Carian - Round... Who knows... [WIP]

[Yandor]

yup, so were you able to "replicate" the process or something close? Cause I'm sure your much better with Wilbur then I am, so if you've got any tricks up your sleeve let me know!

[ravells]

lol, no..I barely use Wilbur, I use FT much more. My first effort this afternoon was a disaster. Still working on it.

[Yandor]

Ahh! ok, I thought you had both of them down pretty good, guess not haha

[Lathorien]

I have been using this style (Wilbured height relief, then I go into gimp for light effects and texturing) for a couple years now (right down to the embossed clusters of blocks for cities) and you've accomplishing much better results. You have convinced me to switch over to PS as overall look you get (especially the rivers) in PS are far superior results to what i have been able to achieve in GIMP.

For the farm land I can get nice results that blend into the surrounding base colour by changing the Farm texture layer to multiply, i imagine PS has something similar maybe with a different name. It allows the darkest parts (lines) to come through with the rest of the texture taking the colour of the surrounding topography.

For forests i use a tiny brush with max jitter/scatter and a very light green and paint in forested areas, then emboss the spray. Sometimes with an under/drop shadow if the scale is right.

Here is my deviant page (my maps became to big to post here long ago):
http://lathorien.deviantart.com/gallery/

Hopefully there is something there to tickle your fancy and hopefully inspire you when your stuck at something since the styles are so similar.

Now to restart the learning curve with PS....

PS - Ravells - Both the "Discworld Map", the incomplete "Lexicon Map" and the newest "Pangea Map" are all FT generate world maps taken into Wilbur, while the "Primeval Map" was hand drawn and then Wilbured (the basic steps each have a seperate picture for you to see the process). With a FT generated map, the erosion process had to be different than the hand drawn map. For FT I use precipitation based erosion (default settings), incise flow with a preblur of 2, then again with a preblur of 1, precip again (default settings), then one more incise flow with a preblur of 1, and then a final precip again with default settings. The hand drawn heightmap didnt have the incise flow with the preblur 2, just two steps of preblur 1.

[Yandor]

Lathorien - I can see what you mean by similar styles, and its not just Photoshop that makes the difference. I've seen plenty of (this quality or better) gimp maps done here. It really is based on how well you know your program and how to manipulate textures and what not. All that is on these maps after I've done the mountains (through wilbur) is all done with textures, and the bevel & emboss layer effects ( with the added contour and texture to add flavor to things like the forest). The roads and the water are all a 2px soft brush with a flat color and a drop shadow... The Fields are a texture, the cities are like the forests just a different brush... Its the ocean in the Cael map that relies heavily on filters and other things to make it... So yeah I mean there isn't much to it, just a lot of basic things I've got from many of the tutorials here and the things I've learned on my own from experimenting...



Anyways, I've been toying with some ideas on how I want this place to look, I'm thinking of changing the desert to a "Bad Lands" or a broken lands kind of thing... But I'm just experimenting with textures and other things so tell me what you think this even looks like... The idea is a bad lands with corrupted/diseased/dead trees... does this even look anything like that??

[jfrazierjr]

Looks like rocky scrub plains to me.... if that's what your going for.. then yea.. good job..

[Lathorien]

how exactly did you do those cities in the overland maps? trying to replicate the look and failing miserably...

[Yandor]

You need to find the right touch really, I use a pattern created by Aidybaby Here. And I believe I shrunk it. In these maps I used the pattern, I've got a top layer, and a bottom layer. One that has that goldish color, with a touch of drop shadow + a dark outer glow and a inner stroke of 1 pixel (75% gray) and then the under one has the same drop shadow + outer glow as the top layer. I've done other maps as well with a splatter brush from photoshop and did simple clicks (once or twice over each other) to build up an area. Take a look at Ascensions Jasmine Coast (go a few pages in and you can get his styles too) to get the basic idea of that one... He also has another map, I believe it was an experimental one that had done here. Its amazing on how much I model after him, or atleast get the idea from and just adapt it a ton... haha well anyways thats how I did it.

[Yandor]

Looks like rocky scrub plains to me.... if that's what your going for.. then yea.. good job..

Jfrazierjr - Thanks for the input, the idea I had evolved a bit more, I wanted the rocky scrub idea but not so much plains as it was broken/shattered/jagged rocks so I added a texture to it. So thanks!

So a few updated things. First and foremost is the Ocean, I got that in place, along with some Text, then the updated shattered lands area instead of the desert. So I ask you guys do these elements work? (Text-color,type Shattered lands-color, texture intensity etc ) Any other suggestions or ideas are welcome but let me know!

[Joe Smith]

I just joined the guild and i am so excited! Everyone is so talented i dont even know where to start! Im going through the tutorials for the beginners right now! This looks great! Good job!