December Entry: New Dundock

[Greason Wolfe]

Ahhhh . . . Ermmm . . . Uhhh . . . Against my better judgment, what with it being that time of the year, I'm gonna have a go at this one. I'm still waffling a bit on which projection to use (probably Hammer or Wagner IV depending on how things compare between the two) for the main portion of the map, however, there will most certainly be an "off-planet" view included as well.

Haven't accomplished much yet other than to select a world to work with, and pounding out a new climate image to use with FTPro (which may still need a bit of tweaking at this point). I'm not quite happy with the "ocean texture" just yet, and may need to build a new lighting file for this project. I'll also need to get in and edit things a bit in terms of elevations, temperatures and rainfall, then, maybe, slap a nice cloud overlay on top of everything.

For now, it is still in an equirectangular projection and the climate/biome coloring has been laid in. There are definitely some areas that need to be dried up and/or heated up a bit, but we'll see how that goes.

If I am lucky (very lucky, perhaps) things won't get stupid at work and I'll have time to finish this up before the challenge deadline. Wish me luck.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

[Greason Wolfe]

Surprisingly enough, I made some progress today.

A bit of work in Wilbur to fill in the land-locked oceans, some erosion and a few tiny tweaks in the climate/biome overlay. Still need to adjust temperature and rainfall amounts before I start placing points of interest. Also laid out the basis for the map, as a whole with, as I promised, an "off-planet" view in the upper left portion and room for a technical readout in the upper right portion. I'm thinking, in the long run, I'll try to set this up to look as though it is on a monitor screen of some sort, but, again, we'll just have to wait and see how that goes.

For the time being, I've opted for the Wagner IV projection, however, it seems to have the same river problem in FTPro that the Equirectangular projection does. That may force me into the Hammer projection, though I don't like it quite as much as this projection.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

[Steel General]

Looks good so far, hope you have time to finish it.

[Greason Wolfe]

Thanks, SG. Things are looking good so far, in terms of having time to finish this one. I've made pretty good headway on it so far and, though it wouldn't be my best work, I could probably finish this up in the next couple of days. I am, however, gonna experiment a bit today, tweak a few things here and there and see if I get results I'm happier with.

GW

[tilt]

good to see you entering GW, and looking good - may your (real) work be slow and your pen fast

[su_liam]

It's a nice color ramp you have there. At least for the narrow spidery continents you have. Hopefully you'll post that after you win the comp .

[Greason Wolfe]

It's a nice color ramp you have there. At least for the narrow spidery continents you have. Hopefully you'll post that after you win the comp .

Well, I don't know about winning and all, but I most certainly will share the climate image I'm using, and I won't even make anyone wait until the end of the challenge. Mind you, it's still in tweak mode right now, but here is the foundation for it. Once I have it finalized, I'll post a new version of it.

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

Well, I got some more work done on this today.

First and foremost, I stretched the shores a bit. I wanted to expand on the "habitable" land some and make the mountains a little less dominant. The rough editing was done in FTPro, but eventually I sent the file to Wilbur so I could re-fill in the landlocked and start working on the erosion process. Once satisfied with that, I sent the whole mess back to FTPro.

I had hoped to circumvent the "straight, horizontal river" problem that FTPro has with some projections, but, sadly enough, I was unable to do so, at least not at this time. The idea was to use an overlay to place the rivers rather than depending on FTPro to lay them out. I'll have to look at that approach again and see where I went wrong, as it seems like it might be a good way to place lakes as well, particularly those above sea level.

To that end, I've opted for a Hammer projection in the lower portion of the map, though now I'm toying with the idea of using that area to "zoom in" on the focus of the map that goes along with the back-story that is developing in my head.

I haven't tackled the temperature/rainfall editing yet, but hope to get to that over the weekend. Still, progress is progress, and I'm fairly happy with the way this is going so far.

GW

Edit : As a side note, I'm really starting to like this world and may pursue it further once the challenge is complete, though I'll probably alter the genre from a sci-fi setting to a fantasy setting.

### Latest WIP ###

[ravells]

Love the colours that you have for your FT shader. I've always been unhappy with mine, they end up hugging the contours too much and look unnatural, but yours looks beautiful. I think this one is going to be a doozy when it's done! Great work, Greason! Maybe just draw the rivers in by hand rather than rely on the software?

[jtougas]

Beautiful !!