How do you think these mountains were drawn?

[Skalimoi]

First, beware:

https://s.geo.admin.ch/824e6dab32

The beautiful swiss maps!

So, I'm a huge fan of the swisstopo style for the mountains, they look absolutely gorgeous. The thing is, I wanna recreate that style, but it looks handmade. No problem, I am willing to spend some weeks drawing those lines, but I wonder if they follow some... method? because it looks very time consuming.

The first thing I have noticed is that they only draw the rocky texture on the slopes that are inclined in more than 30 degrees (for the most part). Let me show you:

https://s.geo.admin.ch/824e708b60

You see?

I use Wilbur and World Machine to generate my maps, so I think I can obtain that data such as slope, hillshade, etc. pretty easily. If any of you are familiar with these programs, what type of data do you think I would need?

The second thing I noticed is that the contour lines are included in the texture, in black. I can do that too.

So, how would you approach this style? Is there any way to try to automate in on Photoshop, or do I have to do it entirely by hand? Thanks in advance!

[waldronate]

http://www.reliefshading.com/ might be of use, as might http://shadedrelief.com/ (they each have a somewhat different focus, but both have good information on such maps). Also, look at Bernhard Jenny's work (start here: https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/bernhard-jenny ) as well as the Commission on Mountain Cartography ( http://mountaincartography.org/ ). Follow the research traces out from those sites and you'll have more than enough information on how to do such things.

There have been many attempts to automate such maps, and there have been some good successes. The secret to getting them to look really good, though, tends to be proper generalization of landforms (a somewhat difficult problem) and the non-global lighting that tends to be used on such maps (light direction may vary within a single map in order to best accentuate the landforms). The scree painting (rocky areas of slopes) can be done in a number of ways, including via http://www.screepainter.com/ from Bernhard Jenny.

[Falconius]

Honestly I'd do it by hand, but only because I'm not the kind of person who could figure out how to automate it. It'd be very time consuming for a map of any great size though, so If I were you you and wanted to start a map like this I'd choose a very small area map to experiment and figure things out on before expanding to larger ones. Other than that I'd take the wilbur bump map, use a program to cast a light on it and get that picture and then lower the opacity, in a new layer I'd probably trace the valley lines in a glaring colour like saturated blue, and the ridge lines in red, and then just go start putting in the hatch lines in a new layer. Interestingly there seems to be no particular uniformity of direction with the hatch lines on the map (some seem to go down slope, some seem to go across slope), but maybe I just don't know how to read them properly.

[Skalimoi]

http://www.reliefshading.com/ might be of use, as might http://shadedrelief.com/ (they each have a somewhat different focus, but both have good information on such maps). Also, look at Bernhard Jenny's work (start here: https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/bernhard-jenny ) as well as the Commission on Mountain Cartography ( http://mountaincartography.org/ ). Follow the research traces out from those sites and you'll have more than enough information on how to do such things.

There have been many attempts to automate such maps, and there have been some good successes. The secret to getting them to look really good, though, tends to be proper generalization of landforms (a somewhat difficult problem) and the non-global lighting that tends to be used on such maps (light direction may vary within a single map in order to best accentuate the landforms). The scree painting (rocky areas of slopes) can be done in a number of ways, including via http://www.screepainter.com/ from Bernhard Jenny.

Thanks for the response! I am quite familiar with reliefshading and shadedrelief, but I didn't know the other websites, so I'll take a look. Also, you saved me with Screepainter, because I think that's exactly what I need. I'll give it a try!

[Skalimoi]

Honestly I'd do it by hand, but only because I'm not the kind of person who could figure out how to automate it. It'd be very time consuming for a map of any great size though, so If I were you you and wanted to start a map like this I'd choose a very small area map to experiment and figure things out on before expanding to larger ones. Other than that I'd take the wilbur bump map, use a program to cast a light on it and get that picture and then lower the opacity, in a new layer I'd probably trace the valley lines in a glaring colour like saturated blue, and the ridge lines in red, and then just go start putting in the hatch lines in a new layer.

Yeah, that's kinda what I thought. I think that style doesn't work well on a high-scale map, so I was thinking about trying it on 1:25000 ones. Your approach on it seems very interesting.

Interestingly there seems to be no particular uniformity of direction with the hatch lines on the map (some seem to go down slope, some seem to go across slope), but maybe I just don't know how to read them properly.

I know, right? I think that's why I couldn't think of a way to automate it effectively, because it really seemed hand-drawn following an artistic style.

[Skalimoi]

The scree painting (rocky areas of slopes) can be done in a number of ways, including via http://www.screepainter.com/ from Bernhard Jenny.

Also I just checked out this. If I understand correctly, Screepainter does all those little dots/rocks, isn't it? That will be useful, but I still haven't got enough information for the rocky textures of the mountains. I read again the info on Reliefshading and found nothing. Does this mean I'll need to do it manually? I just need confirmation.

[waldronate]

Screepainter is for the stippled areas, yes. I probably had an image from http://www.shadedrelief.com/texture_shading/ crossed with the scree stuff in my feeble old brain, for some reason. Tools like texture shading rely heavily on the quality of an underlying heightfield to get their effect, though, so you'd need a good heightfield to make it work.

Replicating the swisstopo map areas for exposed rock is likely easier done by hand than most other techniques at this point. The maps that you showed are approximately contour lines with skeletal lines between them to get a sense of shading. I don't know of an available piece of software that does that sort of technique.

Cartographic Relief Presentation by Eduard Imhof is also a good reference for general terrain depiction ( https://books.google.com/books?id=cV...page&q&f=false is a Googly Books rendition)

[Skalimoi]

Screepainter is for the stippled areas, yes. I probably had an image from http://www.shadedrelief.com/texture_shading/ crossed with the scree stuff in my feeble old brain, for some reason.

No worries! It is a valuable resource nevertheless.

Then I'll do it by hand, let's see what I can do. It's time to grab my good 'ol drawing tablet. Thanks for the book, I'll check it out! I love Imhof's maps so I'm sure I can learn a lot of things from him.

[waldronate]

I ran across the paper that I was thinking of the other day for automatic Swiss style rock depiction (called, amusingly enough, "Automatic Swiss style rock depiction"): https://www.research-collection.ethz...0.11850/201368

It's worth reading for its explanation of the theory behind the art. The references are also worth reading, even if you're not going to implement a method such as shown.