Map 06 - The Lands of Icewind

[arsheesh]

Awesome, Arsheesh!! Great atmosphere. I like how many tribal societies there are in the Guildworld…

Thank Lingon!

Hi Arsheesh

Firstly, let me just say that your map is fantastic! Very moody and the use of colour and form certainly helps to tell a story, which I think all the best maps do.

I'm new on the forums, so I've been trying to drink from a fire hose in terms of info (tutorials, WIP threads, etc). After this map caught my eye, I went back to your full tutorial, and read through Waldronate's comments there and his tutorial threads as well.

I was hoping you could confirm my basic understanding of the workflow you applied to this map please? As I understand it:
- Draw land mass (and create a mask for later)
- Draw height map (covering mountains, hills and rivers per your attachments)
- Import the height map into Wilbur, bound the effects using the mask, and let Wilbur work it's erosion magic
- Take the resulting Wilbur height and bump maps back into GIMP/PS and start the compositing process
- Paint or use gradients to colour
- Do all the other finishing magic
- Profit!

Is that about right (ignoring all the specific settings and such)?

Again, awesome map mate, and very inspirational for recreating a similar style.

First off, welcome to the Guild! And thanks for the kind words. Yes, that is more or less my workflow. One clarification, while I do create selection masks in GIMP, these are used only while working on the map within GIMP, not Wilbur. If you want to select certain areas in Wilbur, for instance the coastline, the rivers or the mountains, you can create separate B&W layers for each of these layers in GIMP, save each layer as a separate .png, and then load these .png's as selections in Wilbur (via Select > Load Selection). Also, for this particular map I didn't use a gradient map, as I was going for a different look. I simply painted the sea one color and the land another and set the layer mode of this painted layer to "color" (so that the parchment layer below still comes through). I also duplicated the parchment layer I was using, moved it above the color layer and set it to overlay at 50%.

That is pretty much the same process I use, which makes sense wince it is based off of yours and Waldronates tutorials on his page

I think I found though that it would pay to actually work on the initial grey scale height map in more detail before going through the Wilburization which takes quite a lot of time. In particular getting all the ridges and lines in first hand. Not doing so I found I had to go back a lot to gimp to editing the height map before running it through Wilbur again.

Oh also if one is aiming for particular river routes to really set those down darker a few heights below the surrounding grey scale so the incise flow will head to them. and also ensure that they are a smooth down hill towards the sea or just make them entirely slightly above sea level.

Ozdarchangel that looks like the right workflow, but I suggest you check the Eriond tutorial Arsheesh made and obliquely linked to, it is really good and useful and you'll learn a lot by doing it. I did.

Yup, that pretty much sums up what I did in creating the height map for this piece as well.

Thanks mate. I've read through that excellent tutorial thoroughly and started following it. Even installed GIMP just because the Difference Clouds are far more configurable than in PS (which is what I've always used). However, before I start the slow process of copying chunks of Clouds and blending them into the height map for the mountain ranges, I wanted to check if Arsheesh had replaced that part of the process with simply hand-painting the GIMP height map - I'd far prefer hand painting, gives me more control over the terrain structures (and key river placement)

To answer the question, yes, for this method I entirely jettisoned the use of fractal clouds, which significantly sped up my workflow. That's one of the real benefits of the method Waldronate outlines.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh