Blackmount Empire

[pasis]

Hello Guild,

This map is a warm up from an earlier work I didn't finish. I have been going back and forth with this as I hadn’t decided where to take it. So I went back to planning table and created a background, so that certain things have a purpose and cities etc will be there for a reason. Since that was done, it was a lot easier to continue.
I post this in low resolution as the original is quite big. Please let me know you thoughts and critique is most welcomed.

-Pasi

[rpgmapmaker]

Nice warm up!

I love the colors you have chosen. I love the look of the rivers and trees. What did you use for the dark green trees... textures and brushes that sort of thing?

Reped!

[Djekspek]

Gasp! that's awesome Pasis! Saw the thread where you started this some time ago and this came out VERY nice. Love the terrain details, erosion effects, mountains, trees.. well basically everything
If I can comment on such a great piece, the water seems a little 'flat'/purple colorwise. cheers!

[Daelin]

You mean there is a higher resolution than this!? Gief!

[Kaiser MacCleg]

That's incredible. How long has it taken you to get this far?

[Yandor]

Wow, I'm glad to see another update, it still looks amazing as always! haha I see rpgmapmaker has the exact same question I got, how did you go about doing the forests, or the technique I guess?

[Sigurd]

What resolution are you working at?

[Jaxilon]

Very good looking stuff there. It almost looks totally real!

[pasis]

Thanks guys for the kind words...Then some answers and explanations…

RPGMAPMAKER & YANDOR: Regarding the textures used I have made few of them with Genetica Viewer and used them with only minimal modifications. Then some of the textures are combination and modifications from several textures on top of eachother.
The tree texture is the one I used in my tutorial http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?4405 and actually it is a modification from my very first map (Bretoria) I did when I joined the guild. I just downsized the tree scale and applied some PS layer styles (drop shadow and bevel&emboss). Most of the look comes from bevel and emboss as I set the bewel size to 1, the contour to 0% and as texture I used the same tree texture and applied it in 500% depth. Attached is a sample of the original forest texture and then the same in the map itself with above settings and layer set to multiply.

DJEKSPEK: Yeah, I need to work on the water. I have tried few techniques to add body to the water, but I couldn’t create anything reasonable that would fit with the rest of the map.

KAISER MACCLEG: This has taken countless hours. I’m not the fastest mapmaker around and I usually tend to go too deep into details. I have seen guys making nice complete maps in an hour and I cannot make a coastline in that time

SIGURD: The complete map is 4096x4096 px, but I might take a small portion of from the right hand side.

[Shaelic]

This is incredible work! Any chance of a more detailed tutorial