The Vale - WIP

[AvuncularMontague]

It looks great, really convincing. Did Wilbur make those contour lines too, along with the heightmap?

[Gumboot]

It looks great, really convincing. Did Wilbur make those contour lines too, along with the heightmap?

No the contours are from photoshop, using the "trace contour" function under Filter>Stylize. I just had to determine the vertical range of the map to determine the scale match between elevation and the grey scale level, so I could get contour lines at the right altitudes (the heavier lines are 100m intervals and the lighter lines are 50m intervals). I did have to do a bunch of manual re-drawing in places where specific geography was required, which is why the underlying relief shading doesn't quite seem to match up with the contours in a couple of places.

I am using my government-issued 1:50 000 topographic maps as a style guide (and will use their key) but I couldn't quite match for scale because the map would have simply been far too big (which is why my interim contours are at 50m intervals instead of 20m intervals!). And yes, Lingon you're quite right; the style is totally at odds with the time period. I aren't any good at those amazing artistic maps a lot of you do with the little mountains and trees so I'm sticking with doing maps purely for the purpose of accurately displaying geographic information for now, hence the satellite map for Terrador and now this topographic map.

One day I might take a crack at one of those artistic maps.

For now I will have to wrestle with this behemoth. The file is already over 1.5GB. My computer is really struggling.