Here is another in progress map after the regional swap and a little mountain range reduction.
I'm trying to experiment with grassland highlights now. Does it make sense to have them encase the various rivers like I have here?
Also, I'm not 100% sure my river structure makes any sense. Any advise on waterways would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Rivers don't violate anything technically so those are fine technically but some run really close to the coast without actually going into the ocean and there aren't any hills or mountains to prevent them from dumping into the ocean. So I would just add some hills in those areas, pretty simple. As for grass around rivers - makes plenty of sense. Take the Nile...it runs through a desert but has some very fertile lands around it due to seasonal floods.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Well I think this is near final. Of course now I have to decide whether to start converting some of my old NWN2 towns into maps for specific locations or start over completely from a world/continent perspective. While I think this has come miles past the Photoshop mess I had to start with, I'm sure not satisfied with some of the shape and scale of certain regions.
Still, I'd really like to move on with detailing some of the specific areas to help flesh things out.
Not too bad, really. Detail away I say...I get the same way.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
have you thought of using FM8's blur to try to get the places where one terrain overlaps another a bit more seamless? Alternately, you could do that in a post processing app such as PS or GIMP, but it would be more manual work(though would get you a much better result!). Also, I would suggest sticking either with Vector symbols or raster and not mix the two. Specifically, the FM8 mountains and the CC3 mountains are quite different in style and look and detract from the entire image as a whole.Originally Posted by Ralleous
Well I think this is near final. Of course now I have to decide whether to start converting some of my old NWN2 towns into maps for specific locations or start over completely from a world/continent perspective. While I think this has come miles past the Photoshop mess I had to start with, I'm sure not satisfied with some of the shape and scale of certain regions.
Still, I'd really like to move on with detailing some of the specific areas to help flesh things out.
My Finished Maps
Works in Progress(or abandoned tests)
My Tutorials:
Explanation of Layer Masks in GIMP
How to create ISO Mountains in GIMP/PS using the Smudge tool
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Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Latest Draft:
Thanks for the tip jfrazierjr. I ditched the CC3 style bitmappped mountains in favor of staying with FM8's vector with a blurred fill beneath.
I tried to use FM8's blur and/or feather on the grassland, swamp, and forest fills, but it seemed to really distort the entire texture fill.
Would have been nice if it blurred the edges without screwing up the interior fill but that doesn't seem to be the case. I may try to do it in Photoshop (blur tool? smudge?) to keep it on the lines.
Here is my latest as I have added some fractal lines for roads. These too need some work to blend in a little better.
All in all I have learned quite a bit from the tips here as well as some general messing around. I think things look quite a bit better than the did (I shudder when I look at the original maps).
yea.. .blurring in FM is a bit tricky from what I remember.... For vector symbols, you would likely need to break the symbol apart first.. but then it blurs "everywhere".. so.. lot's of playing and duplicating to get stuff right... But what I meant was to blur the transition edges... I "believe" you can do that via the feather setting(Mark Olivia would be able to verify I expect).
But yea.. it would likely be much easier to do in GIMP/Photoshop anyway.... just more time consuming as you have to do each symbol individually... Personally... for something like this I much prefer the smudge tool followed by the blur tool with a low rate...... but that also depends on how close two values are to each other....
To be honest.... I would either ditch the vector mountains and go back to raster (and fix in PS with some smudge/blur) OR use JUST vector objects an no raster stuff at all(perhaps a 'very' lite texture in some places.. but nothing "obviously" computer generated...)
My Finished Maps
Works in Progress(or abandoned tests)
My Tutorials:
Explanation of Layer Masks in GIMP
How to create ISO Mountains in GIMP/PS using the Smudge tool
----------------------------------------------------------
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Elrithorn 2015 Update
Wow, 4 years flies by when you aren't in a hurry. Anyhow, thought I'd post my latest version of this map/world just to show that I took all of the advise to heart. Currently spending some more time fleshing out some of the more sparse areas, and filling the (new) wiki with information.
Big thanks again to those who were nice enough to take the time to smack me around and show me what's what.
http://elrithorn.wikia.com/
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