Thread: Vana Gloria - World Map with GIMP, Wilbur and a newbie

I think it looks good and a fascinating process how you made it thus far.

However, I don't get the feeling your two hemispheres really fit perfectly - the left and east edges (it's probably just optical because of the narrow sea between the eastern and western isles and how the coastline loops downards at both ends) and another thing that gets me ... a lot of the islands seem very plump. :S I know, it sounds weird, but that's how they look to me. They all have nice, rounded ends and pretty fat central regions.

Unless your intent was continental masses with very sharp dropoffs into the ocean, you might consider applying an exponential operator to the surface (File>>Mathematical>>Exponent in Wilbur). It will smooth the transitions a bit and make your mountains more prominent.

And yes, Wilbur's erosion doesn't give plausible results when the individual pixel size gets much beyond 100 meters or so. Wilbur also makes the simplifying assumption that terrain is the same everywhere (it's all just mud, not rocks and mud). This simplifying assumption really kills the effect for a certain class of folks.

Unless your intent was continental masses with very sharp dropoffs into the ocean, you might consider applying an exponential operator to the surface (File>>Mathematical>>Exponent in Wilbur). It will smooth the transitions a bit and make your mountains more prominent.

Thanks, tried that and it worked like a charm.

However, I don't get the feeling your two hemispheres really fit perfectly

Went back to double check... and they don't . The original coastline outline is out by a fraction (less than a degree), and the various erosion passes just exaggerated it, plus the lack of wrapping on various processes. It's not as bad as it could be, but it still needs fixing.

a lot of the islands seem very plump. :S I know, it sounds weird, but that's how they look to me. They all have nice, rounded ends and pretty fat central regions.

I hate the islands too. Are there any good tutorials for making large-scale island chains? I also wonder if I should pull the whole large crescent further west. It looks a bit odd out there on its own.



Well here's mark 2, after lots of mostly fruitless experimenting with erosion. The same eroded landscape, exported into GIMP, was used to make the mountain textures, river placement and lowland erosion (largely invisible on this scale, just as it should be, but still informing river flow when imported back into Wilbur). Unfortunately there's some nasty deep gashes around the edges of the highland areas. Hopefully that's easily fixed with some blending and general tidying of the borders between techniques.


Relevant section at full scale


Whole map (half-scale)

So now the texture looks a bit better, but the distribution of mountains and highlands still looks like arse. And the islands. And I haven't fixed the hemisphere wrapping yet.

(P.S. Is there any way to change the tread tag? I could have sworn I checked WIP)