Realistic mountain terrain
How is this sort of mountain terrain done?
Photo 7 of 19 from Showcase
It looks much like natural terrain blended into the color of the map. Or is it software generated? Seems too complex to be hand-drawn.
It looks like a shaded relief painting that's been chopped at the edges to get islands and with some rivers and things drawn on it (note how the mountains stop and start at the sea edge in places and the rivers don't always follow the terrain). See Relief Shading and Shaded Relief – Home for examples of works in this style and information on how to do your own.
The sea is a giveaway. You see mountains Under water that nobody would loose his time to draw. So it has been probably generated by a fractal software and then heavily photoshopped. If it was PS alone it must have taken days and one would Wonder why undersea mountains. But the rivers show that it has been PSed in any case.Originally Posted by chick
Check out this thread, and the one that is linked to in the first post. http://www.cartographersguild.com/re...tml#post233410 I believe they used some old shaded relief map sections and blended them together, then put their own coloring and flare on them. But the sources are old shaded relief maps, most likely done by hand in natural media. There are a few sites all about shaded relief techniques, with examples of different styles, etc, that can be found via Google search. I've visited this one before (which I was pointed at when I got curious about the subject), which has some interesting history and info: Relief Shading - Techniques but I'm certain you'll find others, and maybe someone can point you at an even better one.
If you want to learn how to do it yourself, I'd suggest picking up a pencil and doing a very small study of a section of an existing relief map or a bit of satellite imagery to test it out and get a little practice teaching your eyes and hands how to go about it. That's what I'd do, anyway. And if you have a scanner available, you could take the shaded pencil drawing right into ps or another editing program and use it as a ground for coloring.
Great, thank you for the great info. I'm going to give this a try and see what I can do with it.
Interesting. How would a fractal software generate something like this?
Start with a DEM of some sort and apply relief shading techniques and various natural media and NPR techniques. http://www.cs.utah.edu/research/grou...or-version.pdf is a god starting point.
There was an old thread with a realistic relief picture showing (from about 45° above) a panorama with a lake and a sea bay with mountains around and rivers flowing to the bay through a valley that I saw a few days ago.
Unfortunately I can't find the post and the picture anymore (they were discussing Inside about using relief maps as support for fantasy maps).
OK, here is my first serious attempt to use shaded relief mountains. I'd sure love to hear lots of comments, critiques, criticisms, bashing, or even the occasional positive feedback, about what is good or bad here.
What bugs me is the use of iconic trees with the sahded reliefs. Mixing realistic terrains with iconic/drawn stuff aesthetically clashes. (not to say that shaded reliefs are top down views and the trees aren't). You probably didn't focus on the other things yet but you way want to take care about rivers mouths.
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