Rocky Mountain Critique

[rockmaster]

Hi Everyone,

I've being trying out my hand at photoshop for creating rocky mountains. Any critique would be appreciated. Also anyone know how I can make them look taller/higher?

I used "Terrain creation tutorial v1.5.pdf" as a base.



Thanks everyone
Steph

[Hai-Etlik]

Well, if you are trying to replicate the appearance of orthophotos, I'd suggest you start by looking closely at actual orthophotos.

Simple noise generators like you find in typical graphics software aren't remotely up to the task of creating a convincing mountainous elevation map. Also different mountains look different, and they also look different depending on the scale.

If you aren't trying to make a realistic looking orthophoto and are instead aiming for a topographic map, then I'd suggest going for something more abstract with fewer textures. Try looking up "swiss cartography"; the swiss really now how to do maps of mountains. A good convincing elevation map is still really hard to do for this though.

If you aren't trying to produce something that looks anything like a real topography, but is just a symbol that says "there are mountains here" then I'd suggest going much more abstract. What you have is both apparently trying to look like a photo or hillshaded elevation map, but also very fake looking. That combination gives a sense that the map is lying badly. The symbols on a map should not be misleading about how much information they are trying to convey. Similarly, avoid adding textures that are ambiguous about whether they are meaningful or just for decoration.

Most importantly, a map has a purpose. Be very clear about what that purpose is. You need to keep the purpose in mind when you are deciding how to represent things, and even more importantly, what to represent. Just because something is there in real life doesn't mean it needs to be represented in a map. If it doesn't need to be there, adding it just creates clutter that detracts from the important things.

A geophysical map needs to represent mountains in some detail. A political map doesn't need them, and if it has them at all they should be very low key. A detailed road network is important for a road map, but not for marine charts while the chart needs detailed bathymetry information and a road map just marks areas as being water.

[GrimFinger]

Hi Everyone,

I've being trying out my hand at photoshop for creating rocky mountains. Any critique would be appreciated. Also anyone know how I can make them look taller/higher?

I used "Terrain creation tutorial v1.5.pdf" as a base.



Thanks everyone
Steph

Maps are an exercise in visual perception. You depict, they perceive. Simple enough, right?

Well, apparently not, if the abundance of cartographic maps on this website alone is any indicator.

Here, you present what appears to be the rather humble beginning of a map. What are you presenting the human eye with, though? A mountain surrounded by fields of grass? Or do the green areas denote forests? Or do they denote anything at all? Just vegetation in general, perhaps?

I've certainly seen worse looking attempts at mountains, before, but that doesn't help you any here, now. For starters, your map in its current form gives the eye very little to visually play with. Is this a mountain? Is this a hill? Is this merely a rock? In other words, there's no sense of scale about it. You haven't given the eyeball anything to work with, and so the human eye begins to doubt and to criticize silently to itself.

If you want a mountain to appear taller, then you can trick the eye into buying into that a number of different ways. On very high mountains on the planet that we share, very tall mountains tend to be bedecked with snow. Here, your chosen representation of a mountain is a gray blob with what appears to be hammered features. It really isn't a terrible attempt at a mountain. The color scheme for it certainly conjures up an impression of rock to my eye, and at least it has some sense of texture about it.

The green mass, on the other hand, does a disservice to your attempt at a mountain. its texture is at odds, visually, with what you're giving the viewer with your mountain's texture. The texture of the green mass draws the eye in, down to a perception of lower height for the gray mass protruding from it. Hammered indentations aside, the gray mass of the mountain actually has a smoother texture to it than the rolling swath of green. So, by approaching texture this way, your mountain will seem smaller to the human eye.

This base map has nothing of consequence to offer the human eye, that the eye may thereby draw visual conclusions. No nearby towns or cities or structures, no nearby mountainous companions nor hill kin, nothing really. In essence, you have left the human eye hanging.

When you, as a cartographer, do this, then the human eye will communicate with the human brain and the human voice, and what your human ear then ends up hearing may not be a pretty sound, since your map is an attempt to communicate. Communication begets communication. As a cartographer, what you want to do is to communicate effectively. You do that by showcasing your skills and talents, certainly, but communication is of far more basic origins than that.

Here, my eye asks me how much time and how much effort went into this, into what is presented here for its visual consumption? Imperfection in skill level and in terms of raw natural talent can be offset in other ways - such as through a healthy injection of time and effort and details.

Not knowing what the green is supposed to actually represent, specifically, your map leaves my mind to wonder about that. And so it does, and it asks my eye why there appear to be copycat patterns strewn across this map. That's very...un-ordinary. It's like vertical lines in green form running from left to right across the map. It's very distracting to the eye, and the eye holds that pattern in disdain.

On a map, the human eye tends to embrace irregularity. It seeks out differences. It years for nuance. It pines for visual transitions. Scars and blemishes, in terms of shortcomings in skills and abilities and talents, are more easily forgiven by the human eye when it perceives - rightly or wrongly - that a lot of time and effort was made to create the map that is the visual treat for the human eye.

Perhaps that is no mountain nor hill nor rock. Maybe it is just a anthill that we are looking at. Your mountain looms large over the space of the map. It dominates the eye, in that sense, in the sense of the obvious. But, perception is about far, far more than just the obvious.

This map makes no use, whatsoever, of text to inform the eye. There are reasons why cartographers frequently resort to text. It informs. It entices. It provides a form of visual distraction, a form of visual competition, that the insatiable appetite of the human eye might be whetted for at last a moment or more.

Was there an inspiration in real life for this mountain? By that, I mean, what region of the planet Earth is most like this particular map? I doubt that anyone would say Antarctica, due to the absence of snow and ice. Was it the Appalachian Mountains? Was it somewhere in the Rocky Mountains? I ask, because many mountains actually have trees growing on them, and tree provide a visual mechanism to ascertain a sense of size and scale for the mountain that they are growing upon.

Your mountain is a bare mountain. It is a bare mountain out in the middle of nowhere. So, basically, you have tossed a visual sense of scale right out the window with that maneuver.

When you create a map, you are undertaking an exercise in perception, one where you are attempting to craft a visual narrative for the human eye. Your visual narrative on display, here, says virtually nothing. Why? Because you've imbued it with the very barest of bones and dare to call it a mountain.

No water flows down nor from beneath this, your mountain. It is barren of life, even life in vegetation form. It is largely bereft of visual interest, because you've placed all your visual eggs in one basket.

Plus, to make matters even worse, you complicate matters for yourself by trying to depict a mountain in three dimensional form. So, you choose to undertake a more complex visual equation, yet you only bring the most meager of visual chips to this high stakes cartographic game. Because three dimensional cartography necessarily involves more detail rather than less, the human eye of the viewer lets you get away with less. You're promising the eye the visual equivalent of prime rib, yet you're serving up Vienna sausages. The average eye is smart enough and experienced enough to know that it's getting visually ripped off.

But, in fairness to you, you're just starting out on this map. Right? So, it has very little in the way of details, at present.

But, here's the kicker - the human eye doesn't care. It can only behold what you present. A dearth of details is visual fog. It blinds the human eye to the beauty that you want your cartographic baby to see.

[kan210690]

thank your post

[rockmaster]

i've been working on some DEM/3DS rendering. maybe that looks more realistic.

It's a small scale map, camp size.

[Francissimo]

Very interesting post grimfinger!
About topography with dem, you can be interested in qgis, it allows you to produce hillshades, the kind of style you were trying to do in your first map. There's really a lot of way to depict topography on maps, and that's a cool thing