Little MAP in 3D to develop workflow

Ok, I want to make some maps in 3D and stumbled upon World Machine. Great program, "easy" to learn and hard to master. Second project is Vue 10. Here is my progress so far ;)

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I would love to hear your comments. This isn´t about realism, basic idea is to create maps.

P.S.: Terrain is done in WM2, water in first map PS, and rendering in Vue 10.5 PLE

You're on a good way. I'll guess the terrain was imported as a heightmap? More please :)

Ok, I advanced a bit expanding my territory. The spikes seem to be hickups in the procedurals. Can´t spot them in the terrain file (pov tga), need to get that cleared out. Here is a 4000x4000px render, perhaps a bit over the top, I wanted to see how it looks. It took about 1 hour.
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Edit: Removed the spikes in PS. Couldn´t stand them ;)

Looks pretty good so far ! It might be me because I often have trouble with this but the water seems to rise above the land. The shadow seems extreme also. But as I said it might just be me. Also there is a evident horizontal pattern in the hills in the North East . Good luck with your experiments I'll be asking for tips as it progresses!!

You are right. It is a problem of scale in vue ( at least its a problem for me ;) ) Importing the height map from world machine the relation terrain height to extends seem to get distorted. The mountains are far to high relating to the horizontal dimension. And being to high they cast large and hard shadows over to much area. If I scale the whole terrain up to 1000x1000km without touching height it gets very flat and I don´t get the materials in vue work very well. Looks all mushed up. Next thing I´ll try is to gently lower the height of the terrain in vue. I wished that the dimensions would stay correct. Perhaps someone has some experience with stuff like that. I googled very much but information is kind of thin on this area. I suppose the mentioned software can be used for projects like this but it is on the edge of their intention. It´s just me forcing my will to create a world designed in broad strokes with a procedural engine providing the wanted detail. We will see and every help is welcome.

Don't know WM, but I had they same problem in Wilbur (also not very good at it). I've used a tutorial Waldronate has posted recently and added an additional layer between coast and mountains. That worked fine, but it was just an experiment. I'll have to spend more time with it.

The reason the sea looks like it's above the land is because the lighting from the southwest. Traditionally, a shaded relief map has the light from the northwest, so when you see a map that does not follow that convention, the bevels will appear inverted unless and until you can reorient your eyes to view it properly.

It's a little annoying, actually, because a map of a northern hemisphere locale really should be lit from the south.

Could you get rid of the spikes in photoshop before you move the height map into Vue? Perhaps a levels adjust to reduce the contrast on the highest points?

Mostly those spikes can be get rid of using slight varriations in the fractal generation inputs. Please don´t ask me about mathematics as I don´t know a bit about that. In my experiment there where two whcih I just erased using content aware fills. Worked like a charm in this case and was probably faster than anything else considering render and world building times. Got myself a copy of vue 10 and try to learn it right now. I will start with non mapping tutorials as those are plenty at geeksatplay studios and give a deeper understanding of the workings of vue. I´ll get back at the map the time my understanding of it all is a little better. THX for the comment on lighting. It´s all about what we are used to...

Hi Trödel, have a look at this, hope it helps :)