Drawing a relief for a vector map

[Per Birkeland]

Hello everybody!

As this is my first post in this very informative, well moderated forum, I want to say thanks to all the excellent mappers and helpful guides. I was lurking for a long time before becoming a member and now, while I am currently working on my first topographic map, I need some specific help.

The map I am working on is based on a rough vector sketch from an already existing SVG-file picturing a fictive planet. There is a group of islands located in a northern hemisphere, stretching across a fictive Arctic circle. The climate is ment to be Scandinavia-like (oceanic, subarctic, tundra, alpine, polar influences, depending on location and height). For simplification, imagine Norway; with its fjords, fjells and high mountain ranges. The (or at least my) aim is to draw a very detailed topographic map in various scales, especially in 1:25,000, 1:50,000 and 1:200,000 (inspired by the offical topographic maps of Germany). So I laid a grid on a 1:1,000,000 scaled sketch of my country (a scale has already been set in the SVG-file) and divided it into various, smaller mapsheets into the next bigger scale 1:200,000. I repeated that process for 1:200,000 and 1:50,000. In the end, one 1:200,000 scale mapsheet consists of 4 by 4 (16) 1:50,000 scale mapsheets; where as one 1:50,000 scale mapsheet consists of 2 by 2 (4) 1:25,000 scale mapsheets. In turn, a 1:200,000 scale map section consists theoretically by the end of 8 by 8 (64) 1:25,000 mapsheets. As you might add, how can one set a scale in a vector file; but it was defined (not by me) that 1px is a certain amount of square kilometres and there was a scale pictured (a distance of 1,000km "equivalent" to 52.8px in width equivalent to 18.627mm). I used that quirky equation to scale up or down all following map grids and sheets, keeping the original PPI 300. I know that it is a lot of work and I do not know if this project will ever be finished but hey, let's try and find out.

Scale Grids.png

Blue: 1:200,000 scale map; Orange: 1:50,000 scale maps; Green: 1:25,000 scale maps.

My way of thinking was: Start working on the 1:25,000 mapsheets; combine 4 of them to a 1:50,000 mapsheet and eventually combine 16 1:50,000 mapsheets to a 1:200,000 mapsheet. Drawing coastlines, land masses, rivers, roads, towns etc. is easy with vector graphics, as one can scale it all up or down easily with more or less detail.

Finally, here is my main problem: I always liked the maps with relief shading because they looked so realistic. But drawing a relief with contour lines and then scaling up or down is nowhere near to my skills if at all possible. And as I cannot rely on any already drawn heightmap or the like, every mountain ridge, every valley etc. will be drawn from scratch. A suitable compromise for me was to define a realistic coastline and as a result a landmass in Illustrator and afterwards drawing the relief in Photoshop. In short: Exporting the landmass from Illustrator to Photoshop; drawing the relief; and placing it back to Illustrator. Then rivers, roads, cities etc. can be located on it as vectors as they depend mostly on the physical nature of their environment. Only the relief stays pixelated. But as the mapsheets will be scaled down to the next map grid, a downsizing of a pixelated image seemed to me a better looking way than scaling it up - and because I try to avoid painting a relief for each scale.

Now it is your turn: What do you think of my "work in progress" so far? I admit that my process is not the most elegant way but still doable in my opinion. I considered using Wilbur or Fractal Terrains (scaling a relief once drawn would not be a probleme here, or would it?) but I doubt that it is suitable for my problem and using it seemed to be too difficult after watching several videos on YouTube. You might convince me buying FT nevertheless...

Thank you a lot in advance and reading until here!

[Redrobes]

Generating contour lines from a 3D terrain is very easy. Generating 3D terrain from contours is possible but more difficult. If your wanting to shade the terrain then you will need it in 3D if it is to be done by an automated process. If you have a height map that is lower resolution than you require its not so much pixellated but more of a smooth and blobby appearance. What you lack in low res height maps is sharp transitions like cliffs or details. So its bad news for fjords and alike. One huge problem with height maps is that they cannot represent undercuts and have a hard time with vertical cliffs. On the other hand neither can contours as they all pile up into one single line.

If your fictional world has earth like appearance and geomorphology then you can get hold of some raster height maps in greyscale or LIDAR from a variety of places like NASA etc and just stitch patches of them together to get a somewhat realistic height map version of the ground. Then you can obtain your contours from that.

Generating good heightmaps for a realistic fictional world is always a hard task.

