WIP - Converting a Generated Fantasy Map

[genteelblackhole]

Hi everyone,

I've been working on the world for my homebrew D&D campaign on and off for a little while now and since I've hit a rut I figured I'd stop just looking at maps here for inspiration and actually come to ask for help.

So to start off with, I'd found Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator and decided to take whatever it gave me, because in the real world people don't get to choose their geography so I should just work with what I've got! So my initial continents looked like this:
World Map v2 krita small.png

I'd decided that since we were playing on the eastern continent that I'd just work on that first worldbuilding-wise and come back to the western one later, but I just wasn't keen on the Western one so ended up replacing it. I'd found someone on Reddit that had combined all Celtic nations into one big landmass, so being from one of these nations myself I thought it'd be a nice little easter egg for my friends. I also wasn't keen on the southernmost part of the eastern continent so I found a bit of Eritrea that I liked and used that instead, and so I've ended up with something like this:
Basic Landmasses.png

The problems I'm having is with actually adding terrain, especially in the eastern continent. For the western one I can already visualise a mountain range running up the western spine of it like the Rockies or the Andes. That would lead to a rain shadow creating a desert to the east of it, and I wanted that continent to be a bit hotter with regards to climate.
But for the western one I'm not sure where exactly it'd make sense to have things like mountain ranges. The initial map generated had a heightmap:
Continents Height Map.png

But I'm not really sold on it.

Climate-wise, I'm looking to have a similar range to Europe. So the northernmost point would probably be subarctic or just about in the arctic circle, and down on that southernmost arrowhead shaped peninsula I'm thinking Mediterranean/north African types of climates.

So yeah, I'd love to hear people's feedback on what I've got so far! Should I chop and change things to make sense geographically etc?

[genteelblackhole]

Been working on trying to follow Arsheesh's tutorial for using Wilbur for heightmaps and terrain generation, since I can't really draw mountains in (I use a laptop with a trackpad). The one change I've made is taking actual mountain ranges from real world heightmaps instead of copy-pasting generated ridges like the tutorial says to do.

Still trial and erroring things at the minute, but this is what I've currently got going

GIMP Height Map.jpg

[genteelblackhole]

tutorial followed attempt 1.png

I'm almost done with this draft of the map so far. Just need to do the rivers really and then I'll be done with everything the tutorial outlines.

I think when I go back for a second draft I'll try and tidy the edges of the mountain ranges further, they feel a little bit like they've just been dropped on top of the base map as opposed to being part of the terrain.

I'd quite like to add some forests as well, but I'm not sure what kind would fit this map's style. If anyone can link me any fitting examples that'd be really handy.

EDIT:

attempt 2.png

Minor adjustment, added the V2 Shader map from Wilbur as a layer underneath the previous picture and blended the two. I think it's done a decent job of making the mountains look nicer.