Mundus Innominatus - My very first attempt at worldbuilding

[SkryNRiv]

Hey, guys!

I'd like to introduce you to my baby, a world called (for now) Mundus Innominatus. Sounds kinda silly, I think, haha!

In the first step I used Worldengine to create the continents. According to the GitHub page, "[w]orlds are generated using plate simulations, erosion, rain shadows, Holdridge life zones model and plenty of other phenomenons." My world is actually two different 512x512 worlds joined together and a small continent pasted in the middle just because I wanted some land situated in the prime meridian. Then I figured out I could actually generate 2:1 worlds instead of square ones, but I didn't quite like the shape of the continents I generated later, so I stuck with the first thing I did.

There are two things I don't like about Worldengine: first, it doesn't give a clue about the shape of the tectonic plates, so I can only guess the shape of the continental shelves, and where the ridges and trenches are. Second, the maps it generates can't be fit into a globe, unless one edits the map so it looks like an equirectangular projection. It can be easily done in Photoshop with Flexify. The downside is that there won't be any Antarctica-like continents (boo ).

The second step was to redraw the general shapes of the landmasses and then I used OldGuy's tutorial for realistic coastlines. After that, I used Arsheesh's wonderful tutorial for creating an Eriond style map, but I adapted it to just color code the elevation for a later step I'm planning to do.

And that's it! This is what I have so far. I may add some more islands later or something. Of course, the name will change when I create its history. I hope you like it, and certainly any comments are welcome.

Mundus-Innominatus.png

[MrBragg]

If the projection you're using is equirectangular, you might want to use a tool like https://www.maptoglobe.com/ to see what the poles look like. Just based on what things look like, this map will have some pretty severe polar distortion.

Actually, assuming this is equirectangular, I quick threw this up on map to globe and yep, the poles are fairly distorted. If you ever want to plot this on a globe--or if you're going for realism--you might want to address these distortions before moving on.
pole1.png pole2.png

[SkryNRiv]

Yes, it's true, just as it is, the map won't fit nicely on a globe because the shapes aren't properly distorted for an equirectangular projection. But after editing it in Photoshop, the issue is gone. I use a plugin called Flexify for that matter. I'll show you later how it looks, when I sit at the PC.

[SkryNRiv]

So this is it

Mundus-Innominatus.png

This map can be fit on a globe and there's no distortion in the poles.

MI-azimuthal-equidistant.png

The landmasses near the poles are smaller, though, but I think I'm ok with that.

MI-Lambert-conic-55W45N.pngMI-Lambert-conic-120E50N.pngMI-Lambert-conic-45E53S.png

[MrBragg]

Nice, those poles look so much better! Though, fixing the poles probably messes up the underlying tectonics, but such is life with tectonics ;-)

[SkryNRiv]

[...] but such is life with tectonics ;-)

Can't complain, actually Having a couple little earthquakes a month puts some spice to my life