Mycanum Bay Region

[Joshua_101]

Hi folks... here is my next map attempt. This region is located just to the east of the Elsir Vale Region (my last map) in my homebrew campaign world.

(I am aware that these maps won't match up properly and will appear disjointed if I try to stitch them together. That's okay. I'm not planning on stitching them together and I don't care at this point if they don't match up perfectly. Its not a pro job, just fancy maps for my players and way for me to learn fantasy cartography.)

This region is cradled between great mountains and the sea and is most well known for its vineyards, which produce this world's best wines, meads, and spirits. I picture this region to resemble a cross between Portugal and England.

SO - Here's my first swing at this map. It lacks forests, roads, and labels so far... but what do you think? Room for improvement? I am rather proud of my progress with mountains and river springsources. I used primarily RobA's tutorial which translates from GIMP to PS pretty good.

Criticism and critique welcome!

[GlennZilla]

Really great work!

I enjoyed your work on the Elsir Vale map, and even used many of the same techniques for my recent WIP.

I like the rivers and how this entire area should be very wet and damp. It makes for very interesting terrain.

[Joshua_101]

Really great work!

I enjoyed your work on the Elsir Vale map, and even used many of the same techniques for my recent WIP.

I like the rivers and how this entire area should be very wet and damp. It makes for very interesting terrain.

Thanks 'Zilla! I had a lot of trouble with my mountains in the Elsir Vale map, but I used the Clouds filter then the Inverted Clouds filter a couple of times the way you did for this map. I like the bands of black this produces because it looks like craggy mountain passes and adds to the look of individual mountain peaks after the Lighting Effects filter. I'm trying to figure out how get convincing "snow" on the tallest mountain peaks right now... I might combine all my heightmaps together and apply some isometric tinting and then tweak that a bit.

Rivers are also a sore spot for me. But right now I'm trying to work out a way (combining your tutorial with RobA's) to get the Inverted Clouds filter on a Difference layer to provide rivers of a pre-chosen shape with random edges. Right now I'm just using a custom grunge brush to draw my rivers.

Critiques still welcome!

[GlennZilla]

I haven't gotten to river yet, but I figured I'd mostly follow the countours created by the height map. Since I'm still working on the world as a whole and haven't gotten into the regions quite yet, you'll have to let me know how it works out for you.

[pyrandon]

Joshua, this is a huge leap in comparison with your last map--and I thought that one was pretty darn good! I like the mountains you created so much more! Great work!

[su_liam]

I like the mountains on this one. I really like the passes through the mountains, except... Well, the passes are kind of flat. The quality of this map is so great that it has inspired me to look into how to improve those passes.

As you noted multiple passes with the Difference Clouds filter over a Clouds filter makes excellent looking mountains. Kind of like a cross between billowy and ridged perlin. Nice. Unfortunately, they aren't very controllable. The photoshop Clouds filter has a particular frequency and roughness(not much). Which is bad, because what I want is another layer of relief below the mountains, basically a longitudinal hump with a bit of, still fairly low frequency, variation. I think I might want a gently rolling structure to that variation giving rise to foothills below the mountains. Once I have that I'll add it together with the mountain heightmap(using Linear Light mode in PS, I think Gimp just says, "Add"). Before adding them together, the two layers should be scaled using levels so that the sum doesn't exceed 255(at least not by much).

I'm stoked.

[RobA]

I'm trying to figure out how get convincing "snow" on the tallest mountain peaks right now... I might combine all my heightmaps together and apply some isometric tinting and then tweak that a bit.

Try a palette map on the heightfield grayscale. Just define a palette that corresponds to the elevation you want (hypsometric tinting?)

I think I might want a gently rolling structure to that variation giving rise to foothills below the mountains. Once I have that I'll add it together with the mountain heightmap(using Linear Light mode in PS, I think Gimp just says, "Add"). Before adding them together, the two layers should be scaled using levels so that the sum doesn't exceed 255(at least not by much).

I showed how to do this here using GIMP.

-Rob A>

[GlennZilla]

The problems with the clouds filter in photoshop is one I've been dealing with. But I find that by combining additional filters in other layers blended together you can get some very specific results.

I think the part of my method that I like the most is that I can manually paint one of the layers to adjust things with a great deal of certainty.

For these mountains in particular a barley opaque layer with a large blob of white on a layer with the blending mode of Overlay, or Screen will have the effect Si Lam is looking for.