Thread: The tough start

okay for forests there are two great styles you can use

Pasis' style which can be found in his tut here, the full tut is on page 5
[Award Winner] Rising up the mountains in Photoshop

Or you can use ascension's style here Mini tutorial on photoshop trees

I personally use ascension's style but I've being experimenting a lot with it of late. Both styles are open to experimentation.

also, sorry if i broke any rules for posting links to other people's stuff

-D-

I like it, but then, I'm biased Rivers look fine to me. As for cliffs, I've only made one experiment on that, for my Godslayer map of the Escarpment in the Belgariad. I didn't pull it off too well but I have a new idea beginning to form. If you come up with something then, please, let me know

The thing that jump out at me is lakes. You have a lot of lakes, which is fine, but water goes into lakes from somewhere, and water has to leave a lake somewhere. When you talk about lakes that are large enough to be seen on a continental map, that's a lot of water and results in a significant river draining away the excess. One rule to keep in mind regarding the flow of water, although it can be violated under certain circumstances, it seldom is: rivers don't like to flow close to a lake or sea without draining. The reason for this is that soil, the medium that establishes the flow of water across dry land, is continuously changing in response to that flow. Eventually, unless there is a formidable barrier between a river and a lake or sea, a channel will be cut. Once the shortest path is established, it is unlikely that a longer path will later come out ahead until the deposition of silt at the mouth of the river fundamentally changes the distances involved.

Over the eons, all shortcuts are found. Since shortcuts, once found, are seldom relinquished, it makes sense that few exceptions exist outside of those areas where active reformation is underway.

Good luck with your project. Good stuff!

My favorite part of the map are those underwater cliffs near the coasts. It seems to be one of the themes of a map based on the Ascension tutorials. Where is the tutorial that teaches one how to do that?

It's in Ascension's atlas tutorial and they are the continental shelf. If you look at Google Earth, you'll see them in real life.

Thanks for the trees, I'll start working with them with my next map

As for cliffs... hell, I don't even know where to begin with. Get some mountains, erase the high ones, add emboss to the low ones, "flat" them (transform tool)? Maybe it'll work...

As for the rivers and lakes! I must have missed that fact with rivers flowing closely to lakes, so thanks for pointing that out, but I really can't agree that a lake has to have a river entering and leaving it. I know a few lakes that are "stand-alone". It's hard for me to explain stuff when english is not your first language.

Sometime today I'll try to post some of my next, larger project

First off... Welcome Aboard!

I like it so far. The rivers look fine to me as well. For the cliffs maybe some kind of modification to the 'continental shelf' process would work. Been a while since I looked at that so not sure whether it would be workable or not.