World Map of Asdel

[morne]

Since I can never just focus on one thing at a time, today I've been messing around with getting some smaller scale maps for city map inserts, something on the order of 1:100,000 to 1:250,000 scale.

I've mostly been using Gaea to enhance the existing DEM that I have, just adding additional erosion structures to fill in details. The most challenging part of this is ensuring that I don't change the watersheds/existing rivers that I've already established at a larger scale too much.

Anyway, I also can't help myself when it comes to trying to get satellite imagery-esque views, so I ran the detailed DEM through Gaea again to try and get something that looked realistic.



I've left off roads because I'll need to rework them slightly for the detailed view.

Here's what it looks like in reference to the larger region:



All in all, I'm pretty happy with how the test turned out. It might be more challenging, though, when I need to enhance regions that don't have as strong of and erosion effect. I don't think I'll be including satellite imagery in my atlas, but it certainly is fun to play around with!

[Harrg]

I am a huge fan of this style and approach. I really like your satellite style results. I am wondering how you will handle the docking of tiles and transitions between different biomes.
At one time I managed to achieve certain results, but it was a photo collage. You are taking a much more complex and interesting approach.

[morne]

Я большой поклонник этого стиля и подхода. Мне очень нравятся твои результаты в стиле сателлита. Мне интересно, как вы будете обрабатывать стыковку плиток и переходы между разными биомами.
At one time I managed to achieve certain results, but it was a photo collage. You are taking a much more complex and interesting approach.

Had to google translate the russian

I don't plan on doing every square km of the map this way so I don't need to worry about seamlessness, I'll only cherry-pick key locations that I want to feature at a smaller scale, similar to the Pergamon World Atlas.

Been tweaking the satellite a bit---I had the vertical scale set too dramatically for the size of the region, which is about 70 km^2



This is the detailed topography that will actually be featured in the atlas:



I just need to lay out detailed roads, hydrography, and cities to go along with it. The end result should be similar to this scale from Pergamon's: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/ser...&mi=74&trs=250

[Harrg]

O sorry! I pasted wrong text! I translated it in english!
I read a forum with auto-translation enabled and when I write a text, it also translates into Russian. I usually try to keep track of this.

[Ilanthar]

Wow! Impressive!

[morne]

Experimenting with ESRI's City Engine for detailed roads. Mostly just playing around to see what sort of results I get, but it looks promising.



The streets account for elevation, so that's pretty cool:

[cyanide_baby]

Hello,

Your work is mightily impressive.
Thank you for sharing your WIPs and being so generous with describing how your work.

Some details about your workflow escape me though, starting with the ever thorny issue of ... creating realistic coastlines.

(...) This is raster, obviously, so I'll have to trace back over it to get the vector coastlines.

You may have explained the following in other parts of this forum, so I apologize if I'm asking this question again, but how do you get such natural looking coastlines? Do you copy parts of actual coastlines found online (at the scale of the map you're producing) and paste them over your roughly sketched coast, or do you employ another method?

Thank you.

[cyanide_baby]

Hello,

Your work is mightily impressive.
Thank you for sharing your WIPs and being so generous with describing how you work.

Some details about your workflow escape me though, starting with the ever thorny issue of ... creating realistic coastlines.

You may have explained the following in other parts of this forum, so I apologize if I'm asking this question again, but how do you get such natural looking coastlines? Do you copy parts of actual coastlines found online (at the scale of the map you're producing) and paste them over your roughly sketched coast, or do you employ another method?

Thank you.

Replying to my own post here (hum), but after a bit more time spent on this, I found the following bit in your [WIP] Atlas Maps of Valmere thread:

Yes, today I'm going to post about how I use GDAL to manage projections of my maps. I'll likely not touch on working out the coastlines in illustrator again, but I mostly just follow the technique that Artifexian uses in this tutorial: https://youtu.be/glt_aMlqFsc

So, do you mean to say, that your coastlines are ... drawn?! You create those rough coastlines in, say, Blender, and then use Illustrator to add vector details to the rough Blender outline, per Artifexian's method. Would that be correct?

Thanks.

[morne]

Replying to my own post here (hum)

Oops, sorry! I totally missed your previous post.

So, do you mean to say, that your coastlines are ... drawn?!

Not quite, my methods have changed somewhat since my post about doing coastlines in illustrator. My new method actually does use real world coastlines. I've found that it's much, much quicker to go this route, and as long as you use small enough chunks, shouldn't really be noticeable (IDK, maybe some huge geography nerds are able to tell).

I still draw out all the coastlines globally in Blender, but when I go to detail them out, I use Photoshop, copying and pasting bits of real world coastline to match as closely as I can. I will also use the Lasso tool and brush set to 1 pixel for some coastline coverage, especially smaller islands, just cause it's easier than hunting down real world coastline that matches.

Here's a progress shot to show what I mean:

Getting really detailed raster real-world coastlines proved a bit of a challenge for me---I think the best way to do it without using GIS tools is to use Threshold in Photoshop or similar tool on DEMs, but this can sometimes cause the coastline near really low-elevation areas to look funky.

[cyanide_baby]

Amazing. Thank you very much for this. Having some experience with Photoshop myself, I thought that doing the sort of collage you describe, with actual coastlines, would actually be a worthy technique to use -- also, I can't draw at all!

I have an additional question: Would I be correct to assume that your imagined coastlines and the real ones have (not sure how to put this any other way) "similar scales"? Or do you don't really care, since it's all cut up and re-positioned and brushed over anyway, to create something brand new?