Broken Isle - First Map

[ProfGremlin]

Ok, I've managed to lay in all the forested areas so here's the progress thus far -

UnbrokenIsle_Forests_All.jpg

I'm not completely happy with how the central eastern forest ended up but as it was a little bit of an experiment with generating the outline of the forested area I'm not too worried. I think next on the agenda is to figure out where the villages/towns/cities are located and then lay in some farmland textures.

[ProfGremlin]

Ok, I decided to experiment with laying in the farmland areas tonight. I've used the textures provided by Bambua found over here. I wasn't quite sure how to lay these in so I experimented with a couple different techniques. In the end, I found that simply using the clone tool with both the vine and galaxy brushes seemed to work best.

UnbrokenIsle_Farms.jpg

[arsheesh]

Hey those turned out pretty good ProfGremlin. I tried applying some farmland textures to one of my maps once using the clone tool method, and it didn't turn out nearly so well.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[jfrazierjr]

Ok, I decided to experiment with laying in the farmland areas tonight. I've used the textures provided by Bambua found over here. I wasn't quite sure how to lay these in so I experimented with a couple different techniques. In the end, I found that simply using the clone tool with both the vine and galaxy brushes seemed to work best.

UnbrokenIsle_Farms.jpg

Use a layer mask instead of the clone tool. It makes it much easier to correct any funky shapes brought out by brushes. You might even consider using two layers with two different types of farmland and using the layer masks to have one dominant in one area and flip for different area(or even blend the two... not sure how that would look...but hey.. experiment)

[ProfGremlin]

Thanks for the encouragement, Arsheesh, JFrazierJr. I found mixing up the clone tool styles gave better results than simply sticking with one stamp. By overlaying the stamps they mitigated some of the repeat pattern.

Use a layer mask instead of the clone tool.

This is what I started out to do but for some odd reason I couldn't replicate the feat. Odd, I know, since I used it several dozen times for the forests. Thanks to your statement, JFrazierJr, a light went off in the closet of my mind and I realized what I had been missing. I've laid in a layer of the farmland pattern (it tiles beautifully) and then applied a layer mask. From there a Gaussian blur helped to merge it into the landscape. I think the results are a lot better.

CentralFarmland2.jpg

[arsheesh]

Yup, that looks even better than the last post. Like you mentioned, the Gaussian blur really helps the fields to blend in with the rest of the terrain.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[ProfGremlin]

Wow, it's certainly been awhile since I've worked on this map. Life just kinda happens, y'know? Well, I found some space to work on it today and the progress looks decent. I've laid in all the cities, ports, keeps and trading posts as well as the major trade routes connecting them overland. At this point I'm not sure how much more labeling I want to do. Probably just the major features. At any rate, here's today's progress. C&C is welcome.