Thread: EIP - Talstem Islands

I honestly think that in the shallow part, that it still looks a bit too splotchy, this however, is probably a personal opinion as opposed to an actual default on your part... it seems as if ... its 'almost' there... but you haven't quite put your finger on that final touch for the shallows ... the rest looks fantastic however... very photorealistic ... almsot like a snapshot from an aerial photo

Originally Posted by GlassSphere

jfrazierjr, I'm trying to interpret what your saying. Maybe im confused because I don't have a single water layer it was about 3 in the first image, now its at 6-7. But even after merging them into one, I'm still abit lost as multiple layers your naming have the same name- "water layer"

First, this is amazing. Personally, I think I might like the original water a bit more, though this is still great looking.

As for criticisms, the beach pat is too regular. I assume you create a path and stroked the path with your sand color or something? I have some ideas about that if you'd like, but it depends on how your layers for the sand/regular land are lain out.

For the sandbars, assuming you want them below water, you would pick which water layers (perhaps 1, maybe 2 at the most?) you want on top and create a layer mask with a large blur for your sandbar. This will allow you to get your sandbar to fade into the deeper water and disappear.

Joe

you could use a gradient mask to fade it under water as well.... it would work nice in conjunction with all of what jojo just suggested...

As everyone's said, this is looking really good. I much prefer the second type of water, but it seems like those are some damn big waves.

Hm, waves. It would be really cool to have water with wave-patterns... Like dunes. I have to try to make something like that. x]

Nice map! As stated, it looks like a aerial photo. The only thing that bugs me is how "soft" the shapes are. The jungle edge (and even the shorelines) seem too smooth, making the islands look blobby. It is like it needs more fractalization, or something.

The other thing (regarding Joe's comment on the beaches) is that there should be a difference between the windward and leeward sides of the islands, in terms of the beach widths.

-Rob A>

Originally Posted by RobA

The other thing (regarding Joe's comment on the beaches) is that there should be a difference between the windward and leeward sides of the islands, in terms of the beach widths.

-Rob A>

Thanks Rob, it's good to have something to go on. I knew they looked to uniform to my eyes, but did not really know the real world reason for why they shouldn't. Could you provide some details as far as how the wind affects the beachline? ie, if the wind is blowing E->W, then the beaches on the E side would be [wider|thinner] than thos on the W side?

Joe

Originally Posted by jfrazierjr

Thanks Rob, it's good to have something to go on. I knew they looked to uniform to my eyes, but did not really know the real world reason for why they shouldn't. Could you provide some details as far as how the wind affects the beachline? ie, if the wind is blowing E->W, then the beaches on the E side would be [wider|thinner] than thos on the W side?

Joe

That is what Wikipedia is good for .... yer supposed to go and research it jojo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_geography

Well the splotchy-ness is intended. You can sortof see the blackish patches in the shallow part. I think it's a very realistic texture of a seafloor. It could be patches of black sand or seaweed, but whatever it is, most ocean floors aren't endless seas of white sand. I did blur the original water's waves in the center, so at the moment they are only slightly visible bumps.

As for the waves on the outside being to big. WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!!?!??! Is 10,000x10,000 pixels not enough? should I make it up to 20k then shrink it? It'll be twice as small then. Or my computer will explode. That reminds me though, I forgot to slightly distort the waves to be abit more organic.

About the beaches. They are nothing more than a light/white/yellow inner glow applied to the islands right now. As for the jungle being to soft, yea, the line from the jungle to the beaches is really soft but I later hoped to amend it by adding trees onto the edges of the beach.

The island's edges may seem soft, but I realized at this more zoomed-in scale, The coastlines are going to be alot softer than I'm used to. We commonly see maps on the continental scale where the coast should have a lot of bumpiness and variance. But this close anything alot more bumpy on the shorelines would have been quickly eroded away.

Well, Here is the latest results from a ton of experimentation. After attempting and failing at something for 4 hours straight you get a little bored, so It's been a few days. I think I really got it down. I was trying to do too much when the look was already quite realistic from what I've seen from satellite photos. The things I added are:
1: Underwater lightened around coastlines/beach. This was the hardest part. I wanted to create an effect that didn't look like a simple linear glow. After trying tons of different filters and effects, I found a really simple one that worked fine-. A bevel (might as well be a glow) with an adjusted gloss contour.

2: Shoreline waves. I wanted them abit longer actually, but I'm still amazed at how simple it was to create the effect by getting the typical water/glass distortion to contour with the shorelines.

3: Shoreline Trees. You'll notice that the transition between beach and jungle is looking better, with trees now gradually forming the line. This was interesting to create, as I had to widen the coast before putting the trees on it, or else there wouldn't be enough room for them without some of them jutting into the water.

4: Even smaller outer-ocean waves. 16,000x16,000 pixels!!! EEEEGAADS!. The effect was applied and shrunk back to 2,000 pixels. This took over 30 minutes for 3 steps overall. But oh does it look sooo goooood.

Other: I made a little sandbar by just a little brushing on the island's mask. It doesn't look great, but I know if I took a look at some sandbars I could eventually paint in some better ones.

Whats wrong: Beaches don't have varying width. I know how to, its rather simple, it'd be just 1 more step to widening the beaches for the trees. But to be honest after looking at a lot of beaches with google earth. They all tend to have a very set width. The effect to slightly randomizing the beaches width wouldn't be too realistic either. It would be best to manually adjust it with a simple very light erasing of the island's mask. The main problem with this is the tree-line will also have to be manually adjusted. Not that big of a deal I guess, that in order to manually adjust something you have to also manually adjust that section on another layer.

Tell me whatcha think. Personally I think I've got it down enough to write a really comprehensive tutorial on it.