Untitled Practice Map

[Humabout]

While I'm not entirely certain just where I'm headed with this map, I can say there is one unifying theme - I'm primarily using tutorials by Arsheesh. The map was made with his Eriond Tutorial, and the map symbols are from his quicky nifty tutorial on making, well, map icons. Eventually, I'll probably round out the map with his border tutorial. Come to think of it, the only thing that wasn't the result of one of his tutorials are the compass rose and chart lines (done in Inkscape and then fiddled with in GIMP).

As I make this, I'm letting the flow of the land dictate where points of interest fall. I have the rough idea of a region where city-states are just coming into being and most of the world is virgin wilderness. Other than that, I haven't really gotten a solid vibe going, but I'm sure something will materialize. That or all the wire-fu flicks I've been watching will turn this into a knockoff of the Autumn and Spring Period.

Anyway, enough train-of-thought babbling. Here's a map!



The one thing I see so far is that I have a bit of graininess going on in the mountains and a few other spots. I need to figure out how to smooth that out a tad. I think it came from Wilbur. The mountains also look a tad anemic; something else I'll need to tinker with.

[Humabout]

The more I looked at the last attempt, the less I liked about it. I liked the idea of an isolated area, geographically, but not showing a western boundary didn't make it closed enough. That combined with the fact that the mountains are definitely not scaled properly to the map and having the attention span of a caffeinated hamster, I have started over again. Here are the steps I've worked through so far:

Coastal Outline.

I like this a bit better. Now there are some volcanic islands near the mouth of the sea and a pretty southern peninsula.


Unblended Mountains.

Now I have some highlands, a coastal mountain range, some mountainous islands, and a big ol' honkin' Himalaya-style mountain range starting in the east. I deviated from Arsheesh's tutorial slightly here to add a second layer of elevation I entitled Hills. The intent is to give more height variation to the highlands so they end up more hilly.

Hills Blended

At this point, the hills have been blended together, merged down into one layer, and blended with the land below.

Mountains Blended

The mountains have now been blended into the hills below and set to 25% opacity with an addition blend mode. It took some tinkering with reduced brightness and contrast to get this to look right, but I think I got moderately decent ridges roughness in the mountains.

GIMP Height Map

A bit more touching up plus a quick decrease in contrast to even out the lowlands a tad later, the height map is finished and ready for Wilbur.

As always, comments and criticisms are welcome and invited, even!

[arsheesh]

I'm glad that my tutorials are of use to you Humabout. The graininess you mentioned in the first image is likely the Noise that is added in Wilbur during the erosion process.

Adding in a secondary hills layer was a nice touch. I look forward to seeing how it turns out in the rendered image. I did note that you still have a few edges in the mountains to the south with some hard edges (see the attached image). If you run this through Wilbur as is this will likely result in some jagged edges or really steep (almost vertical) inclines in the rendered image.



There are a couple of options for remedying this. The first is to get in there with the eraser (at low opacity) again and keep at it till you can't tell where the mountain layer begins and the hills layer ends. The second is you can run it through Wilbur as is but make sure to run a few more passes of the Precipiton Based Erosion filter. Each time you run a pass it erodes a bit more. If you do this be sure to add more noise between passes or else you'll start to lose detail and the map will become too smooth. I should warn you though that if you use this method expect to have a ton of tiny river inlets along your shoreline.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Humabout]

Thanks for pointing those out! I thought I'd gotten rid of those. And thank you for the tips. I had a feeling the graininess was Wilbur-related. God knows I'm just scratching the surface of that software. I cleaned up those edges you pointed out:



Ocean Bottom for Flavor


And I created a sea bed using a the same difference clouds trick as for the land, but with Contrast -50 and Brightness -50 to get a relative brightness I wanted. Then I used a black airbrush to darken the bits where I want deep water. Lastly, I used my Land Mask to select the area where the land was, and applied Select > Grow (16) + Select > Feather (25) to create a coastal selection and filled it with white on a new Normal blend mode layer at 20% opacity. I did repeated this until I had four coastal layers to get a nice coastal glow. I will need to see how this actually looks with the land when it's finished, but right now, I kind of like it. It won't be going to Wilbur, though. Next step is to just colorize it as is, if I don't go back and redo the coastal waters with more feathering (they look a tad bubbly right now).

[Humabout]

Here's the colorized water map with an inverted Land Mask for the sake of seeing how it will look with land. I'll actually use the River Mask on it so the water colors the rivers.

[Humabout]

I still need to do some labeling and toy with the contrast and such a tad, make a border and legend, and smack a title on this thing. But here's the land and water:



Few things jump out at me immediately right now. 1) The compass rose has jagged edges, (2) the rose + chart lines don't feel like they sit in the map right now, and (3) the land meets the water a tad too abruptly for my taste. I need to figure all that out, still.

I'd love any comments or criticism!

[arsheesh]

Looking good Humabout. Was the compass rose from a font? I've noticed that some compass fonts tend to be low quality, which might account for the jagged edges. Also, while it looks like you've applied a bump map (or emboss) to the land layer the mountains are somewhat lacking in texture and depth. Was this intentional? If not, you can always try adding another bump map or emboss to just the mountain layer. Otherwise looking good.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Humabout]

The compass is from Inkscape, actually. I made it and the chart lines there. As for the mountain bumps, I'll tinker with them a bit more. I toned them down a tad because they were getting too white. I'll try bringing them back up or adding another layer to increase the depth a bit. I might have tinkered prematurely.

[arsheesh]

Another thing you can do if they are getting to washed out is to adjust the sliders on the gradient map so that the white area occupies less area along the gradient.

[Humabout]

I think I got the mountains going now, and by adding a cream-colored (same color I'm using for the compass and lines), glow with an overlay blend at 40% opacity on the land, I think I have the land sitting in the water instead of on it. Next, I'm going to see about making and adding some symbols and lettering to work out just how to do that. I'm tossing between using a fairly flat-looking symbol and using a beveled one. I'll start by trying both.

Anyway, current progress:


And let me just say thank you for all the advice, Arsheesh. I like the kind of map this tutorial produces, so I'm going to have to tinker with it a fair bit and learn what I'm doing. Hopefully, I can put out some spiffy looking stuff with enough practice.