Hi!

glad you like it. Cheers.

It's a great challenge, for me particuarly because the stuff I've done before as really just been exploring techniques and this is the first time I've had to use all that to a practical end.

Wilbur helps make this map really. A great program! I'm still stumbling around it a bit. For this map, I furthered my methods from my tutorial - but the key is in the height map. I must have spent about 8 hours working on that (my 'puters a bit old and slow too ) and still not quite happy with it - don't think the hills show up much and they should be a bit softer, but something learnt for next time.

It was a bit tricky 'coz Wilbur's errosion created some unwanted rivers heading out from inland towards the ones already there, and I've seen the river police on patrol and wanted to be a law abiding citizen even though it meant scraping the first one. Actually, it bugged me too and wanted to make it look more natural.

Previously, I used whatever output Wilbur gave me for the entire map, which was fine for playing about with techniques as the tutorial maps don't have any other purpose. For a map that has specific details, I couldn't get exactly what I wanted so I adapted my workflow and concentrated on using Wilbur to detail various areas of the map for what I was after.

So what's changed from the tutorials I've done, is after creating a general height map using Photoshop, I rendered out numerous stages (gray height maps)from Wilbur as I added errosion - one also just for the mountians only with more errsion. From Wilbur back into Photoshop and blend all the various height maps to make a more custom one to be as close to the sketch, using layers and a soft eraser then flatterned that height map to make a master height map. It's partly because I dont know Wilbur beyond the first 'fun with wilbur' tutorial, but this way I had more control for what I was after.

This went back into Wilbur again for a little more noise and errosion to unify any dodgy blending I might have done in PS - but also because Wilbur's great at making it all look natural.

I also thought that Wilbur's Lighiting render that you see when you open up a file was much better than any I previously had done in photoshop, which can be too harsh or strong. So when I was done in Wilbur I save that colour lighting map out and desaturated it back in PS for my base render (rather than go through Render Lighting and Emboss )

Another change to my previous method is that with the master height map once in PS. I created a couple of colour height gradients and blended them into the file. This worked nicely with the final render with wilbur.

When I'm done, I hope to put up an overview of all this on my site, including the a link to the gradients for download if anyone would like to use them. probably next month. For now, I hope the above helps explain things a bit if anyone wants a go.


Cheers

jez