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Thread: May/June 2011 Lite Challenge Entry - Compound Interest

  1. #11

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    New Visible-wavelength image with cheesy starfield. I did remember to block out some of the stars on the lit side of the planet, although I'm not sure if I did enough. And the shadowed portion of the planet may not be dark enough.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    My Finished Maps | My Planet Maps | My Challenge Entries | Album: Pre-generated Worlds

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    Assuming I stick with fantasy cartography, I'd like to become a World Builder, laying out not only a realistic topography, but also the geopolitical boundaries and at least rough descriptions of the countries and societies.

  2. #12

  3. #13

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    That's the tutorial I followed, although I modified a few steps. I replaced the manual random erase step with blocking sections out with layered Cloud and Diff Clouds. And the manual cloning of stars was replaced by creating 4 more layers of small and large starfields. While it seems to do a decent job at small clusters of stars, it doesn't do a large Milky Way-style band of brighter stars, because in a 4096x4096 image, the clouds are proportionally small compared to the canvas. It's the same issue for the cloud cover on the planet itself. Neither stars nor clouds is something I've attemped before, so I haven't figured out what works for me yet.

    For the planetary clouds I followed a tutorial on this site (for doing whole planets), but again, the canvas size in the tutorial is much smaller, so the resulting clouds are smaller. I'm not sure if just transforming the clouds and making them larger would work or if they'd pixellate obviously.
    My Finished Maps | My Planet Maps | My Challenge Entries | Album: Pre-generated Worlds

    ------
    Assuming I stick with fantasy cartography, I'd like to become a World Builder, laying out not only a realistic topography, but also the geopolitical boundaries and at least rough descriptions of the countries and societies.

  4. #14

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    All right, here's a quick and dirty rundown of my starfield technique (no pictures). I'm assuming this is in GIMP.

    1. Start with an all black image.
    2. Rename your background layer "small stars"
    3. Go to Filters>Noise>HSV Noise. Make a noisefield with the following values: Holdness 4, Hue 0, Saturation 0, Value 200.
    4. Go to Colors>Brightness-Contrast. Increase the contrast by 50. Leave the brightness alone.
    5. Make a new all black layer named "bright stars".
    6. Make another HSV Noise field with the same values as the first.
    7. Go to Colors>Brightness-Contrast. Increase the contrast by 100 this time.
    8. Scale up the bright stars layer to double its original size.
    9. Go back to the small stars layer and select everything by using the magic wand with a threshold of 255.
    10. Go back to the big stars layer.
    11. Go to Layers>Crop to selection. Now the excess big stars layer is deleted.
    12. Now we're going to give the brighter stars a little color. Make two new layers. Name one "reds" and one "blues".
    13. Paint both all black and make HSV noisefields in them as well. Same ol' values.
    14. Gaussian Blur both layers with a radius of 5 pixels.
    15. Brightness-Contrast both layers. Set Brightness and Contrast both to 100.
    16. Add layer masks to both layers. Initialize to "Grayscale copy of layer"
    18. Get out the bucket fill with threshold set to 255. Paint the "Reds" layer all red (RGB 255, 0, 0 or HSV 0, 100, 100). Paint the "Blues" layer all light cyan (RGB 0, 255, 255 or HSV 180, 100, 100).
    19. You should now see your bright stars on a mottled red and cyan background. This is not what we want. So, set the modes of both the color layers to "Color".
    20. Now some of your bright stars are blue and some are red. This is looking good, so merge both color layers down into the "bright stars" layer.
    21. Set the "bright stars" layer to "screen" mode so that the smaller stars are visible.
    22. Hit "flatten image".
    23. There you go, a decent-looking starfield!
    24. With practice, you may be able to modify this technique for even greater realism, but always remember the following:

    HSV noise is your friend.
    The Brightness-Contrast tool will make your noise look more like stars and less like TV static.
    To color your stars, make separate red and blue layers. This will color some stars, but where the layers interfere with each other you'll still get plenty of white stars.

    Also note: the starfield that other tutorial teaches you to make may look cool, you would never see something like that outside a dense star cluster. A realistic starfield should look like the night sky, but with no light pollution or twinkling. However, you could consider adding a "milky way" band, although I'm not sure the best technique.
    Last edited by Omnigeek6; 06-05-2011 at 06:50 PM.