[Per Birkeland]

Generating contour lines from a 3D terrain is very easy. Generating 3D terrain from contours is possible but more difficult. If your wanting to shade the terrain then you will need it in 3D if it is to be done by an automated process. If you have a height map that is lower resolution than you require its not so much pixellated but more of a smooth and blobby appearance. What you lack in low res height maps is sharp transitions like cliffs or details. So its bad news for fjords and alike. One huge problem with height maps is that they cannot represent undercuts and have a hard time with vertical cliffs. On the other hand neither can contours as they all pile up into one single line.

How do other software like Wilbur or Fractal Terrains handle that problem? It seemed that they avoid that smooth or blobby appearance while zooming out as they compute the map every time after every change.

If your fictional world has earth like appearance and geomorphology then you can get hold of some raster height maps in greyscale or LIDAR from a variety of places like NASA etc and just stitch patches of them together to get a somewhat realistic height map version of the ground. Then you can obtain your contours from that.

That is an interesting idea and worth testing it. Thank you!

Generating good heightmaps for a realistic fictional world is always a hard task.

Good to see that I am not the only one having trouble

[waldronate]

The number one problem with most erosion software is that the system doesn't erode a geologic layercake as happens in the real world, but rather operate on a 2D image where intensity is equal to height. The most common variant of the problem uses a completely uniform hardness across the terrain, which results in an appearance similar to eroded sand dune or tidal flat. Some systems allow you to specify a variable hardness based on an image map, but that often results in the appearance of something emerging from a substrate like cake being washed away from a baked-in toy.

A common solution to the erosion problem is to provide multiple algorithms that mimic different parts of the erosion process (water, wave, thermal, glacial, or something else entirely). Each kind of heightfield erosion tends to result in a form of terrain that is most plausible over a relatively small range of scales. Wilbur's precipiton erosion, for example, tends to give features that are typical of maps on the order of a few tens to a few hundreds of miles across. Its incise flow operation (which isn't a precise analog of any kind real-world erosion) can give a look that works across a larger range of scale, depending on the settings used. An exponential operation can give a result reminiscent of glacial erosion, but typically only for maps that are a few tens of miles across at most. Wilbur doesn't have a thermal erosion/mass wasting feature, mostly because I don't particularly like the look of the rounded mud-hill humps that it gives. All of Wilbur's erosion models have a serious defect in that they are not mass-preserving.

I have found that most folks who use Wilbur don't care a huge amount about physical correctness because the images that they generate are just one feature in their overall artwork, commonly a bump map to add some texture. If you need a physically correct whole-world terrain map, you best bet is to learn a huge amount about geology and planetary processes and then use that knowledge to draw a map. Software products can help you flesh out some of the local areas, but I have yet to see a product that will start from nothing and pop out a physically-correct and detailed world. Because fictional worlds have a nasty habit of being backdrops for stories, people seem to be less willing to invest huge amounts of effort into making them physically correct than they are willing to tell stories against a merely plausible backdrop (it's usually more important to the story that there are only three passes in the impassible mountain chain than it is to know that the chain is a quartz monzanite batholith with westward-trending dip protruding through a metamorphosed silicious limestone region with very limited cross-jointing).

As Redrobes suggested, quilting together multiple sections of real-world terrain is a good way to get things going fairly quickly. I expect that we'll very soon see some enterprising student train a machine learning system on real-world elements and allow for drawing in important elements (rivers, mountain ranges, and so on) and the system will do the quilting and blending for you. We're not there yet, but all of the parts are available.

[Per Birkeland]

A common solution to the erosion problem is to provide multiple algorithms that mimic different parts of the erosion process (water, wave, thermal, glacial, or something else entirely). Each kind of heightfield erosion tends to result in a form of terrain that is most plausible over a relatively small range of scales. Wilbur's precipiton erosion, for example, tends to give features that are typical of maps on the order of a few tens to a few hundreds of miles across. Its incise flow operation (which isn't a precise analog of any kind real-world erosion) can give a look that works across a larger range of scale, depending on the settings used. An exponential operation can give a result reminiscent of glacial erosion, but typically only for maps that are a few tens of miles across at most. Wilbur doesn't have a thermal erosion/mass wasting feature, mostly because I don't particularly like the look of the rounded mud-hill humps that it gives. All of Wilbur's erosion models have a serious defect in that they are not mass-preserving.

Jeez... I didn't know that Wilbur is that powerful. That's amazing! May I ask what your profession is and how it led to Wilbur and/or FT? Your knowledge is way beyond programming, as you obviously digged deep into geology, too. Great combination.

