Introduction Post and a few maps

[jfrazierjr]

Fixed the rivers, in the one instance where I kept the fork (important for the city thats built there) I hope I provided enough subtly geographical evidence to support it (w/e the heck that means)

The bulk of this repass though is looking at the mountains

http://the-azarian.com/azariandnd/az...sm_map-WIP.jpg

Sooo.... I was about to say pretty nice mountains there.... and then...

I greatly disliked those mountains so I spent some time reading the "Playing with Mountains" thread, got inspired and made this pass at the two largest mountain ranges.

http://the-azarian.com/azariandnd/az...m_map-WIP2.jpg

Muuuuuch better imo

WOW... so much better than good! "You have... rep."

Joe

[jfrazierjr]

btw, if you would be willing, you can upload your maps directly to the site here and get thumbnails. I for one like to look at the thumbnails first. Sometimes things look much better (or worse) at thumbnail view that they do at full size. When you are posting, click the Go Advanced button and a few inches down from the text field where you enter comments is a Manage attachments button. You can upload up to 5 attachments and those that are jpg, png, or gif(I think) will get thumb nailed and shown inline below your comments and you can click to see the full size. If you like your copies to be on your site "in addition" you can even upload from a URL.

Joe

[Finis]

The latest WIP

http://the-azarian.com/azariandnd/az...m_map-WIP3.jpg

[Naeddyr]

Very nice, though I personally think the grass and sand look kinda blurry, compared with the crispness of the mountains and the forests.

[torstan]

That's coming along very nicely. Good work.

[Karro]

Very good looking. I think there's still something odd looking about the two largest peaks. They look to be about 3 times taller than any of the other mountains around it. Also, because this is a north-south running range, I would expect most of the lower ridges feeding into these peaks to also run north-south, with only a few meandering side-to-side ridges, but in the case of these two peaks, the feeder ridges form a radial pattern outward, like a snowflake.

For these peaks (assuming you want to particularly tall peaks that rear above the rest of the mountains) if you want to maintain a certain height, you might try building a series of ridges and plateaus and have the taller peaks be ridge peaks that sit ontop of the plateau.

Anyway, the rest looks great. I particularly like the texture of your forests, and how it thins out at the edges, breaking off into little clumps of trees and copses at the edges. Those are awesome!

[RobA]

What is the scale of this map?

-Rob A>

[Finis]

What is the scale of this map?

-Rob A>

oops! the scale is on one of my hidden layers. >_>

1 inch = approx 200 miles

it's 'roughly' the size of france and germany with room to spare

[Finis]

Very good looking. I think there's still something odd looking about the two largest peaks. They look to be about 3 times taller than any of the other mountains around it. Also, because this is a north-south running range, I would expect most of the lower ridges feeding into these peaks to also run north-south, with only a few meandering side-to-side ridges, but in the case of these two peaks, the feeder ridges form a radial pattern outward, like a snowflake.

For these peaks (assuming you want to particularly tall peaks that rear above the rest of the mountains) if you want to maintain a certain height, you might try building a series of ridges and plateaus and have the taller peaks be ridge peaks that sit ontop of the plateau.

Anyway, the rest looks great. I particularly like the texture of your forests, and how it thins out at the edges, breaking off into little clumps of trees and copses at the edges. Those are awesome!

Thank you, and I agree about the mountains. I probably spent seven or eight hours yesterday playing with Rob's technique, combined with some of the ideas in the 'Playing with Mountains' thread and a few of my own. The radial 'snow flake' patterns seemed to be the best way to get two distinct large peaks that were, at a glance, noticeably larger than the rest of the range, without dwarfing the rest of the peeks (if you think they are too big now, you should have seen my other attempts :p). I'm aware they don't look 'quite' right, but at this point I am not sure if shrinking them any more / changing the structure will have the desired effect I want.

I'll probably spend sometime looking at google earth today for reference and seeing what can be done

For the record, I live in the pacific northwest (near Seattle) and greatly enjoy my view of Mt Rainer on a clear day. Even though it's 80 miles away, towers above everything else in the skyline. Now I realize that Mr Rainer is only about 10-15 miles at the base, and the ones on my map are closer to 200 :p and thus would tower into low orbit; but I wanted them visible at a glance on the map..

Sigh.. not sure how to resolve it.

[RobA]

The problem is that realistic satellite images at that scale don't have discernible mountains. In google earth or maps at that scale mountains look kile stretched out snowflakes, and not like mountains.

This begs the point of the map - is it there for information or to be realistic...

-Rob A>