The Burning Archipelago

[theleast]

Hi all! Long-time lurker and tutorial reader, first-time poster here. Welcome to the Burning Archipelago.



The Burning Archipelago is the setting for a homebrew DnD 5e age-of-sail campaign that I'm developing. The various islands of the archipelago were formed by a massive super-volcano, the caldera of which is Lake Renapi, at the centre of Keldrith Island. It's a southern-hemisphere region, at a latitude approximate to New Zealand, so the island of Dunaria has also been shaped by glaciers and sea ice.

I drew the islands in Illustrator using my wacom tablet, with the pen tool set to finest accuracy. This let me scratch out the coast in minute detail. Then I painted a grey-scale height map in Photoshop, using my illustrator file as a layer mask. I took that height map to Cinema 4D (my 3D program of choice) and rendered out a lighting pass. I also applied a gradient map to the height map to lay down a foundation for the colour, then hand-painted the rest of the textures in Photoshop (grass plains, forests, bare mountains, snow-caps, water etc.). Labels and parchment styling were also done in Photoshop.

Thanks for looking. Feedback is welcome!

[Voolf]

This is pretty beautiful, rep worthy i woud say. Looks very realistic - satelite view. I would love to know more how you painted it an made those nice lighting effects

[Abu Lafia]

Welcome to the Guild theleast! Congratulations for such an outstanding map debut. This is one of the finest "satelite" type maps i've seen here lately and the palette is fantastic! Get ready for some rep coming in Since you asked for feedback, i'd say the only thing that bugs me a bit are the "particles" flying around the edge of the title parchment background. Also the labels are a bit too big in my view (crossing the islands' coasts) and are somewhat overwhelming the beautiful landmasses. In that regard, i can just highly recommend having a look at Eduard Imhof's: "Positioning Names on Maps", wich is a wonderful resource for placing labels. I'm sure your next map will look even more breathtaking... Keep up the awesome work!

[theleast]

Thanks for the kind words!

This is pretty beautiful, rep worthy i woud say. Looks very realistic - satelite view. I would love to know more how you painted it an made those nice lighting effects

For the painting I used a combination of custom brushes, real geographic information (I stole some of New Zealand's mountains), and various blending modes.

For the lighting effect I took the grey-scale height map and used it as a displacement (aka height) map in Cinema 4D, that I then applied to a flat plane. This turned the plane into a 3D extrusion, where lighter shades of grey were higher. I then placed two lights in the scene: One was a faint blue area light to represent ambient light from the sky, the other was a slightly yellow infinite light at a low angle to represent the sun. I then rendered the plane out from directly overhead using an illumination pass which only outputs lighting information. Finally, I took this lighting pass and dropped it above the colour-map in photoshop, setting the layer mode to Overlay.

Most of what I've done is derived from various tutorials that I've found here, but if people want to know more about my specific techniques I'd be happy to make a tutorial or two of my own.

Since you asked for feedback, i'd say the only thing that bugs me a bit are the "particles" flying around the edge of the title parchment background. Also the labels are a bit too big in my view (crossing the islands' coasts) and are somewhat overwhelming the beautiful landmasses. In that regard, i can just highly recommend having a look at Eduard Imhof's: "Positioning Names on Maps", wich is a wonderful resource for placing labels. I'm sure your next map will look even more breathtaking... Keep up the awesome work!

Oh yeah, I forgot to clean up the parchment mask, hence the particles. Next time! And I'll definitely check out that guide, it looks very useful. Thanks!

[Ilanthar]

Very nice map ! I don't have much to add to Abu Lafia's comment.

[Voolf]

Thanks theleast.
Since i very rarely deal with any effects this is still pretty dark magic to me . (i hand draw everything). If you ever feel like making tutorial out of this map that would be great indeed. I know you are working in Photoshop, but i wonder if i could achive same in Krita.
Anyway, thank you for sharing with us, this map is beautiful. I like how nice you depiced forests and grass.

[Kellerica]

Now that is an outstanding first post indeed! I'm a sucker for darker maps, and this one certainly hits a sweet-spot. It's just oozing with atmosphere. Love it. I also absolutely adore those landspahes. I concur with Abu Lafia though - the labels on the islands are indeed a little too dominant.

Most of what I've done is derived from various tutorials that I've found here, but if people want to know more about my specific techniques I'd be happy to make a tutorial or two of my own.

Please do! I'd love to learn more of how this map was made.

An outstanding introduction all in all. Welcome to the Guild, and I sincerely hope to see more of your work!

[Josiah VE]

Holy smokes! This is amazing! Such a beautiful style. Even though it's a satellite style it has a wonderful painterly look. The sea is fantastic, the mountains, the forests, the labels, all top notch! Great job! Looking forward to seeing more of your maps, and I would be very interested in seeing the process to how you made it.

[Tom]

Wonderful job Theleast!! The map itself is really cool, i like the colours, the shapes and the general "dark waters" feel a lot! I'm pretty noob at making height-map, yours seems really a fine example!
But there are 2 things that this map miss absolutely (in my opinion of course):

- A "pirate/fantasy/handwritten" font! internet is full of amazing free fonts that will make your map shine
- A wind rose symbol! Otherwise your sailors will get lost..

[jshoer]

Great satellite map! I especially like Dunaria, with its glacial-looking gouges. Almost reminds me of Mount Desert Island. Have some rep!

I'd love to see a version with roads and cities on it.