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  1. #1
    Guild Journeyer Ryan K's Avatar
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    Wip As Yet Unnamed Map - Basics

    Good Afternoon fellow Cartographers,

    I'm currently in the process of building a map for a world I am designing, and I am using a combination of Fractal Terrains with the aid of the Terraformer, and of course, Photoshop CS.

    Usually when I am bringing a Fractal Terrain map into Photoshop, the next three hours is consumed by meticulously tracing the outline of every coast, island and lake, but since I woke up to myself and started playing around with light intensities in Fractal Terrains, exporting the two-toned image into Photoshop, running the Glowing Edges filter over it, inverting it and knocking off all the troublesome white-space, those days (and I do mean days) are far behind me.

    The Terraformer package is the greatest thing since Fractal Terrains, of course, but an issue with one of the climatic images is that it tends to attribute the same texture to high-altitude, dry areas as it does to deserts. However, by blending this climatic image with some choice selections from the Gaia, the snowy mountains in the northern section of the map look like it has snow up there as opposed to cacti, rattlesnakes and Bedouin.

    This image is basically I shot of how my planet is shaping up so far, but my future intentions for it are to create a much more scaled back, authentic looking hand-drawn map, with incomplete landmass depictions, compass rose, maybe a couple of sea-beasties.

    My biggest problem is this:

    I like how with Fractal Terrains that I can produce images up to 8000 pixels wide. I like excess. I like putting 1TB of memory to the test. And usually I can do that. If I wanted.

    However, for whatever reasons unbeknown-st to me, if I so much as ask for a tiny image to be converted into .bmp, .jpg, .anything, Fractal Terrains tells me "Computer says no" and shuts down the program. Doesn't do it with any other many countless of other maps that I have scattered about my HDD, just the one that I desperately want to export for the love of God!!

    So, I have had to settle for screen-capture resolution. Not happy, Jan.

    Anyway, please have a look and let me know what you all reckon
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    Regards,

    RK

  2. #2
    Community Leader Facebook Connected Steel General's Avatar
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    I like it so far...

    ...can't help you with the Fractal Terrains issue as I don't use it myself. But I'm sure someone with more knowledge/experience with it will be along to give you some help/ideas.
    My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...

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  3. #3
    Administrator Facebook Connected Diamond's Avatar
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    I like the general outlines and continental shape, and the elevation coloration looks good. Only question I have is about the tannish area in the southeast - is that desert? If so, why all the rivers running through it?

    On the FT front, I too can be of no use to you. Never used that program.

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    Guild Journeyer Ryan K's Avatar
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    Admittedly, I didn't initially plan on the river outlines appearing in the desert. But the more I thought about it, the more I decided that they would make useful water channels, wadis and I might even convert one of the courses into a canyon of some sort.

    Deserts rarely have to consist of miles upon miles of burning sands rolling across a great expanse, but merely a climatic zone where it rains too far too little for there to be the sort of vegetation found in more temperate zones. So I decided to leave them in, because it actually didn't make sense not to have large watercourses (no matter whether how much of the time of the year water would flow through it).
    Regards,

    RK

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    Administrator waldronate's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ryan K View Post
    I like how with Fractal Terrains that I can produce images up to 8000 pixels wide. I like excess. I like putting 1TB of memory to the test. And usually I can do that. If I wanted.

    However, for whatever reasons unbeknown-st to me, if I so much as ask for a tiny image to be converted into .bmp, .jpg, .anything, Fractal Terrains tells me "Computer says no" and shuts down the program. Doesn't do it with any other many countless of other maps that I have scattered about my HDD, just the one that I desperately want to export for the love of God!!
    FT will output images subject to the limits of your machine (it keeps everything in memory). FT is a 32-bit Windows program, meaning that it has access to roughly 2GB of process space including editing data, workspace for the displays, and workspace for export. Exceeding this limit will cause the program to terminate without warning in a rather unhelpful fashion. I can get it to output 6000x6000 bitmap files without a problem.

    There was a bug in some releases of FT that would cause the program to crash if there were grids enabled when the export was attempted, regardless of export size. There is a fix for this problem, but I'm not sure if it's on the PF website or if it has only made it into the beta versions. Contact PF tech support if you can output without grids but not with and they should be able to get you working again.

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    Guild Journeyer Ryan K's Avatar
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    I didn't consider turning off the grids, so I might give that a whirl.

    As for the limits of my machine, I would think it was beefy enough to handle it if my old Dell Insperon 1200 could handle it. Then again, the Dell runs Windows XP, and this machine runs Vista.

    I'll try some more fault-finding in the meanwhile. Thank you for your advice Waldronate.
    Regards,

    RK

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    Guild Journeyer Ryan K's Avatar
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    I love you, Waldronate, and I would like to bear your children.
    Regards,

    RK

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    Administrator waldronate's Avatar
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    Black bear or grizzly bear? I suppose polar might work in a pinch, too, if we can figure out a way to get them to the arctic...

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    Guild Journeyer Ryan K's Avatar
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    I was thinking more panda or koala bear, despite the fact that they aren't really bears.

    It worked, as you can tell, I now have the ability to make 8000 pixel wide maps ... problem now is that the computer that has PS on it won't be able to handle the 1GB of images I want to process :S

    Well, at least now I now know what to get for Christmas.
    Regards,

    RK

  10. #10
    Administrator waldronate's Avatar
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    Ah, I was thinking more along the lines of disposal.

    Good to hear that the problem has been resolved to some level.

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