Map 34 - The Eastern Reaches of Khaluk

[Redrobes]

Long time no mapping....

So for starters I took the allocated area and upres'ed it and crinkled up the coastline a little and generated some masks of exactly where the disputed borders lie in the west - Damn those Cocarnian infedels ! I shall raise an army and the sunset will be red with the blood of those heathens.

Ok so arrapently they are undead... I shall raise and army and throw garlic at them !

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[Diamond]

Just steal all their yarn and needles and you'll be good to go.

And yes, nice to see you mapping again!

[Chashio]

Hmm, this should be fun to watch.

[Redrobes]

I asked if there was a height map for this area but alas this island region on the left was just photoshopped up and its going to come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that mine will be in 3D. The reason is that its more effort up front but less effort downstream if you like the kind of realistic terrain that I do. I have also mentioned about three times in the past my method for making 3D terrain out of 2D and this is a chance for me to actually post some attachments at every stage so its more obvious.

So starting with my mask (see top post of this thread) I did an edge detect on it and got the border out as a line (i.e. an all white page with just a line land border on it). Then I printed it on a sheet of A4 - though you could do this next part digitally if you like. With a blank land and only a line for the border, draw on the edge boundary rectangle which encloses the land border line so that you can cut it out later. Then start putting on contours with a fine pencil or better still a thin draftsman's pen. Look at where the existing rivers are and guess where the high ground must be in order to drive the water into them. Working from the peaks downwards, draw the concentric lines so that they dont touch. Clearly in real contours they could but its going to make work for you later if you do. Work down to the land border and then continue past it out to sea. Then I scanned back in my drawing (Pic 1). Then whack the contrast up to max so there are only full black and full white pixels in it. Tidy it up a bit so the contours still dont touch and then flood fill the bands black and white like a zebra. Start at the highest peak and work down. (See Pic 2).

Then again, tidy it up some more till your happy and also try to make the white and black bands about even sized. Then count the number of bands from highest peak to lowest part of the sea. Mine was 19. Divide 255 by 19 and pick a number which is a bit lower. I used 12. Then, starting at the highest peak, if its white then leave it, if its black then also leave it for the mo and come back to it. Take the next band which lets say was black, fill it with 255 - 12 which is 243. Flood fill the next white band 231 etc and work down. Finally, go back and sort out the first band if it was black to start with make it 255. Now I started at the lowest point of the sea and made that 0 and worked up but I got into a pickle so start at the high point and work down. (See the 2D Pic 3).

This in 3D looks like Pic 4 so blur it a lot until it evens out the bands. Thats 2D Pic 5 and in 3D Pic 6.

Thats about as far as you can go before needing touch up in a 3D editor but its enough to get you relief shading if working in 2D. Theres still a little banding in it but thats the limitation of 8 bit greyscale and ill put it into my 3D app and smooth it some more then it will be better. So for now thats where I am up to.

Edit: Ordered my images ok now.
Edit2: Picture order is still a bit ropey but you get the idea.

[Redrobes]

I added some mountains and ran it up with the shader and got it to this point.

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[J.Edward]

I meant to mention last night, I love what your doing with this.
I enjoyed going through the pics of your process for creating the terrain.

[Will Phillips]

Nice - I think the topography matches a lot with what I was envisioning in my head for my area to the north of you. Let's collaborate on this one, eh, neighbor?

[Carnifex]

We, the mighty brain-eaters, would like to inform you that we've employed brain-less dwarves to flatten the land that lies between us. That way, the carts with the yearly brain supply are easier for our skeleton horses to pull.

[Redrobes]

I meant to mention last night, I love what your doing with this.
I enjoyed going through the pics of your process for creating the terrain.

Thanks, I have tried to textually describe this process a few times so this gave me an opportunity to get some pictures of the stages and now I can just refer people to this post in future. It has come up a lot in the past and I did quite of few of these.

Nice - I think the topography matches a lot with what I was envisioning in my head for my area to the north of you. Let's collaborate on this one, eh, neighbor?

Your welcome to steal the map or height map as a basis for your section if it helps you. But I cant go through the process of doing the contours again if I missed a bit.

We, the mighty brain-eaters, would like to inform you that we've employed brain-less dwarves to flatten the land that lies between us. That way, the carts with the yearly brain supply are easier for our skeleton horses to pull.

I should also like to mention that the standard appareil of the Khalukians is a very tight fitting fully encompasing plate steel helmet with double buckled under chin strap. Most difficult to chew through ! Additionally, a declaration has been made this day that any dwarf seen on the western border will be subject to a short maths exam and those that dont pass shall be executed on the spot. Those living dwarves that skipped math class and dont add up good had better start doing extra home work.

I should look at my neighbours and see what the land form looks like. I just stuck in those mountains in those positions just to get the process running. I think the mountain ranges are a bit fat and need to be modified but its all script based so I can move them pretty easily. I may have to write some special brainless dwarf sub routines to my script if theres some unnatural terraforming going on !

Ok - so this is what it looks like around me.

[Redrobes]

I redid the mountain masks to match up with my neighbours mountains.

Since then I have been running the world sim with all its tedious rain settings and so on. Only when I use my program do I remember why I don't release it.... Anyway, after a pitched battle with it I have some semblance of settings that dont suck. The problem with artificial height mapped data is that it was never made during the process of erosion and so on so it always generates loads of local water troughs. There is some settings to get around this but the proper way to do it takes so long to run I cant be bothered. So for now here is where its at and maybe ill faff with it some more yet and maybe let it chug for many hours over the w/e and see what it comes up with.

It has started putting some beaches in now and I can just about make out the waves on the shore but at this scale they are a single pixel wide. This wip is scaled down from the full sized run too so you may not see anything that suggests they are there.

Edit: Also a gratuitous 3D view where you can see a better view of the beaches.
Edit2: Ok, rendered out the texture at higher res and cut out the beach. Thats better !

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