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Thread: Half of Terran World Map

  1. #1
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    Post Half of Terran World Map

    Hello all. I've been here a couple of times seeking help with my world map. The world I am designing is Earth 50 million years in the future, and will be utilized in my fantasy setting (for gaming and possibly for setting my novels in).

    I started with a Dymaxion map progression and outlined each continent/plate on a separate layer. This allowed me to rearrange the continents as tectonic projection projects (I couldn't just start with one of the projected maps because it was in a more standard projection model, which was causing the land at the edges of the map to be severely distorted).

    The map's scale is 1 inch = 4146.76 miles, or 6673.57 km (the map is 6 inches tall). The points at the top and bottom of the map are the North and South poles, and you can see where the map was spread to flatten it. The marks on the sides note the arctic circles, the tropics, and the equator. The brown on the map notes mountain ranges, but not altitude (I'll later be adding layers for altitude, terrain, and climate).

    Currently, I would like help with spicing up the coastlines, as well as ideas on how to camouflage what is obviously Africa's coastline on the Eastern portion of the continent.

    Oh, and for the perceptive, I did switch the poles. There is research showing that this may have happened many times in our past, and I'm using it as one of the many events that helped reshape the world and remove almost all evidence and knowledge of previous cultures.

    Thanks for any help you can offer.



    I also wanted to add a "great work" to all of you here. I've seen some beautiful maps here, and I hope I can achieve a percentage of what the CG's best have.

  2. #2

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    50 Million Years ahead?

    That sounds like a serious call for geologists first of all, ever since continental drift will have been a serious issue.

    Btw - does the Sun hold out that long? Can't remember whether it was 5 million or 5 billion years...
    Two in harmony surpass one in perfection

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Baziron View Post
    That sounds like a serious call for geologists first of all, ever since continental drift will have been a serious issue.

    Btw - does the Sun hold out that long? Can't remember whether it was 5 million or 5 billion years...

    If you're interested, the research can be found http://www.scotese.com/Default.htm. It would be kind of silly for him to have a 250 Ma map if the sun wasn't going to be around that long; I believe the sun's got billions of years left.

    I'm actually researching theoretical evolution as well; there are a number of biologists who have written books on what animals could be like in the future, including an Animal Planet special The Future is Wild.

    I don't try to explain magic and such with science (aside from simple handwaved psudo science if necessary). The fact that my setting is Earth in the future is more to give me structure than it is a huge portion of the setting: I'll never come out and say it in game, though there are clues and echoes of the past which do affect the present.

    Either way, any ideas on how to spice up those coastlines?

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Baziron View Post
    Btw - does the Sun hold out that long? Can't remember whether it was 5 million or 5 billion years...
    The sun lasts a good 5 billion years more. About a billion years from now, though, Earth becomes uninhabitable as the sun's perpetual increase in brightness drives the inner ege of the habitable zone past Easrth's orbit.
    Last edited by waldronate; 04-27-2008 at 05:07 PM.

  5. #5

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    Check out RobA's tutorial on how to build a not-so-random coastline.

    This sounds ideal for your purposes since you can start with images of existing continents and by playing with the settings, make detailed coastlines which hold the main forms of the continents but differ in the detail.

    You will need to download Gimp (free download) if you have not already got it.

  6. #6
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    I tried following the tutorial in Photoshop, but it wasn't working, even after someone refined it for Photoshop (I'm misunderstanding one of the steps I believe).

  7. #7
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    Thanks. I finally got it to work, but it isn't doing very much for me, since I'm dealing with such a large scale. I did discover that I can trace out the continents and use the Ocean Ripple distortion to create some random coastlines, then find edges to finalize. I'll be fine tuning things, see how it all turns out.

  8. #8

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    Hmmm, must try that ocean ripple trick. When you say it's a problem of scale, do you mean that your document is at too high a resolution for the cloud filters to give the effect?

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by ravells View Post
    Hmmm, must try that ocean ripple trick. When you say it's a problem of scale, do you mean that your document is at too high a resolution for the cloud filters to give the effect?
    No matter what resolution I try, the cloud details are just too big. I figured out a workaround; I fill the whole layer with the clouds, then use transform to scale the selection down to 1/4th, then tile it. GIMP allows you to play with the detail of clouds, but I can't find a way to do it in Photoshop.

    The ocean ripple trick is only good for islands I found; it makes continents too uniform in their randomness ... as oxymoronic as that sounds.

  10. #10

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    It's a pity the PS cloud filter doesn't have settings, I use a plug-in filter for clouds which has a lot more options. Very good plug-in set, which I'd highly recommend to anyone. Works with PSP too.

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