WIP - World Creation (Mat'am)

[mwagner]

So I've always played around with making my own world and have revisited the idea off and on for the past several years, and then I found the cartographer's guild and have been reading through a lot of the tutorials and works in progress so I figured might as well give it a go, since it seems that there is quite an awesome and supportive community here. So I decided to start all the way at the beginning with plate tectonics. This is just a rough sketch for me to get started on the specific land forms next.

Overall I just want to know if it makes sense (more or less) with the plate movement and whatnot since that will define a lot of the elevation and mountains of the world.

The only continent idea that I have starting off is for plate B3, I want it to be far enough away that it could be missed by early explorers, and I want two 'parallel' mountain ranges. The northern one being higher and rockier (hence the collision with the northern plate and the southern range being older and not as high and leading to a flatter area (desert) as it runs to the sea. The rest I jsut sorta started drawing.
C1 I think should be mountainous on the south and west
C3 should be mountainous on the northern edge
B5 pretty much jsut mountainous and hilly all over but calming down to the east
D1 mountains on the boundaries with D2 and C1
D2 mountainous on the boundary with D2
D3 mountainous to the southeast, with oceans forming between it and D2 and C3
E1 will be a smaller land mass with ocean having formed between it and the rest (I like the idea of an icecap that freezes far enough out to touch the southern most continents during the winter and then recedes in the summer to form passable ocean lanes.)

I am really not sure where island chains should go. I think they would be on edges that are colliding in the ocean plates. Right?

[Josiah VE]

Looks interesting, I don't know much about plate tectonics, I don't make my maps too technical, but looking forward to see how this develops.

[Azélor]

It's not my field of expertise but many people forget that the pole is a point on a sphere (although planets are flattened at the poles, so not exactly a sphere...), this point becomes a line when converted in 2D. You can't have a crack and a non-crack at the same spot.

[Caenwyr]

This is just silly. NO ONE starts a map with plate tectonics. I love it!

Also, Azelor is right of course:

It's not my field of expertise but many people forget that the pole is a point on a sphere (although planets are flattened at the poles, so not exactly a sphere...), this point becomes a line when converted in 2D. You can't have a crack and a non-crack at the same spot.

Try running your map through G.Projector. It's fun to watch, super easy to use and it helps to point out easily overlooked mistakes at the edges of your map (not just the poles, but also the 180° meridian). Make the adaptations that feel right to you, run them through G.Projector again and keep doing that until you have a seamless product. Takes a little time, but at this stage it's no biggy yet. Better do it right from the start, right? Doing this in a later stage would result in a HUGE mess, and LOTS and lots of work.

And since you're starting from the absolute basics (which I love!!), you have every opportunity to turn this into some flawless awesomeness!

[Deadshade]

Scratch A1, A2, A3, E1.
If you project your map on a sphere you'll notice that these plates are ridiculously small. Note that because distances on an equirectangular projection near the poles are shown much bigger than they are , the plate(s) which approach the poles must expand their horizontal dimensions as you approach the pole. Actually as the poles are only points, they belong necessarily to only ONE plate.
The plate that contains the pole, will look like an anvil : Let s say a small horizontal basis at 40° latitude then expanding right and left as you go northwards untill it joins the left and right side of the map f.ex at 80° latitude.
Reduce the number of plates - I am not saying that this many are impossible but it makes the work more difficult. Also your shapes are mostly triangular what is not very natural - for instance if you project B3 (and many others) on a sphere, you'll see that it looks triangular.

A plate is basically a sollid island floating on the molten convection cell that is below. That's why it moves as a whole according approximately to a single velocity vector.
So once you drew your plates, you draw on each one a single vector and then every single point of the plate will be moving in the direction of this vector. Again this is true for a sphere so on a rectangular projection the vectors would seem to have different directions for different points but this is only an artefact of a 2D map which tries to represent a sphere on a flat surface. This artefact is especially strong and difficult to represent for the plate containing the pole.
As a vector has not only a direction but also a length, you can vary the lengths and see that some plates move faster than others. This step is not necessary but f.ex fast colliding plates create higher and craggier mountains than slow colliding plates.

Perhaps the most important lesson if you want to start wih plate tectonics is that you simply must start with mapping the plates on a sphere. Only when it is finished on a sphere, you project the result on a plane and start to map the details. It is possible to start on a plane but then you need experience to be able to project in your head at every moment back on the sphere.

[Caenwyr]

What Deadshade said.

I've also whipped up G.Projector myself and quickly did some maps of the poles:

The North Pole would look like this:


And the South Pole would be like this:


You'll notice that there's a tiny little circular plate on each of the poles. That doesn't look right. Right? Also, when it comes to movement, the southern disklet seems to expand in all directions, while the northern one is moving all over the place at the same time. And D1 turns out to be just... ginormous:



C2 is quite special too: projected on the real-world globe, it would stretch from Miami in the north to Rio in the south, and from Panama in the west to the Horn of Africa in the east. Huge indeed:



So yeah, play around with G.Projector a bit! It's fun and it teaches you things . And you'll get even better in the process.

[mwagner]

Lol, Thanks Caenwyr. I'm a math guy so when I want to do something accurately I have to do it as accurately as possible, even though it will probably extend the time and effort and might not really change all that much in the long run.

[mwagner]

Thanks guys, I'll go back and play with the plate shapes and use G. projector till they look right. (is it the NASA one?) and then I'll mess with directions. Thanks! I'll post it again after I fiddle with it.

[mwagner]

Scratch A1, A2, A3, E1.
Perhaps the most important lesson if you want to start wih plate tectonics is that you simply must start with mapping the plates on a sphere. Only when it is finished on a sphere, you project the result on a plane and start to map the details. It is possible to start on a plane but then you need experience to be able to project in your head at every moment back on the sphere.

Would it be safe to assume that the plates move with rotation and not just linearly?

[mwagner]

Ok, so I took all the advice and redid the plates. I cut down on the number (I don't think I can get it less than what I have and be happy with it). I tried to make the movements make sense on a globe (the poles are WAY better) and I found that G. Projector to check stuff out on (its really cool). I went with some rotational movement for a few of the plates because it made sense to me. I also went ahead and sketched in general landmasses too. Thanks for the feedback so far!