Reply With QuoteI'm glad I'm not the only one who bases map outlines on everyday stuff! That's a trippy base map - kind of looks like a mutated horse galloping along...
Broken Isle - First Map
Ok, so I thought I'd start with the ever popular Regional Tutorial from RobA. I found some interesting shapes chipped out of the garage floor sealant at work so I took pictures with my cell phone. You can see the original in the attachment below. I then popped it open in Paint Shop Pro 7, rotated it, and dropped the color down to two colors. You can see the result below as well. I rather like the result, especially in the south, but I'm wondering if the north edge is a little too straight. Then again, we do have the Arabian peninsula...
Incidentally, I have more examples from the garage floor at work. I've both taken pictures and made rubbings of them using 11x17 paper and a #2 pencil. Both techniques have their strengths. Making rubbings seems to be a bit more faithful to the original while photos provide unexpected results once they've been manipulated in a graphics program with the fuzzy select tool.
I'll post updates and progress here as I go along...
I'm glad I'm not the only one who bases map outlines on everyday stuff! That's a trippy base map - kind of looks like a mutated horse galloping along...
I like the shape, although I'd like it better if that Cornwall-esque finger visible in the original photo hadn't broken up in the computer version. Looking at a lot of squiggly, wiggly, random-noise-based maps can make you forget that our real-life landmasses often have relatively long straight lines on the macro level.
The original shape and position looked better to me. The added islands (as if the island is shredded on both sides) look unnatural to me. It's just an opinion. I like the idea of using an everyday life object as a source.
Thank you for the feedback, I really appreciate it.
The original conversion of picture to land mass shape was conducted in Paint Shop Pro 7 by the process of simply dropping the image to two bit color. Because of the relative color values in the original image the process resulted in the shredding of the southern end and the addition of the islands on the northern border. I was a little surprised at the result and didn't care for it to much, though it did grow on me some over time. I tried using the fuzzy select tool in PSP7 but found it didn't work to well, even with the shift key held down and the image converted to grey scale. Later, I opened the original image in Gimp and used the fuzzy select there with the setting of Add to Selection. The results were much more positive. I've posted that image below for your perusal.
So, should I change the title of the thread to (Un)Broken Isle?
Ok, folks, I've been puttering along through RobA's tutorial. I've managed to get to the point where mountains are the next step. So far the process is a bit of a blur but I'm definitely learning through it. I've had to puzzle my way through a couple of points (the grass layer bump map really had me stumped) but I'm enjoying the experience. I'm thinking of perhaps detouring to RobA's alternate means of generating mountains that he links to in post 11. The current stage of the map is visible below. Any C+C is welcome.
If I hadn't had seen the source for the map I would have thought that the right hand landmass is a sort of Britain flipped horizontally and a very small Ireland next to it. It's cool how random shapes can suggest these things.
Looks good so far.
Thanks, Ravells, Hohum. I lucked out with these shapes. Who knew that a chipped garage floor could provide so many hours of fun? I'm enjoying the process and it's a testament to RobA's capability that a novice such as myself can generate a map that looks pretty decent the first time out. One issue that's bugging me some is the dirt layer. I'd prefer to see a more even distribution with more mottled color akin to the manner of the grass layer. I may go back and try repeating the grass layer steps only with colors for dirt. From there I could apply a gentle blur and/or drop opacity to blend the two layers together for something I'm more comfortable with.
Don't forget that the tutorials are not cast in stone and the best way to get to your own style and to learn the software is to just experiment and play with it a lot. That's how most of us learned this game. It's not like experimenting is going to cost us money in materials!
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