[Award Winner] Atlas Walkthrough [Fractal Terrains & Illustrator]

[Sigurd]

Two Illustrator related questions:

1. You export an image that is 4800 pix across and put it in a file with your 10" by 16" frame. Do you crop everything outside the frame? Shrink to fit? How big a piece do you do at once? Do you play with the dpi?

2. Is 'autotrace' the same as 'livetrace'?



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[SopFreem73]

Totally awesome. Ive wondered in the past exactly how you did your work. Its good to see it laid out for a change and the whole process revealed.

[Sicuropoli]

Thank you.

[vooood]

Step 6. Creating the Raster Background
To create my photoshop background image, I need to export four files from Illustrator. First of all I'll create a crop box from the outer map frame so that all of the exported images register correctly. The first image to export consists of all of the landcover layers. I'll export it at 300 dpi and in CMYK color, but I don't want layers. The second image to export is the relief layer (make sure you set the transparency back to 100% before exporting). This image should also be 300 dpi, and the color should be greyscale. The third image is the water layer (300 dpi, CMYK), and the fourth is the pink casings I've created below my boundaries (also 300 dpi, CMYK). Go ahead and open all four of these images in Photoshop.
Start with the landcover image. Change the color mode to RGB to open up some of the filters we'll use. Then use Filter > Brush Strokes > Spatter to fractalize the edges between landcover classes a bit. I will also go ahead and add a bit of Gaussian Noise to this layer as well. Set the transparency of this layer to 80% and add a layer of just white underneath it. Change the color mode back to CMYK. The next layer above the landcover should be your boundaries, which you can bring in using Image > Apply Image.
Next we will need to adjust our relief image a bit. Start by changing the color mode to Duotone, and select a tritone of pure cyan, pure yellow, and pure magenta. This will make the relief a nice gold color which looks better than black when multiplied with the landcover. You can then change the color mode to CMYK. Select all and get rid of some of the roughness of the relief by using Filter > Noise > Median, with a value of around 5 or so. I also like to Gaussian Blur this image a tiny bit as well. Now it can be brought in above the boundary layer. Set it to multiply and use a low opacity, around 25% or so.
Above the relief, bring in your water fills as a new layer. I'll add a slight inner glow to the water fills and my background image is done. Place it on the appropriate layer in your Illustrator file.
I've attached an image that shows where we are now; there are only a few more steps to go!

What I would like to know what color scheme did you use to export the climate/heightmap from FT as the background layer? I see some very nice brown and green colors - is that a FT color scheme for heightmap or was it a climate map?

And one more small question. Did you export the river layer from FT and traced or you have drawn the rivers yourself?

[laevex_esre]

First of all this tutorial is fantastic and I'm very impressed with the work you did on Sorol.
I'm trying my best to follow this to the letter, but I just got to this bit:

Step 5. The Creative Stuff
The first image I've attached below shows where I am now. I've added roads, trails, settlements, cities, boundaries, rivers, and labels to the map; and I've also finished drawing in the landcover polygons. It looks like the map is complete, but there are actually a few more steps to do before it is finished.

Whoa! I have no idea how to go about all of this. It seems like a pretty massive step to me and yet you've just sort of glossed over it. Can anyone direct me to a tutorial that might help me understand how to do this? Or can somebody give me some guidance?

It looks so awesome and I want to learn how to make my own maps look this cool.

[Midgardsormr]

That step is just standard Illustrator stuff. Using the Pen tool to draw paths, stroking them to get the different patterns and colors for road, river, etc… The Text tool for labels. Probably the Symbol tool for settlement icons, or possibly the Text tool if he's using something like Adobe's Carta font for that purpose.

The "landcover polygons" are just polygons drawn with the Pen or Pencil tool which are then filled with colors or patterns to represent the different terrain types. Personally, I prefer to use a tablet and the Pencil because it gives me less regular lines—it's far easier to add the little fractally jiggles that way than trying to make them with bezier curves (a bezier curve is what the Pen creates when you click and drag).

[laevex_esre]

Ok thanks for that. I'm new to Illustrator so that's why I didn't know how to do it all. I'm kinda teaching myself now. I'm liking the pencil tool for rivers.

[laevex_esre]

My major problem with this tutorial at the moment is that Step 4, copying in the overlapping maps, is impossible. Because of the projection, the angles and proportions all seem to be wrong when I copy in a neighbouring map. Anyone got any tips on this?

[whitemiasma]

My major problem with this tutorial at the moment is that Step 4, copying in the overlapping maps, is impossible. Because of the projection, the angles and proportions all seem to be wrong when I copy in a neighbouring map. Anyone got any tips on this?

If you project your peripheral maps all into the same projection as the central map, they should blend together no problem.