November/December 2024 Challenge: The archipelago of endless wrecks

[Redrobes]

I don't usually have time to enter a challenge and this one might still be another that I start and end up throwing on the dump of unfinished attempts but often as the yuletide season approaches it can go quiet and I can work on something. These shapes to make a map challenges are usually popular and no doubt I will be among stiff competition but its a bit of fun to try anyway.

A long time ago I did a lot of islands for the Ansium co-op world and I still have the shaders from that to use. So if it is possible that I can massage the starting image into something 3D then I can have a go at using them to colour it for me.

Looking at it then I think that the black looks like land and white is sea. Theres a lot of black at the top so that might prove interesting to get that mountainous but somehow it will have to be. I like the right side better so I will do a square map.

My normal method to make something 3D is to use my zebra method but this map has a lot of detail and the zebra method involves using a pen to create contours. This time I think I will try to layer up copies of the map which have been blurred and then merged together with layers so that we blend up from the coast to the top of the map. I usually work with white as the high ground so first thing is to invert the map and then add all of these layers.

I need some height information below the sea level too some I have to do the same process to create some fake bathymetry. Once all done then I have a greyscale image with 8 bit per pixel shades going from 0 to 255 brightness which at some undefined point in the greyscale needs to look a lot like the original image. That grey value needs to get mapped to sea level and then I must convert the shades higher than that into heights above sea level and those shades darker to depths under the sea level.

After I have them mapped into "float" heights as a digital elevation model then I will need to find some height mapped mountains and blend them into the very high ground.

So after an hour or so here are some starting WIPs.

NovDec_02.png NovDec_03.png NovDec_04.png

NovDec_05.png
### Latest WIP ###