Creating a Planet/World Map using Poser 10 (+ image editing software)

[Neyjour]

This is something I've been fiddling with for the past several days.

Years ago I made a freebie pack of Materials for Poser 6: Terus IV Geological Dig P6 Mat
I now have Poser 10, and thought about installing them and seeing what they'd look like applied to a Hi-Res Ball (Poser Primitive Prop). I was wondering if they'd make interesting planets for a map...
One of them had some definite possibilities, and after doing a little tweaking, I came up with some settings that looked like landmasses.

It's been difficult figuring out how to tweak the settings to get the results I want (and I still haven't completely got it down yet), but I've had a few good results.
And rather than planets for a space/universe map, this looks like something that could be applied to a Fantasy world/regional map (just... not flat).

Poser 10 Planet Test by Neyjour.png

The one on the left is made entirely in the Material Room, and rendered with displacement.
I've been marathon'ing the Vampire Diaries for the umpteenth time ( ) to pass the time and lessen the tedium of waiting for all these tests to render (displacement takes foreeeeever).

The one on the right is just a very quick test to see what it might look like, on its way to becoming an actual planet view for a map.
The ocean is a couple different textures applied (and rendered) individually to the same Hi-Res Ball, and then blended a bit in PaintShop Pro X7.
The black from the original "landmass" render was removed (along with a few islands/continents), placed over the ocean, and then manipulated a bit with a base texture, multiple layers (and different layer modes), dropshadows, etc.
And then I added a quick planet shadow.

I think it has some nice possibilities for map making, so if anyone has Poser and is interested, let me know and I can post some screenshots of the Material Room and Render settings.

What I like most about this is the 3D "stick up off the globe" mountains.
If course, if you just wanted flat landmasses, you would simply set the displacement to zero (and save yourself a hell of a lot of rendering time).
And with some proper texturing of the landmasses, it would look much better. Or, simply smoothing out some (or all) of the lumpy mountains on the front-facing continents, if you wanted to make it an all-ice planet/terrain.

[Eilathen]

I like it! A lot. Looks very cool and i like the landshapes. Looking forward to where this is going.

Oh and i admit to having that guilty pleasure as well...the VD, i mean Although i haven't yet watched all of S07...i don't know, (kind of spoiler-ish) since Elena is out, it's not the same anymore... What?!

[Neyjour]

I like it! A lot. Looks very cool and i like the landshapes. Looking forward to where this is going.

Oh and i admit to having that guilty pleasure as well...the VD, i mean Although i haven't yet watched all of S07...i don't know, (kind of spoiler-ish) since Elena is out, it's not the same anymore... What?!

Thanks Eilathen!

I haven't been able to achieve the landmass shape(s) I want on a single ball, so what I may have to do is render two different ones and then "piece" them together to create two views of the planet (front and back). Once I've decided on what I'm going to use, I'm guesstimating it may take 12 hours (or more) to render both of them at the size I want to work at. All the tests I've been doing so far, as well as the example I've posted, have been too small... I'll post an update once they're rendered, and then start working on the layout, the ocean, and initial texturing of the terrain.

Another Vampire Diaries fan!? I love that show so much. It's one of the few that I can marathon over and over and never get tired of. What do you think of Season 7 so far? (I've seen it all). Sadly, it's my least favourite season of all of them. Not because Elena was gone (even though I'm hugely disappointed she left the show), but I just didn't care much for the storyline (and I really disliked the new main character for that storyline). Overall, I was a bit bored, uninterested, and annoyed (mainly with that character) through a lot of it. Hopefully season 8 will be better... *crosses fingers*

I hope you're enjoying it more than I did...

[johnvanvliet]

Nice , i do not use poser so...

but have been using Blender for many years
this was done in blender nodes
https://www.cartographersguild.com/a...chmentid=81580

[Neyjour]

Nice , i do not use poser so...

but have been using Blender for many years
this was done in blender nodes
https://www.cartographersguild.com/a...chmentid=81580

Thanks.

That looks fantastic! I never would have guessed it was done in Blender (I would have been thinking Photoshop, GIMP, etc.). Wow...

[Josiah VE]

That is so cool! I imagine you could use it to trace and make a planet map like J. Edward's as well.