December 2022 Challenge: Goode's Canyon on the Red River

[waldronate]

Because I have limited creative ability and tooling, I shall map "A CANYON". Yes, "A CANYON". Specifically, Goode's Canyon on the Red River, which has some mildly implausible landforms, probably as the result of the whims of some unexpectedly powerful entity. We begin with the concept:
base_image.gif

[waldronate]

Load the base up into Wilbur, abuse with the usual erosional-type tools and it's more or less like a canyon!
wip1.jpg

[waldronate]

Let's try something familiar, but a little different: some perspective.
wip2.jpg

[waldronate]

Yeah, that's a little silly in terms of coloring. Saving out several channels for different elements will allow final assembly in Photoshop. Because we're going to do things in a perspective mode, everything will be screenshots of Wilbur's 3D preview window, which is a little lower resolution than is ideal. I really ought to get a higher-resolution monitor one of these years or fix Wilbur to generate a larger image directly.

A bump map because it's often useful to bring drama from low to high.
sm_bump.png

A texture-shaded image because it gives a little interest to the high-frequency parts of the terrain (the edges).
sm_ts.png

A base color image is important to avoid a general black-and-white map. This is from the Wilbur V2 shader, adjusted to look like a forest / desert kind of terrain.
sm_color.png

Most folks are familiar with a simple shaded image, so we'll put one of those onto the stack as well.
sm_light.png

Wilbur supports a depth image, which can be used to get heavier strokes on depth discontinuities. After a little processing the raw depth image looks like this:
sm_depth.png

Might as well do contours and rivers as additional interest.
sm_contours.png sm_river.png

That's the parts. Most of the grayscale things will be multiplied together as the high-frequency detail on the image, which will be modulated with the background color to get the overall image.

[waldronate]

Dropping everything into photoshop and stacking them up gives this result:
wip3.jpg
The top items are mostly multiplied together. The river layer had the background selected and removed, then a color overlay / outer glow layer effect applied to make things the right color and improve visibility. The contours and bump layers were color-inverted to allow for cleaner multiplication without damaging everything (that is, without going completely black). The two brightness/contrast adjustments offset the crazy amount of darkening from the large number of stacked grayscale images. Some layers are at much less than 100% opacity (bump and contours would totally overwhelm things if not reduced).

[waldronate]

That's pretty good, but it needs a little cleaner edge treatment to hide the ragged top and bottom edges and get rid of the big flat tables on each side. A neatline and screen will give solid bounds to the edges and make cropping a little easier as an added bonus.
wip4.jpg

[waldronate]

Labels are the hard part, but they are important for being a map and not just being a picture.
### Latest WIP ###
wip5.jpg

It still needs some more frills like maybe a wind rose, scale bar (maybe - it's hard to do in a meaningful way with a perspective map), and some descriptive text about this national park's history and importance.

We'll see if I get any time to come back to this.

[Diamond]

I really like that!! Ah, if only I could learn Wilbur...

Really like the coloring and texture, and the perspective is solid. You may have a contender here!

[waldronate]

Wilbur's easy. At least if you have a specific kind of twisty and mechanistic mindset, anyhow.

[Naima]

Yeah, that's a little silly in terms of coloring. Saving out several channels for different elements will allow final assembly in Photoshop. Because we're going to do things in a perspective mode, everything will be screenshots of Wilbur's 3D preview window, which is a little lower resolution than is ideal. I really ought to get a higher-resolution monitor one of these years or fix Wilbur to generate a larger image directly.

A bump map because it's often useful to bring drama from low to high.
sm_bump.png

A texture-shaded image because it gives a little interest to the high-frequency parts of the terrain (the edges).
sm_ts.png

A base color image is important to avoid a general black-and-white map. This is from the Wilbur V2 shader, adjusted to look like a forest / desert kind of terrain.
sm_color.png

Most folks are familiar with a simple shaded image, so we'll put one of those onto the stack as well.
sm_light.png

Wilbur supports a depth image, which can be used to get heavier strokes on depth discontinuities. After a little processing the raw depth image looks like this:
sm_depth.png

Might as well do contours and rivers as additional interest.
sm_river.png sm_contours.png

That's the parts. Most of the grayscale things will be multiplied together as the high-frequency detail on the image, which will be modulated with the background color to get the overall image.

Very nice I think this could be alaborated in a little tutorial for wilbur to add on site ...