Taking a break from the slightly tedious work of wind currents, I realized while looking over Korba's Calen Ndor (one of my other big inspirations), that I had neglected the actual ocean temperatures resulting from my rough currents, so I set about doing that. It was a bit of a learning experience figuring out the best way to do it, so I'll upload my three main stages in hopes that they will be helpful to someone.
Ideally, there should be two final copies - one for 'January' and one for 'July', but due to laziness and school, I'm going with one that's somewhat both and neither, for now.
My first image is of the basic heat distribution irrespective of continents or ocean currents, and based solely on latitude. I tend to begin with something like this so I have a rough idea in mind. I basically just made a quick gradient of the colours I wanted to use, set it to reflect, and drew the gradient from the center of my image (0° E/W, 0° N/S) due North to (0°E/W, 90°N). This wasn't wholly satisfactory, so I redid it using Photoshop's layer styles (gradient) for a little bit more ease of control without cluttering the image's history, but that's not really of importance, I suppose, as it can be done without layer styles.
Next, I tried morphing that actual layer according to my ocean patterns, but this proved to be overly-complicated and produced mediocre results. My method was to duplicate the entire image for safety, merge all the visible layers, and use Photoshop's Liquify filter, so I could liquefy the temperature while still seeing the continents, as the Liquefy filter only displays the layer currently being liquefied. Then, before applying the liquefication, I saved the mesh in it, and canceled the liquefication. Next, I went back to the original, liquefied the temperature layer, and applied the saved mesh. This allowed me to liquify only the temperature layer, but still be able to work while seeing the continents.
As stated, however, this was extremely over-complicated and produced results that were mediocre, at best, so I decided to try a different approach.
My next attempt came from a closer examination of Korba's own temperature maps for Calen Ndor (link) and realized that what I loved most about them was their simplicity. So this time, using the same colours as I had created for my gradient above, I used a simple round brush with a low hardness for a little fuzz, and blocked out the general shape of the temperatures, and then deformed them by hand by painting each colour back and forth over it's neighboring colours until I had something that looked satisfactory.
I'm still concerned about some of those temperatures, though, on the final one. Some of them just don't feel quite right to me for some reason. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to offer them.
With any luck, some of that babble might prove useful for someone.
Next, I am going to finish up my wind currents for July, and then move on to rainfall. And/or I might touch up the temperature map to account for seasonal changes, as my world does actually have a tilt to it.
-asp
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