I have found that most folks who use Wilbur don't care a huge amount about physical correctness because the images that they generate are just one feature in their overall artwork, commonly a bump map to add some texture. If you need a physically correct whole-world terrain map, you best bet is to learn a huge amount about geology and planetary processes and then use that knowledge to draw a map. Software products can help you flesh out some of the local areas, but I have yet to see a product that will start from nothing and pop out a physically-correct and detailed world. Because fictional worlds have a nasty habit of being backdrops for stories, people seem to be less willing to invest huge amounts of effort into making them physically correct than they are willing to tell stories against a merely plausible backdrop (it's usually more important to the story that there are only three passes in the impassible mountain chain than it is to know that the chain is a quartz monzanite batholith with westward-trending dip protruding through a metamorphosed silicious limestone region with very limited cross-jointing).

Physical correctness has been one of my goals. But as it was mentioned before, maybe priorities will change due to problems in realization. For example, there will be fjords on the map. Without some generalization in detail on the map, smaller scale mapsheets will be blurred and fjords can look nasty fast. Confirmed by my attempts with Photoshop and the relief layer style... I can't draw a new map for each one of my favored scales. That'd go beyond of my capabilities.
Besides some already known locations of settlements and a rough river placement and coastal outlines the rest is up to imagination. Story doesn't get into account that much, so next to nothing stands in the way of a realistic drawn map. Working with Wilbur and/or FT sounds better and better.

As Redrobes suggested, quilting together multiple sections of real-world terrain is a good way to get things going fairly quickly. I expect that we'll very soon see some enterprising student train a machine learning system on real-world elements and allow for drawing in important elements (rivers, mountain ranges, and so on) and the system will do the quilting and blending for you. We're not there yet, but all of the parts are available.

After all I read about you and your work, you might be that enterprising student.

I'm gonna upload some screenshots of my work so far later. Then try the demo of FT and Wilbur again. I actually can't say what exactly occured that I lost interest in using them. But I'll elaborate. Thank you for your very detailed answer!

[Harrg]

Hello Per Birkeland. I tryed to do something like you say.
I think vector is not good idea. Better use rastr, because you need many points for your map.
Make many layers, eache leayr have only one black-white color and just draw relief in each this layers like if you draw it in lines style.
You should wathc Pixie and Charerg works.
P.s. for grayscale map you can covert height map in photoshop. Use light effects in filters. Make alfa layer with your height map. Than make new full gray layer. Choose this layer. Open filter - leight effects. Change settings of leight and don`t forgot choose alfa layer of your height map in window.

[Redrobes]

These are nice maps ! What app was used to colour / shade them ?

Its definitely not photoshop for the terrain, although it could have been photoshop afterwards for the castle, village and paths.

[Harrg]

Thank you Redrobes. This is photsop. In early steps I used wuilbur for edited height map, because I cun`t made good erosion by my hand. For shading I used photoshop light effect filter and hand draw shadows.
For green-brown color map I just used gradient on height map. For satellite map I used textures mix.

[Per Birkeland]

Hello Per Birkeland. I tryed to do something like you say.
I think vector is not good idea. Better use rastr, because you need many points for your map.
Make many layers, eache leayr have only one black-white color and just draw relief in each this layers like if you draw it in lines style.
You should wathc Pixie and Charerg works.
P.s. for grayscale map you can covert height map in photoshop. Use light effects in filters. Make alfa layer with your height map. Than make new full gray layer. Choose this layer. Open filter - leight effects. Change settings of leight and don`t forgot choose alfa layer of your height map in window.

Wow, these are looking great! Thank you very much, your help is very appreciated! If my maps would look like half as well as your's I would be very happy.

[Harrg]

Thank you.
This is dirty example of grayscale map. How I can see you meent something like it?
You can make relief more hard or soft.
You just need spent many time to make black-white height map. Unfortunatly this is the most hard part of this work. But in this step you can make many details like stones, trees small group of points that than colored by texture) and make illusion of real satellite scan.
Your steps
1. make height map (HM) (make many layers, each layer one color. From black to white, when black it absolutly buttom, white is the heighest point of your world) (for easy draw map make gradient with colores)
2. choose HM and coppy it
3. make alfa layer. put HM here
4. make new layer fill it by gray color
5. open fillter --- rendering --- light effects
6. choose inlimeted light. play with settings and coner of sun.
7. in settings choose alfa layer with HM and extrude it
8 done, you have a gray texture that you can coloring now