  5. #15

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    Thanks for the post! I'll give it a try later tonight. I use PS though, so I'll translate as best I can. Have a rep pt as thanks.

    I have started copying cells over.
    My Finished Maps | My Planet Maps | My Challenge Entries | Album: Pre-generated Worlds

    ------
    Assuming I stick with fantasy cartography, I'd like to become a World Builder, laying out not only a realistic topography, but also the geopolitical boundaries and at least rough descriptions of the countries and societies.

  6. #16
    Guild Master Facebook Connected jtougas's Avatar
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    This is such a great idea and so much work. Good for you for going for it.
    I am the breath of Dragons...The Song of Mountains...The Stories of Rivers....The Heart of Cities.... I am A Cartographer....

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    Everything I post is free for use and redistribution under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 licence, except where noted otherwise in the thread.

  7. #17

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    Yeah, thanks for taking the time to share your technique!

    Cheers,
    -Arsheesh

  8. #18

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    Figured out a way of copying cells over a bit faster, but still not quite just copy/paste/move on. I've built 4 layers of overlapping Hexagonal selections. I copy the entire layer under one of those selections, then paste it into the target layer. I move the whole layer so that the center of the copied hexes is on the center of the right eye hexes for that color. Then I use Marquee selections to slide out all the surrounding hexes until they're on their correct view hex cells. Then once everything is in place, create a copy for the left eye as well, then Spherize each of them into an eyeview. Yes, the view across the eyes is duplicated. Each eye is centered on the same point.

    I've finished the Elevation (white) layer. Just Temp, Rain, Vegetation like this to go, then I will go through and add some Visible Light cells that replace the others.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Hmm. Now that I see what the view range is, I may have to recenter the view so you see something other than sea.
    My Finished Maps | My Planet Maps | My Challenge Entries | Album: Pre-generated Worlds

    ------
    Assuming I stick with fantasy cartography, I'd like to become a World Builder, laying out not only a realistic topography, but also the geopolitical boundaries and at least rough descriptions of the countries and societies.

  9. #19
    Guild Master Facebook Connected jtougas's Avatar
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    This is a winner for sure. A great idea and great tips on how it was(is being) done.
    I am the breath of Dragons...The Song of Mountains...The Stories of Rivers....The Heart of Cities.... I am A Cartographer....

    Finished Maps
    Kingdom Of Shendenflar Campaign Setting (WIP)

    Everything I post is free for use and redistribution under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 licence, except where noted otherwise in the thread.

  10. #20

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    Thanks for the compliments folks, they mean a lot.

    I'm taking a step backwards, to recreate the planet views with a new center for better scenery. I'm also experimenting with creating better cloud cover for the visible light view. The clouds I've generated actually look pretty good to my uneducated eye.

    The steps I took, in PS:
    - Create a new cloud layer, and Render/Clouds to fill it. Set the layer to Screen.
    - Transform the layer, and set the Width to 250%.
    - Add a layer mask, fill it with Render/Clouds, and transform the mask the same way.

    - Create two more Cloud layers, press Ctrl-G to have them affect only the main Cloud layer.
    - Fill both layers with Render/Clouds, and fill their layer masks with clouds also.
    - Transform one of the Cloud layers and set the width to 150%. Do the same to its layer mask.

    - Apply the Layer Masks to all 3 cloud layers.

    You now have 3 cloud layers, 1 main one and 2 sub-layers. Change the order of the sub-layers and play with the layer settings to see what looks best. Maybe the 150% layer should Multiply, while the 100% layer Screens, or vice-versa. Color Burn and Hard Light also have strong effects.

    I haven't gotten far enough yet to post any screens of it, but I wanted to write down the process before I forgot it.
    My Finished Maps | My Planet Maps | My Challenge Entries | Album: Pre-generated Worlds

    ------
    Assuming I stick with fantasy cartography, I'd like to become a World Builder, laying out not only a realistic topography, but also the geopolitical boundaries and at least rough descriptions of the countries and societies.

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