World Map Basics

[Gamerprinter]

I love this style of map - its a direction in map creation that I'd like to master myself. Just my luck, everybody (Ravs, anyway) wants me to produce only hand drawn maps - when this map you have is exactly the kind of stuff I want to produce. I can't create maps like this by hand.

As far as "Painterly" - I draw, I hate to paint and don't do it. So the only way to achieve a painterly look for me is using software.

Great job, Torq!

[Torq]

Thanks for all the kind words. RobA, here is a screenshot of the terranoise settings. Its two heightfields, billow and ridged multi, combined using an "add" combiner between them. with a bit of tweaking on the levels.

Torq

[RobA]

Thanks-

That gives me a better idea.

(too bad that it does not support spherical mapping, eh?)

-Rob A>

[Torq]

I think it does support spherical mapping, by way of the small icons at the top of the screen.

Here is my attempt at the rivers. I tried doing them in Gimp but didn't like them at all, so I switched to Inkscape and traced the paths. I couldn't get them to work, following RobA's advice becasue nothing seemed to fit with the black stroke around the continents and lakes, it just didn't blend in. Even tried the slight pillow emboss, but that seemed to alter the colour too much. Anyway, this is what I settled on. Please feel free to give comments.

Torq

[RobA]

Here is an example of the pillow emboss (I just used all the blue as a start, so it was applied to the water bodies as well...just pretend it is only on the rivers )



I made a copy of the rivers as black on white. Applied a 15 px blur.
I then created a new 50% grey layer, and bump mapped this layer using the blurred river copy. Change the blend mode of this layer to overlay.

I also duplicated the overlay layer to emphasize the effect more (but could also have done it by increasing the bump depth when applying the bump map).

This gives the look of a river valley around the river, size determined by the blur amount.

-Rob A>

[Bohunk]

I just want to chime in here with my first post to show you a entire planet using this process. This style is so unique I had to step up and show you. This was done with almost the same settings Torq used, just different seeds and of course the world icon pressed.

[pyrandon]

Cool Bohunk! Nice one!