Reply With QuoteAfter exporting it to CC3, this is the climate map I mentioned earlier.
Raswar
This is my first serious attempt at using Fractal Terrains to create a world. After some initial frustration with using FT, it went much faster after I read through the tutorial at http://www.fracterra.com/CGTutorial/index.html. After consulting the sample map of Earth provided with FT, I decided there were too many mountains and planed most of them down in the Northwest continent. For the southwest continent, I lowered them, lowered land into the sea on the north edge and raised it up on the south edge. The Eastern continent I left pretty much alone, since I liked the extensive high plateau. I did some basin filling and smoothing, ran some rivers (set to long), and did some more altitude adjustments until I got all the major rivers to flow the sea. I used the climate editing tools to reduce the rainfall about 35 degrees north and south latitude until I got grasslands and deserts. I'm sufficiently satisfied for now. Next, I think I want to export this to CC3 and start populating it.
Raswar CC3
After exporting it to CC3, this is the climate map I mentioned earlier.
Wahoo! Indeed! Nice layout of the Biomes!
I can't really take all the credit. I can let the computer do the randomizing and the number crunching, and something interesting is bound to come up. All I have to do is a couple of hours worth of judicious editing and tweaking of the basic parameters. Most of the art, in the approach I am using, is knowing what to edit and tweak and where. I can let most of the details fall where they will, and let my fictional inhabitants work around what "nature" has given them. The thought of trying to do this with pure art makes my brain hurt.
I decided that I wanted the full range of possible biomes, so I increased the rainfall along the equator to give me some tropical jungle and added ice at the poles. I also increased the height of the mountains in the northeastern continent. I redid the rivers using actual flow (based on rainfall) instead of potential flow, which made most of them a bit shorter. I also used a TrueColor overall coloring scheme from the Terraformer images and an alternate climate coloration, to get an image of the world should actually look like, except that the rivers are exaggerated and I don't have cloud cover. I'm having a few problems exporting this to CC3 and doing what I want with it. Next, I want to focus on the northeast continent and start populating it.
I hope that you know that the climate model is ignoring a lot of factors and produce very inaccurate climates. The grassland on the equator for example, should be an exception, not the norm. (as you might have already guessed)
Did you perhaps mistake the 30 degree North latitude line for the equator? That's where the grassland is, next to the desert, on the northern region of the northeastern continent. I'm not quite meteorologist enough to account for global ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns.
