Applying biomes to a Wilbur-enhanced map...?

[Kyrel]

Hi guys,
First off, I have to mention that the software known as Wilbur is amazing, and even more amazing is that the guy who makes it gives it away for free...! I discovered it just a few hours ago and it solved all my niggly 'great-mountain-generation' problems; I had a height map ready to roll in PS, but the 'Render Lighting' method just wasn't doing it for me...

So anyway, here's what I've achieved using Wilbur plus the PS height-map:
D&D-map-pure-wilbur-smaller.png

It looks waaay better than anything I managed in PS, mostly because the mountains now seem radically different to the lowlands (which is what I wanted). Now... up near the north I'd want it to be mostly white-ish coloured, since it's permanently snow, and down south I'd like a sandier, drier colour to dominate most of the southern islands, but I'm not sure how to easily apply this without ruining the Wilbur-colours for the mountains... i.e. I'd want the green to be replaced in both cases, but keeping the snow-caps, and definitely keeping the texturedness of the mountains and terrain.

I'm probably missing a pretty simple and obvious solution, but I am new at the whole cartography game (only started 48 hours ago, but it's been a blast )

[arsheesh]

Well, I don't know that this is really an "easy" solution, but rather than using the default Wilbur shader you could create your own height color gradient maps. What I do is start with a Gradient Map to designate Temperate biomes, then create one to designate desert/arid biomes, and finally one to designate tundra and arctic biomes. Then I place opaque layer masks over the Arctic and Desert layers, paint in the areas where I want them to show up and apply a Gaussian blur effect to help better show the gradual shift from one biome to the next. Below I've posted cropped copies of some of the gradient maps that I'm using in my current map, as well as what they look like once combined the way I described.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Kyrel]

That sounds good... do you mean do this in Wilbur? I'm very new to it and I've not found the settings yet to make custom height gradients... I assume one would do three copies of the same landmass (one icy, one dry, one temperate) and then opacity-layer them together in PS?

[waldronate]

I was going to suggest using the Latitude feature of the Wilbur shader, but it turns out that it's not quite working correctly at the moment (it might work just fine if you only have a single-core machine, but I don't have one of those handy). It lets you specify a color shading range between two latitudes just like you can do in altitude with the Altitude part of the shader.

Your rivers look a little odd and are placed in a non-physics-based manner. I'm guessing that you used the difference clouds filter in Photoshop? I'm kinda partial to the river effects that you get with the Fun With Wilbur tutorials from the main program download page ( http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/wilbur.html - you probably already knew that, though).

And that guy who gives away Wilbur for free can be a little odd at times, so be careful around him...

[Kyrel]

I was going to suggest using the Latitude feature of the Wilbur shader, but it turns out that it's not quite working correctly at the moment (it might work just fine if you only have a single-core machine, but I don't have one of those handy). It lets you specify a color shading range between two latitudes just like you can do in altitude with the Altitude part of the shader.

Unfortunately I have a quadcore CPU... so latitude wouldn't work, if that's what you're saying. How does one use the Altitude shader, and where can I find it?

[waldronate]

It's the Wilbur shader, Altitude tab (Texture>>Shader Setup when the Wilbur shader is selected). The Altitude tab will let you change the height coloring.

[Kyrel]

Ah yeah... that let me edit it, cheers

Another thing I was wondering... is it possible to generate some depth/detail for my sea alone, in Wilbur? Currently it's a bit flat and boring... it'd be nice to have some dips and such.

[arsheesh]

Huh, I didn't realize Wilbur had an altitude shader! Well anyway, to answer your earlier question Kyrel, I should have specified that I created the gradient maps in GIMP, which is sort of a scaled down Photoshop clone. I know that you can create gradient maps in Photoshop but, not having ever used PS, I'm afraid I couldn't tell you how to do it. But basically you import the Wilbur height map, make a copy of it, and then apply a gradient map to that copy.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Kyrel]

Well, I took the original idea and applied it to my landmass...

d&d-map-3-climatised.png

I'm amazed it turned out pretty much as I wanted it to, and relatively similar to how Arsheesh's example looked. My only wish now is to have some sort of sea texture...

[waldronate]

Rumor has it that Wilbur 1.77 (out now at your favorite Wilbur distribution point) fixes the latitude shader problem referred to earlier.

The sea fix in PS should just be a matter of putting in a sea texture layer on the bottom and chopping out the sea parts on the other layers. A fix involving Wilbur would be to select the sea areas using Select>>From Terrain>>Height Range with a Minimum of -1000000 and Maximum of -0.00001, followed by Filter>>Fill>>Mound with Minimum Height -0.0001 and Maximum Height -1000 to fill the sea basins. Better results can be obtained on the Mound operation by using the Edit Profile button and setting a Non-Linearity value of 2 to get continental shelf-looking things (a similar result can be obtained by doing a Select>>Modify>>Contract with a value of 3ish before doing the initial mound). If it's a little too harsh of an effect, setting Sea Opacity to 0.5 in the Altitude tab of the shader setup will make the water a little murky.