World Mapping with Fractal Terrains

[Dalakmar]

Hi all,

I'm trying to create a world map for my Campaign Setting but I'm having difficulty creating anything even resembling a world map. Does anyone out there use Fractal Terrains to create their maps - if so - can you give me a few tips please. I'm finding it all very frustrating.

If you think I should try another program instead please let me know. Any and all help greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Dal.

[Steel General]

First off...Welcome Aboard!

Several very knowledgable FT users here (I am not one of them), I'm sure someone will be along shortly to answer/help with your question(s).

[Greason Wolfe]

I'd be happy to help where I can. I'm no expert with FT, but do use it to generate base maps to work with in other programs. As SG said, there are several others that are probably more knowing about FT than I am. A good place to start would be finding a post by Redrobes and clicking on the link he has to a keyword index for posts here in the guild. Or better yet, I'll just post a link to it right now and hope he doesn't mind.

http://www.viewing.ltd.uk/Temp/CG/In...word_Index.htm

Scroll down the page until you find the Fractal Terrains section (about half way) and see if something there helps you out. Beyond that, you'll probably have to post something (image wise) to illustrate the problems your having and where you'd like things to go with the project.

Welcome aboard and good luck.

GW

[Sigurd]

Can't really help you without more to go on. I have to say, making a world map in FT seems like one of the more easy things to do, its actually harder than not making a world map with that software.


What projection do you want?

Any maps around here that illustrate your goal? People can be much more helpful with more info.


Sigurd

[Dalakmar]

Hi all,

Thanks for the responses. Steel General . . . thanks for the welcome. For some reason I figured I'd posted here before, but it seems not.

Greason Wolfe . . . thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to check out the link as soon as I've posted this.

Sigurd . . . yeah you'd think creating a map would be easy but I can't create one I like. Things would be so much easier if you could just type in how many continents you wanted. I end up either getting 1 or 2 or far too many little island strings.

What I'm trying to do is create a world map containing 4 or maybe 5 distinct continents - however, it has to look realistic. The only way I'm able to do this at the moment is to create my world 1 continent at a time and then past them into Photoshop and create a map that way. When I'm finsihed I then want to take the map into CC3 and work on it there. Well that's enough rambling for now.

Dal.

[Greason Wolfe]

(snip) . . . yeah you'd think creating a map would be easy but I can't create one I like. Things would be so much easier if you could just type in how many continents you wanted. I end up either getting 1 or 2 or far too many little island strings.

What I'm trying to do is create a world map containing 4 or maybe 5 distinct continents . . . (snip)

Dal.

As a suggestion, and there might be better ways of accomplishing this, one of the things I do is start with a mid-level roughness, a relatively low sea percentage (like 30 to 50 percent) and a large land size setting. From there, I start trimming things down until I get the continental layout that looks close to what I desire. More often than not, this means going from one world to the next until I see something that has a rudimentary resemblance to what I'm looking for in the long run and working with that. It's a bit tedious, but it might be worth a try.

Alternatively, you could try building things from a flat world perspective. I've not had much luck with this approach, but I haven't messed with it more than once or twice.

GW

[NeonKnight]

Well, here is a quick 'World' I whipped up (kinda Earth reminiscient).

The FT options are shown. and the method of selection was Wilbur Fractional Brownian Motion (fBm)

[Dalakmar]

Thanks NeonKnight,

That's exactly the kind of world I'm looking for. Here's to a night of . . . erm, well . . . randomly clicking my mouse button. Thanks once again.

Dal.

[Sigurd]

Its very hard to get away from the randomness of a random generator. I think I had 30 tries for my favourite FT world. If its any consolation, sometimes the random element really works for you and it suggests something you would not have planned.

Changing the size of continents and water is a good thing to try.

Here's a tutorial for a recent version of FT

http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/CGTutorial/index.html

Its well worth a look.

Sigurd