Thread: Critisism on new World Map

I like this new map much better.

I have encountered a problem with my maps in FT and Wilbur. When I export my finished map in FT to Wilbur it isn't shown as a height map, just the silhouette of the lands. I have tried other maps and they work, so it must be something wrong with the map that I am working with. I have read in another thread that there is a "black dot" located on the map that may ruin the whole file. I seem to have found it, shown in the attached images. How should I do to get rid of it, so that I don't have to make a new map just because of the black dot?

I imported the map to FT3 and used the "normalize data" action, though it doesn't seem to fix it .What should I do?

Normalize data won't fix teh issue; it just turns the INF and NaN values into something that you can edit away. You should be able to paint away those values with a brush that has a value close to the surrounding values.

When transferring data between Wilbur and FT, prefer the MDR file format to other formats such as PNG. MDR is a 32-bit floating-point value and will preserve all of the features of your data, even INF or NaN values. I recommend painting out those very high or low peaks before exporting to Wilbur, though, because the extreme values will mess with the automatic height calculation and you'll lose the appearance of most terrain information (it's still there, but the lighting model has limited dynamic range and the extreme values will minimize the contributions of the "normal" values).

The problem is fixed, thank you waldronate for the advice!
This is the current version of the World after that I followed this tutorial: http://www.worldofgotha.com/PF_TUTOR...rah_index.html
I'm currently trying to figure out the climate and wind patterns following this tutorial: http://jc.tech-galaxy.com/bricka/climate_cookbook.html

Any idea of where deserts and other climates may show up? Any criticism?

I'm curious about the rationale for some of your mountain range placements. For instance, the broad Himalaya-style mountain range on the large eastern continent that's interrupted by an inland sea, and a similar phenomenon way off on the far left of the map -- mountain ranges don't usually have sudden depressions somewhere in the middle, they generally extend across a continent the long way. I suppose looking at the seafloor elevations would help a lot in thinking about this.

The other thing that bugs me a little -- and this is a common FT problem, I think -- is that the height "noise" in the inland areas is a bit too uniformly dispersed, or high variance, or something, to look realistic. The broad flat plains and high plateaus that one would expect don't appear to be there, they're interrupted by piddly little stand-alone mountains. This happens in a few places in the real world (see northern Africa and western Australia -- that is, it sometimes happens on really old continental shield) but not in most places, even quite tectonically stable ones. It just looks kinda weird.

Also, what makes your big mountain ranges so uniformly three chains across? And what's going on in the swirly zone on the middle left?

Thanks octopod for taking the time to share your critic and thoughts!
I am finished with the continents shape and form, but by no means the mountains, so it's always open for change and adjustment.
I completely agree with you about the random and bumpy noise terrain, and sadly I don't know what I should do about it in it's current state. Either I will have to find a way to get rid of it, or I have to use the FT maps as guides and not solid set truth about the world.

For the mountain formations and their placement I have used tectonics to figure out convergent, divergent and transform boundaries. The eastern continent are actually three plates sliding towards each others. The little inner sea is part of the south eastern plate etc, and with the west continents the same principle, or something... I am not a geologist or expert at all, but I try to follow the advice given on this website and other sources on the web and books.

The swirly zone to the left is.. well, I want some realistic functions to the world, but I couldn't help myself to add some unrealistic elements to I thought it looked interesting, but maybe it just looks silly?

The three chains across are my poor first attempt to draw out where the mountains ranges would go. I didn't want to make any super fancy stuff if it was going to change anyway :/ do the mountains on the north east continent, the one breaking apart from the big continent, look more plausible? Do you have any tips/ideas on how to make the mountains look better in FT when using the prescale offset tool?

I don't have much experience with FT, unfortunately, so I don't know what kind of editing you can do to get rid of that random-bumps weirdness.

So the swirly thing IS magic, then? OK, that's cool! I really like everything about your Himalayas out there other than the big hole in the middle of them. If you shuffled that big sea over eastward so that it was solidly on the southeast side and drained to the sea in the east, it would look great; or if you moved it a teeny bit further north to put it on one of the other plates. Where it is, though, it kind of throws me off. Similarly the bite taken out of the mountain range in the far west just looks kind of inexplicable.

The mountains on the northeast continent look beautiful; I assume that's got a subducting ocean plate on its eastern side and a rift like the Red Sea forming on the western side.

Which of these oceans are you thinking of as being on top of continental crust, and which on top of oceanic? I'm guessing that your crazy concentric archipelagos in the far southeast are all separated by shallow warm ocean on continental crust, like Indonesia, but is that long ocean in the west also like that (like the Cretaceous Interior Seaway)? If so, cool beans, I really think that there need to be more epicontinental oceans in fantasy mapping. :-D

kinda looks like you took earth map and liquified it in photoshop (and additional editing)

I can assure you, I didn't use Photoshop and additional settings/filters to make this I used FT, Fractal Terrains, and I agree that it looks similar to earth. I have to do something about it then!