Looking for techniques/advice/discussion

[Billia]

Hello,
This is my first time posting on the forums, despite being a member for quite some time now. The resources available here are incredibly helpful and informative.

I'm finally posting because I've volunteered to make a planetary map for role playing game I'm involved in. I've been working on the map steadily for six months and it's come quite a ways. I joined the role play group and they had already produced a basic map. I took that map and added to it and changed it. But it still doesn't look quite right. I've been trying to create a map that looks similar enough to the original so as not to make the other players of the game redraw their boundaries and re-position their cities and such. But I have been given permission to change some things.

Here is the progression of the map since I've worked on it.
1. http://i.imgur.com/ziDWp09.jpg
2. http://i.imgur.com/BULIvjc.jpg
3. http://i.imgur.com/CkiY82Y.jpg

I'm not very good at making mountains. I'm not the best with textures. And some general tips and advice on how to improve this map would be greatly appreciated.

I work with Gimp, and I have a pretty low-end computer.

Thanks everybody!

[Billia]

--Bumping--

[waldronate]

You are definitely making progress. Is there a particular part of your maps that you are unhappy with or are you just looking for feedback?

[Ascension]

Ok first off you need to get some nice landmasses. You have the general shapes worked out but what they lack is variation. You need some more little coves and bays to break up the straight areas but leave 1 or 2 straight areas. I'm fine with the mountain placement except for the one in the lower left. It runs coast to coast and cuts off the desert peninsula. I might turn it and run it more north-south or move it more inland. The textures you are using seem a bit large for the deserts and the green seems a bit bright so I might add a bit of yellow into the color mix to mute it a bit. I dig the peninsula in the middle right with the island hanging off.

[Billia]

Waldronate: I am certainly looking for feedback. If I had to pick some things I don't like about it I'd have to say the shore-lines, mountains, and textures.

Ascension: I definitely agree concerning the shapes of the land masses. Do you know any methods I can use that would keep the general shape of the continents while varying the shore-lines? The mountains are my weakness. I have no clue how to make realistic looking mountains. And as for the color scheme, I found a really nice thread on this site awhile ago with an expertly made map. It was so beautiful. The artist mentioned that the trick to getting a realistic color scheme was to make everything a shade closer to gray. I clearly didn't take her advice when I made the most recent version of this map And the peninsula you're looking at is just a copy/paste from Siam. The original artist of the map didn't use much creativity when he made it.

I really just need to make a map that is similar enough to the current version, but looks ten-twenty times better.

[johnvanvliet]

i would have to say the ( for the 3d image) the first thing i see is the location of the deserts
they just "pop out" at me for being off . the wrong locations

they just do not fit in

large deserts like those on the coast are "rain shadow areas"

i would start with a topographic height map
then work from that

someplace here is a wilbur tutorial for filling in a land mass with fractal height data

there are other ways like using a "skeletal" and "distance" algorithm on the land masses fallowed by one of the many "erode" algorithms

Do you know any methods I can use that would keep the general shape of the continents while varying the shore-lines?

this came up very recently
the gimp plugin "fractalize path" ( fractalize_path.scm)
though it is old and for a OLD version of gimp
it works , the tool just opens up UNDER the "gimpshop" one window on Gimp 2.8 for Microsoft Windows

turn off the "One window to rule them all" setting

[Azélor]

On a Earthlike planet, your unlikely to have deserts at the equator when they are surrounded by water unless you have a good reason. Like johnvanvliet mentionned, desert can form there if the dominant winds are blocked by mountains.

[Soloeus]

There is some fractal script you can use to re-shape the coastlines.

[Billia]

Alright. Thanks for all of the tips, everybody!

I've reworked the continents and made them look way less drawn in. Here's what they look like now: http://i.imgur.com/MIbmEdE.png
The white is a temporary placeholder until I find out how to get Wilbur downloaded*. Then I'll just have to decide the best way to paint it with Gimp.

*Wilbur download site is down.

[Billia]

Hello again,
I've been working on this and I think I've finally got something that I like. Let me know what you all think:
Check it