pass gut instinct on how I saw the possible major plates based on the way FT had done the heightmap. Not sure how plausible it is, but then as you said these are just the major plates not the micro plates of which there are likely hundreds if not thousands.

Karrakys 2.0 WIP1 - Plates.jpg

[Azélor]

Why is it missing the poles?
Not Poles but poles.

[Khaalis]

A slightly updated version with some changes based on Naima's comments.
Karrakys 2.0 WIP1.2.jpg

@ Azelor: Do you mean polar continents like Antarctica? Or do you mean the gaia map? (Note this has not had any climate work done yet.)
Karrakys 2.0 WIP1.2 (Gaia).jpg

Or in Hammer:
Karrakys 2.0 WIP1.2 (Gaia-Hammer).jpg

[Azélor]

Is it the same map? The other one was missing the icy caps.

Each pole can be water or land (like Antarctica) but xan't be both on the same latitude.

[Naima]

Thanks again Naima! In the intirem, I had tossed this together as my first pass gut instinct on how I saw the possible major plates based on the way FT had done the heightmap. Not sure how plausible it is, but then as you said these are just the major plates not the micro plates of which there are likely hundreds if not thousands.

Karrakys 2.0 WIP1 - Plates.jpg

Ok I have changed a little this setup , It doesn't pretend to be correct , but I highlighted the close resemblance that the opposing coasts have between the oceanic dorsal so I removed the plaque you put underwater between the two major continents and in white line I show the resembling coastline, just like South america fits into African western coast...

then I have enlarged the polar plaques because this map is still on a sphere and those polar region should have arrows that point in different directions in the equirectangular map.
Added some other possible fracture lines .

https://i.imgur.com/Sixm74c.jpg

[Khaalis]

Is it the same map? The other one was missing the icy caps.

Yes, same map, just changed from "Show Altitude" view to "Show Gaia" view. I didn't see another way to get the caps to show.

Each pole can be water or land (like Antarctica) but xan't be both on the same latitude.

Can you expand on this? Are you saying it is inaccurate because the caps expand onto the landmasses?