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Thread: Map of the Twin Kingdoms of Aran and Ilan - Handdrawn

  1. #181
    Guild Expert Facebook Connected Caenwyr's Avatar
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    Hi all! Another update. A few days ago I considered the idea of adding shaded relief to the areas between the mountains. That sounded like a straightforward plan, so I set to work optimistically. Unfortunately, I met quite a few more bumps in the road than I expected.

    First off, I decided that if I want a shaded relief, I'd better do it right from the beginning. It's never bad to do something in high detail, and lower the detail afterwards, right? Why do it, if you can overdo it!

    So I started drawing out relief contour lines. Bloody work took me over two days, but what I ended up with was more than I had hoped for:
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    (don't mind the lack of detail in the upper right corner, that's on purpose. The people living in these lands have no detailed knowledge of the Big Outside, so it's a "hic sunt dracones" sort of thing)

    Only after I finished my contour map, it dawned on me that red lines on a white map don't actually have any use when you're trying to make a shaded map. What I needed was a greyscale map, with brightness implying elevation. A DEM (Digital Elevation Model), so to speak. So I started creating that instead, based on the red contour lines, and ended up with this:
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    Great, right? There was only one problem with this map: the elevation changes are not gradual, but stepped. Creating a shading pattern based on this stepped DEM would result in ugly ring shadows. I'd have to erode the map to the point where the steps would no longer be visible, without erasing important features (such as the gap draining the huge lake/sea in the north). So I vamped up Wilbur, and started playing around with the settings.

    Maybe I'm not smart enough, maybe I should've read the documentation better (RTFM, right?), but what is certain is that I failed. Miserably. I either ended up with a map that's only slightly recognisable, or elevation steps that were slightly eroded, but still very much present.

    I almost gave up, I can tell you that. For a moment I considered exporting the whole shabang to Sketchup and model the terrain there, but I didn't know of a way to export the terrain again to a greyscale raster file. So I started looking around on the web, and found a payware software package called GeoControl. The package is now adopted by a company called Cloddy, but on the old website I found a free demo version, which I promptly downloaded and started fiddling with.

    It was a blast. Much of the work you do by hand in Wilbur (which is exactly what makes Wilbur so versatile) has been automated in GeoControl. I managed to play with the settings enough to get rid of the steps, and exported the resulting DEM to Wilbur for the finishing touches. After a few last tweaks in Photoshop this is the DEM file I managed to create:
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    Now over to the shading! As a longtime GIMP user who recently switched to Photoshop, I was absolutely certain there should be an easy way to create bump maps using the DEM file as the elevation layer. Well, I failed to find it. So after a few hours of frustration I fired up GIMP and quickly smashed this little beauty into existence:
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    All I still needed to do was take the light and dark parts, blur them to blobs, and overlay them on my map. And that's what I did. And this, my friends, is the result:
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    The problem now is: will I really be able to let that bump map sit there, unused save for the blurry shading on my handdrawn map? Or will I cave in and start a complete redo of my map in a more realistic manner? Argh, ambitions! The death of my social life!

    What do you think of the added shading, guys? Is it worth the trouble, or does it actually make my map worse than it was before?
    Caenwyr Cartography


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  2. #182
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    Quote Originally Posted by Caenwyr View Post
    Maybe I'm not smart enough, maybe I should've read the documentation better (RTFM, right?), but what is certain is that I failed. Miserably. I either ended up with a map that's only slightly recognisable, or elevation steps that were slightly eroded, but still very much present.
    Right, RTFM .
    OK there is only a prehistorical one but anyway. You have a function "Deterrace" which should/might/could with the help of God do exactly that - deterrace. The more your map has terraces, the better it works and you have a lot of them. It is relatively bad on the top and at the bottom but that leaves you only 2 places to correct instead of N.
    However the vertical discontinuities (cliffs) are what Wilbur (or FT for that matter) can't really deal with. It would sorely need a continuity tool like an S curve that smoothly connects at the top and at the bottom Inside a selection. World Machine 2 has that.
    I have been struggling with a 2000 m sea cliff (residual artefact from continental shelves creation) for 1 week and even with the help of Waldronate couldn't get rid of it.


    The problem now is: will I really be able to let that bump map sit there, unused save for the blurry shading on my handdrawn map? Or will I cave in and start a complete redo of my map in a more realistic manner? Argh, ambitions! The death of my social life!
    The former you will not but the latter you will. Too much time investment in a sophisticated problem and negligible yield.

    What do you think of the added shading, guys? Is it worth the trouble, or does it actually make my map worse than it was before?
    Well it's better for me but that's because I know that it is there. Yet it doesn't make much difference and a casual observer wouldn't even notice. It seems to be a waste to have reconstructed a height field and only use it for shading.

  3. #183
    Guild Expert Facebook Connected Caenwyr's Avatar
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    What I wonder about most, however, is not how to eliminate the steps, but how to fill in the spaces BETWEEN each contour line so the steps are no longer visible. In fact the contour lines are the only real information we have. Do you guys know of a solution? Is there a way to digitize the contour lines and let some sort of software fill in the blanks?
    Caenwyr Cartography


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  4. #184
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    I agree with Deadshade : You spent a lot of time on the shaded reliefs but it doesn't make that much difference on your map. I would rather kep them and refine the process to make another version of the map in a realistic style rather than mix them with the hand-drawn style here.

  5. #185

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    I read through most of the thread (whew!), and I must say I really liked the first version of the map. The second one is good too, but as others have noted, try not to mix styles (the hand-drawn mountains and the height map shadow). They can both be very nice on their own but not together, in my opinion. Also, I would suggest complementing the hand-drawn mountains with some minor hills here and there in the rest of the map, to suggest a more varied terrain. Plus I would get rid of the coloured borders, they are mostly distracting in this case, especially in the independent regions.

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