The Realm of Trent

[Aval Penworth]

Starting another regional project while I have a little extra time and motivation. A couple of people have requested a walk through so here it is.

This will be a detail of southern region of my Naerth World Map. So far I pasted the section I will be detailing and traced or colour selected the major features, creating a new layer for each group of features. I used Old Guys trick for roughing up the coast.

Fills and textures are from the Vintyri Project site...Thanks Mark.

Screenshot below..(It's PS6, that's why it looks old-school)

[Aval Penworth]

Base land texture was created by selecting the land Noise Filter> Dry Brush Filter > Gausian Blur 2.0

Hills created in a new layer with a Clouds Filter (Green/ White) . Colour select White> Delete white area. Layer effect Bevel/Emboss soft, with contour and texturizer (bare mountatins) Depth 80% Size 18px, Highlight 25% Shadow 75% Then reduce layer opacity to 75%.


As I add other elements I will review the settings on the hills layer to se what looks best.

[Aval Penworth]

I've now started the base of the mountains. I turned on the the layer effects for bevel/emboss and have the texturizer setting on bare mountains.

I may add some more areas of low mountains later but for now I just want to make sure that there are mountain areas consistent with my larger map.

I will add more layers with increasingly steeper bevel setting and paint to gradually build up the mountains. I will also add a noise filter of 3-5% to the mountain layers if they need to look rougher.

[Aval Penworth]

So now I have painted on three layers of mountains. The peaks have taken shape, but I will probably make more modifications as I go. I have scattered some bushland with the pattern stamp around the base of the mountain and turned up the green on the land base. The brush will help with blending the forests around the mountains later. I've also turned up the red in the mountains as the gray was too flat, but put some light peaks to accentuate the hieght.

[Aval Penworth]

After some more tweaks with a fine brush on the mountains I have turned on the forest layer. Using an irregular brush I used the pattern stamp with deciduous forest pattern. I set the forest layer to drop shadow but set the highlight to 10%. I have also added a slight drop shadow to the hills for extra definition. Don't know if I'll keep that or not.

[Aval Penworth]

I've drawn in the main rivers 5px wide for major rivers 2px wide for smaller rivers. All rivers are drawn on a transparent layer with a slight bevel.

I will add more trubutaries later.

In order for the main river to pass through the mountains, I erased a path on each mountain layer with a hard edged eraser.

[Steel General]

Turned out quite nicely, good job.

My only little 'nit-pick' is that the city markers don't have the same 'vibe' as the rest of the map. They look a bit out-of-place to me.

[Aval Penworth]

Turned out quite nicely, good job.

My only little 'nit-pick' is that the city markers don't have the same 'vibe' as the rest of the map. They look a bit out-of-place to me.

How about if I just take out the emboss? Like this... and change the font colour

[Steel General]

My preference would be the second version. But don't change it just because of 1 opinion, if you like the original then go with that. It is after all your map

[Aval Penworth]

Well there are a few versions now. I will leave it for a few others to chime in before I graduate it to finished maps. My labels and symbols cause me the most consternation so I like to get feedback.