Reply With QuoteOh, hey good idea. I hardly ever go back and do that bump mapping stuff with dodge/burn but you're totally right. I'll get on that right away.
Looking good.
I think your texture bump map is swamping your mountain shadows a bit. Have a look at this area as an example:
The shadows make it lok like the river is running over hills rather than between them. To sort this out you might want to really emphasise the mountain shadows. I took the liberty of doing a quick overlay to see what it looks like (hope you don't mind!) to get this:
Here's the overlay - as you can see it's really not very smooth or carefully done!
Hope that is useful.
This is a great map - I'm glad to see your style continue to get better. Great stuff.
Oh, hey good idea. I hardly ever go back and do that bump mapping stuff with dodge/burn but you're totally right. I'll get on that right away.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
How's this look? Added some towns and roads, walls and docks, and did the dodge/burn on a gray overlay bump map thing. I'm not thrilled with the city so I'll keep workin on that as well as the towns in the desert.
Last edited by Ascension; 02-01-2009 at 11:56 AM.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Hmm, I still think it could go further. Here's a satellite image to show what I mean:
The mountains are defined by the sharp shadows, and the smaller shadows that show terrain are secondary to those. You can go pretty extreme with the overall mountain shadows.
Otherwise, I like it. I agree with the city, but I've never been able to get good city results on these kind of maps. Interested to see what you end up with though.
Tor- yeah, the first iteration of this map had that sharp look and I wasn't feelin it (I thought I'd get bashed for it) so I deleted those ridges and redid them softer before I ever even started a thread. As to the bumping that I did do, well, it was getting quite dark and I get bashed enough for that, so I didn't go as hard as I might like to. I could use some smaller brushes and put in some gulleys and more definition but I don't wanna get carried away just yet and make it look like a DEM...not quite ready for that much realism yetI tried to rep ya for the advice but I gotta spread some around it appears.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
No worries. It looks good as it is. I'd be interested to see the sharp one you threw away!
Here's a halfway measure between soft and sharp on the terrain, plus I fixed that gray city and the desert towns, and some minor tweaks on the roads. I took a copy of the terrain and grayscaled it then hit it with unsharp mask which brought out the highest of the high whites, then a slight blur and set to overlay and I pumped up the bevel on the ridges, then some more dodge/burn on the bump layer. Anyway, it's all good, just messin around. Now back to the game. Crap uploaded the wrong pic. OK, here's the right one.
Last edited by Ascension; 02-01-2009 at 08:24 PM.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Thats a damn awesome map, the land texture is pure awesome.
Thanks Xiao. I'll be adding this technique into the continent tut I have sometime this week so that you can give it a try if you want.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
I think the only thing that throws me off here are the snowy bits. I find it odd that they have no steep slopes whatsoever: something I would expect from areas high enough to snow on.
I'm with torstan: sharp shading FTW
"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't."
-- Samuel Langhorne Clemens a.k.a. Mark Twain. (1897) Following the Equator.
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