My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
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.
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Cogito, ergo sum nerdem.
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Pimping my worldmap here. Still WIP... long way to go, but I'm pretty proud of what I've done so far...
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
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
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
Last edited by altasilvapuer; 05-10-2009 at 02:24 PM.
(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
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.
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'll just ditto what Ascension said.
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
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.
I think, therefore I am a nerd.
Cogito, ergo sum nerdem.
Check out my blog: "The Undiscovered Author"
It's the story of a writer... follow me in my simple quest to get published, and share your own writing stories, adventures and writerly tips.
Pimping my worldmap here. Still WIP... long way to go, but I'm pretty proud of what I've done so far...
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