Haevenstad Harbor and the Ydisian Coast

[Steel General]

I think it looks pretty durn cool...

[Ascension]

Despite the stubbornness, the vegetation looks great.

[Greason Wolfe]

Spent some time fiddling with mountains and rivers today. It's pretty rough right now and I think I will probably be re-working the distribution masks to give a more erratic shape to the mountains. In a similar fashion, I will likely extend the rivers further up into the mountains. Will have to see how it looks after a larger render, but for now, here's a sample of what I managed this afternoon. I'm definitely looking for some thoughts and opinions on this one as I am only about 50/50 on how it looks both for shape and coloring.

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

Alas, I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this, and I made every attempt to avoid it, but . . .

Simply put, there just isn't enough room. This became increasingly obvious as I kept looking at the latest render. Maybe it is just me, but the rivers/lakes were just odd and the mountains . . . Well, I wasn't happy with them at all. I need more land mass. I need more editing space (spoiled myself by working with larger resolutions in Terragen, so 513 by 513 is giving me claustrophobia! ). And I desperately want more detail, so it's back to the elevation file for a few days.

The good thing about this is that it will give me room to build up various buildings in and around Haevenstadt as well as in the outlying regions and should also give me better detail when I go to re-work both the elevation scheme and the rivers. The bad thing is that I will have to rebuild my surface maps and distribution masks, in which case, it might be time to take a closer look at GIMP.

I'll try to get a base elevation update up here as soon as possible, but the time consuming task is going to be rebuilding the coast line. As I start increasing the size it gets too "smooth" looking, and while that isn't bad in some places, other places need that extra bit of roughness for added effect. And, of course, I'll have to fill in a few low spots, but that is the easy part.

Terribly sorry for the untimely delay, but I haven't abandoned the project, just doing the same old, same old and taking a couple steps backwards to get several steps forwards.

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

Well, it only took me what seemed like forever, but I've made progress on two fronts. On one front, the regional elevation map is coming along nicely, but I've still got some tweaking to do before I'm ready to start rendering. On a second front, I zoomed in on the harbor itself and started doing some work in greater detail. In effect, I took a smaller part of the regional map and blew it up to a full scale map (in TG, that is) so that I'd have room to work in smaller details. This worked well as it has given me room to build the switchbacks leading from the lower portion of the harbor to the upper portion. I'll still have to do a little bit of tweaking, and am thinking about trying to add a bit of a wall at the top of the cliff face as a "safety" factor. It just wouldn't do for the children of Haevenstadt to go tumbling down the cliff, would it?

In any event, a couple of renders, one showing a bit of coloring for the lower portion of the harbor. I wanted to get a sense that now, years after all the engineering work to make the lower portion usable again, some vegetation is starting to grow. Evenutally it will change, once I start working up road and building masks, but for now, it should give everyone an idea where things are headed. If you look towards the top left of the first image, you can see the switchbacks against the cliff face. I figured I'd include a closer view of them as well, now that they are starting to cooperate.

As a side note, because this is becoming a two front project of sorts, I will move the Harbor of Haevenstadt, itself, into the City/Town Forum and maintain this thread for the regional development.

GW