[WIP] Hadra Divela: In which I learn about Wilbur
OK, this is my third map in GIMP; but it's my first serious attempt to produce something I might actually use----the previous two were practices. Here's what I did:-
Map 1:- A "continent" (actually divided into five big islands), drawn in white on a black sea.
Map 2:- The same continent superimposed on some land clouds, using Arsheesh's method from the Eriond tutorial.
Map 3:- Some mountains added on, using my variant of Arsheesh's method from the Eriond tutorial. (Variant: I use hardly any airbrushing. That's all done with the curve tool, brightness/contrast, a little light use of the smudge tool at low opacity, and a huge amount of careful erasing with a soft brush at low opacity.)
Map 4:- The same thing but after some Wilbur work. I depart completely from Arsheesh's method; there are three precipitation passes, some added noise, two full erosion cycles with the erosion blur set at 0.1, sharpen, and then a little tweaking to fix a couple of long straight rivers----using MSPaint, cos I use leet graphics programs.)
Map 5:- Map 4 imported back into GIMP and bump mapped.
Now seeking your advice, constructive criticism, destructive criticism, personal abuse----heck, I'll take any kind of attention I can get, I'm not proud!----before I start colouring it all.
Okay, so here's an attempt at colouring it, using a green overlay as a base tint, a slightly darker green airbrush for the lowlands, a brown airbrush for the hills, and a white airbrush for the snowcaps, plus a sea layer. The most time-consuming bit was using the ink tool to fill in rivers.
You won't be able to see from the thumbnail, but I've marked and labelled the forts, cities and temples. I also put on a scalebar, borders and neatlines, and compass.
Overall, the map looks pretty good. I think the northwestern mountains look a little blobby, but that's just a personal taste thing.
You have some pretty straight river segments in there that could be adjusted to be a little wigglier, I think. Also, there is a hard coastal edge that looks a bit odd.
After an initial basin fill, I recommend that the wilbur loop should (broadly) look like noise-basin fill-incise-precipiton and repeat as needed. The initial basin fill gets rid of the big basins (note that you can make a selection out of the basins and save those for later use as lakes, if you're into that sort of thing). The Fill Basins and Precipiton filters both tend to smooth out parts on the surface; noise roughens it up a little so that the Fill Basins and Precipiton will get that roughness imprinted on their effects. Without added noise, the basin fill filter will give long runs of straight river segments and the precipiton filter will get very smooth parallel striations. I do recommend that incise flow and precipiton be used together because incise flow excavates straight-wall canyons and doesn't make deltas, while precipiton smooths down those edges to get a better visual effect on canyons (it will make something similar to deltas in nearly-flat areas).
A feature in Wilbur that isn't used in the Eriond tutorial is the ability to find rivers without affecting the terrain. The result is an image that can be used as a layer in the final assembly in your raster editing tool. Fun with Wilbur, Volume 5 shows how this can be done. People seem to want to see the incise flow filter make rivers and so push it hard, to the point where they get canyons tens of thousands of feet deep that runs for hundreds of miles. A lighter touch on the incise and an overlay of rivers is quite likely to get a better effect than just incise alone.
Nice map, PaperAndPaychecks, very Latin/Roman. The island set-up reminds me of Settlers or Anno 1492! Is there a story behind it?
And great info, waldronate. I've just started looking at Wilbur, via the Eriond tutorial, so this will hopefully be very useful for me.
Just playing with alternative map styles...
I agree with Waldronate's assessment of the rivers. Prior to using Incise flow if you add a bit more Percent Noise (I use 5% but for a larger image you may need a slightly higher amount) this should make the rivers look a tad more natural. Overall though, nice job.
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
This morning, my shiny new 10"x6.25" graphics tablet arrived. I celebrated by making brush pipes for hills and mountains, and re-drawing the rivers by hand.
I'm starting to like this approach of generating an atlas and then drawing over it.
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