Geidor

[Steel General]

I thought about beaches, but I've decided for the most part, I don't think they'd be too visible from this distance, would they? I will probably put a little bit, somehow, but not much.

Depends on the scale, didn't see one unless I missed it in a earlier post.

[Karro]

I'm also not happy with the mountains, at the moment. I did manage to give a little bit of illusion of depth, but not enough, and it's not crunchy enough, yet. I'll probably do some more playing around, and might poke around some of the related tutorials here, which I haven't viewed, yet.
-asp

One thing to consider about the mountains, depending on the level of realism you're going for, is that at the scale I presume you're using here, the mountains won't be just a single ridge-line in each case. Rather, they'll be a mass of many ridges and folds of land on folds of land. That's a lot harder to depict (at least, I'm finding it so), but will probably look better.

[altasilvapuer]

Steel General - I was saying I'll try to add something in a future version. I haven't, yet.

Karro - I've considered that thought, too. Haven't decided quite how I'm going to approach it, yet, though. Last day of exams is tomorrow, and then I have about 2 weeks-ish of break before more classes, so I might be able to get some more work done on this, finally

-asp

[altasilvapuer]

Well, I did some more work on the shadows for the mountains. I'm still going on them, and I haven't even started shading the rest of the terrain, but I reached a natural saving point, and decided to upload a little bit of progress.

Texture Pass IV:


The mountains feel a little dark to me in some places, and not quite random enough, but I think it'll even out once I have some shading on the rest of the land, and better textures filling everything. I also started reading through Pasis' tutorial, finally, while everything was saving, so I might incorporate a little bit of his ideas, depending on how well they mesh with my own strategy so far.

Comments, so far?

-asp

[altasilvapuer]

Well, I did a little more work on the textures over the past couple days.
Updates to the map from previous version (that I remember):

• Mountains roughed up a little
• Snowcaps added to some of the taller mountains
• Beaches added to a few of the coastlines - still needs work.
• Existing textures fleshed out more - especially Northern Tundra.
• Forests added/fleshed out in various places.

Texture Pass V:


-asp

[altasilvapuer]

(Quadruple-post? Really; if it wasn't for the time gaps, I'd probably feel terrible about this, heh)

After much yelling at Photoshop, I finally have a new version for everyone. It seems that as soon as my PSD breaches the 2GB mark, it loses the ability to save - who knew? The full-res of this is currently sitting around 1.85 GB, after deleting 90% of the old layers.

Most of the work here is the obvious addition of sea and lake textures, but I've also done some detailed shadow work on the land textures.



Comments? Criticisms?

-asp

[Ascension]

I love it except for two bits: 1 the forests seem clearly defined, texture-wise, but the mountains seem awfully blurry in comparison; 2 I think you might need some sort of shallows around the landmasses as that edge is kind of abrupt. Colors are sweet, almost perfect; and I love the things like the deserts bumps and the plains area on the southern continent. Very cool, I might have to snag a copy.

[Steel General]

I'll just ditto what Ascension said.

[Karro]

One other minor comment. There seems to be a bevel on the edge of the lakes, but not of the oceans. It seems a little odd. I would think either both would be beveled or neither.

Also, the lake-bevel goes awry in at least one place, in a lake on the northern continent.

[altasilvapuer]

Well, I've finally gotten back to this map. When I started the rivers, it quickly made my eyes bleed (as I'm sure no one here is surprised), so I swore it off for a while and declared it "close enough". I started another map, among other things, of which I'm up to tectonics and such, currently.

While going over this map with a friend a couple days ago, however, I felt a renewed drive for the rivers, so I've gone back to them. It has also helped that I've basically decided the only rivers I'm including are those important/known to the denizens of the planet (because, after all, just because it's SciFi doesn't mean it's 100% explored - or such is my excuse, anyway).

I've gone for more of a satellite-inspired look the whole time, which makes this somewhat of a departure, but I've got a few ideas on reconciling that, so we shall see what turns up.

In the mean time, here's a little preview of the rivers, so far:


I'm not happy, yet, with the rivers on the middle continent to the left of the big bay/sea, but for the moment they're standing as-is. I just need an excuse why they're so straight and fast and the others are more natural.

I've also decided that I'm not happy with the oceans, still (shores included), so I'm going to re-do them before I'm done, so for now the shallows are not much better than the last iteration. I'm also still deciding what to do with the mountains. I've got a couple ideas, but most require re-doing them quite a lot, which I'm not quite ready to do, yet. We shall see what I come up with. I am open to ideas, though.

Any majorly grievous river problems, so far?

-asp