Vallee Mystique : Rivermania Challenge

[landorl]

The mountains have a pretty good texture. That works pretty well. It definitly needs something to blend it into the background, but it sounds like you are making plans to do that.

The only other thing that is a bit of a negative is that at the point where you have the widest mountain, it plateaus at the top. I don't think that is intentional. I haven't uses PSP, so I don't know how to fix it.

[Greason Wolfe]

How's that old saying go?

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again?

Well, I didn't quite succeed. I'm afraid my ancient version of PSP just wasn't up to the task I was trying to push on it. The big problem, I think, wasn't in PSP's abilities as much as it was in the fact that the more I developed, the more manufactured things started to look. Thus, I was faced with a decision.

On the one hand, I could try to put the map together in GIMP. The problem there is that I really haven't taken (or even had) the time to learn what GIMP can do. On the other hand, I could fall back on Terragen. The benefit in TG was that I would be able to work with a more natural looking elevation model. In the end, TG seemed to be the best way to go.

So now, after a couple hours worth of work (and probably several to go) I've gotten off to a better start than before after several hours worth of work in PSP. For the most part, I wanted to get my coastal areas set up. It took a bit of experimenting when it came to smoothing things out along the coast, but I managed it with a little flood filling at a low opacity and a gradually increasing area of effect. I haven't laid out the main rivers yet, and I'm sure that's going to be a bit of a pain as I will have to cut down some of the elevations surrounding them, but things are progressing much quicker than before.

So for this update, there are actually three images. The first is the elevation model after editing in PSP. The second is TG's internal interpretation of that elevation model. The third is a low end render with full surface maps in place. I may need to do a little blurring (either gaussian or motion based) to smooth things out just a bit, but that is an experiment for another time. In the meantime, I'll be doing a full sized render so that I can get a better look at where the new rivers are likely to occur.

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

As I set to working on this again earlier, I realized that I'd almost made a terrible mistake. Well, not really terribly, but it could have been a time consuming one had I not caught it at such an early stage.

Without even thinking about it, I had rendered the lakes from the template at sea level rather than at an elevated level. But this was actually good news in a way. It gave me a chance to go back and rework the coastal areas as I wasn't completely happy with them. It took a bit of time, and I'll still have to go and do a little touch up work on the "new" lakes that have appeared based on the elevation model, but all in all, I'm fairly pleased with where this is heading now.

I'll likely spend the next couple of days working out the rivers and cutting/blending them into the elevation model, but for now, a bit of an update for comments, suggestions and/or criticism.

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

So obviously, I haven't posted on this WIP as much as I had hoped, but that's because I ran into a few snags. With Waldonrate and Torstan's tutorials, and a lot of help from Wilbur, I think I've managed to solve most of those problems. I'm in the process of a new render in TG right now, and though it won't be showing the rivers, I am hoping the channels will show up enough to give an idea of where they are going to be. I'll be posting that render once it is finished and then dive into the work of setting up my river mask for a second render. After that, it will be a matter of setting up a few distribution masks for special areas (like extended beaches and such) and a little tweaking of my surface files. If all goes well, I should have this done (with the exception of labeling) in the next day or two.

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

Well, that took a little longer than I expected, but the first render is finally finished. Right off the bat, I can see a couple problem areas that I'll have to work on;

1. The smaller of the pair of lakes to the WSW looks to have dried up for the most part.

2. The island in the larger of the pair of lakes to the SE has pulled an Atlantis on me.

Both problems, however, shouldn't be hard to fix. That fix is going to have to wait though cause I need my beauty rest. After which, I'll get back to work on those two problems as well as laying out the river mask for rendering sometime this afternoon or evening.

GW

[Steel General]

I'm enjoying watching you work your way thru this. I would have gotten frustrated a long time ago and said "to hell with it".

[Greason Wolfe]

I'm enjoying watching you work your way thru this. I would have gotten frustrated a long time ago and said "to hell with it".

Oh, there's been plenty of frustration. But unlike it was with my other projects (Haevenstadt Harbor and Khardessa) it's been a good kind of frustration that keeps pushing me forward. And the things I'm learning . . . I'll be able to go back to those previous projects and start whipping them into shape.

But hey, if you want some of my frustration, I'll be happy to share . . .

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

So I'm still plugging away on the rivers and/or streams. Slow, painful process, and I'll have to blur their basins in on the elevation model some just to smooth things out. Of course, it's playoff hockey time so my . . . um . . . dedication to this project has wavered a bit. Just can't live without my hockey! But sooner or later, I'll have another update to post. Hopefully that'll be sooner rather than later.

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

For the time being, call this a finished map. I'm still not 100 percent happy with it, but working my way through it has given me considerable food for thought in relation to future projects/experiments involving some cross-software work. I've got some tweaks to the process in mind that should give me some really good results if they work out the way I think they will. The big thing will be applying them in the right order/fashion so as to make them blend in well with one another. Still, from time to time, I might come back and work on this a bit, just to refine the overall process. For now, however, it is off to do a little bit of writing for loogie and work on some climate map development for Terraformer.

GW

EDIT : Actually, a little change in plans. I'm hungry for hot wings, so it's off to Hooters first, then the book store and, after that, a little writing, perhaps.

[Ascension]

Is all of that white snow-capped mountains?