[Award Winner] Saderan – a tutorial

[TheMarcus7]

This tutorial is fun! I've been having a great time using this tutorial to teach myself Photoshop CS3. My project is to update a map we use in a monthly campaign thats been running for almost 10 years and I've run into a bit of a snag. Here is my map up to the Elevations section:



Note the area in the Northwest quadrant circled in red. The black line represents a cliff edge that makes the side to the East a plateau, a couple thousand feet above the area to the West. This is a section of an old map made by a friend of mine showing a representation:



I've messed around with various ways of creating this huge cliff, but so far, nothing that doesn't look really bad. Any suggestions?

.TM7

PS. Its not my world, so I have no control over how improbable that kind of cliff is. Its fits in the history of the world.

[TheMarcus7]

Hah! Figured it out on my own. The line I was drawing for the "edge" of the plateau was too wide, so when I tried to bevel it, the bevel was too wide. Gonna move this to the Regions WIP forum.

.TM7

[nemasis]

This is one of the best tuts I have seen in a long time! Not to many people take the time to explain all the details you did!

Thanks a ton for this. Even if I am not happy with the turn out of my map, I now have a far better understanding of how to use masks to my advantage.

My work thus far:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1628241/EpicMap_Test.jpg

Nemasis

[guyanonymous]

This is a great tutorial.

Your instructions were clear, and I appreciated how you provided the menu-based instructions as well as verbal descriptions. I learned a lot, and finally understand masks a bit better.

You may appreciate knowing it works, unmodified, on a 30000x15000 pixel image. Alas, that image (in .psb format) saves out at 15.5 gigs with all the layers left modifiable. Ouch. (64bit PS & Vista 64x)

I really appreciate how well it works with land-masses, elevations, etc. exported from FT Pro and placed onto the various layer masks for mountains, hills, etc. I just need to adjust/tweak those peaks (white areas) in mountains that show up...and of course start adjusting things for better position (not in the middle of continents). It's a great start, and I'm liking the look/feel.

I'm off to experiment with doing the same with climate regions....hmm....can I have one type of climate show up as white, while the others show up as black only? Hmmm....

Thanks again!

p.s., your procedure (minus the mask-painting) also plugs into the action structure well, allowing some great repeatability for different maps.

[guyanonymous]

My first experiments with climate haven't been too successful...but that's ok. I refined experiments with altitudes/textures coming out of FT Pro and being fed into the layer masks for elevation/hills/mountains/peaks/ice. Here's where I'm at so far. Everything (except the one experiment with forests) is based on exports (repeatable for any map made there) from FT Pro and with changes only made using in-photoshop menu commands (repeatable).



Thanks again for sharing this excellent (and educational) tutorial.

[Gus]

That's a very beautiful style, specially the ocean.

[guyanonymous]

I played more with the default layers setup by Tear's excellent tutorial. I concentrated on the mountain ranges specifically.

In adjusting the bevel/emboss settings, I adjusted SIZE and DEPTH for the hills, mountains, and peaks layers, increasing those two settings for most layers, in some cases maxing them out. I also adjusted the levels on the layer masks to accentuate the shadows, midtones, and highlights of the layer masks themselves on each of those layers AND the ice layer. This allowed me to use the same starting height map (blurred to taste) for each - essentially a straight gray-scale output from FT Pro (as everything in the map is so far).

Next step for the mountain side of things - starting to add in a bit more irregularity to the mountain ranges using brushes (I like dual brushes with a lot of randomness in opacity, orientation, size, etc)... if anyone has suggestions that way...let me know

Tear - thanks again for a great tutorial.

[gejiaxu]

Hi All,

This is my first post--found this site a few days ago and I am totally hooked. I love maps and know a fair bit about using PS, though mostly for photo retouching, basic graphic design, and pixel art, never anything as complex as a composite map from scratch.

I actually stumbled across the Cartographer's Guild while looking for ways to draw a world map for my SRPG (Olithum), which will eventually need one.

I plan on practicing this art for quite some time, and trying out lots more tutorials to hopefully come up with my own style. I tried out this particular tutorial just to learn some techniques; my results are far from perfect and there isn't really much unique about the map, since I didn't want to spend too much time fiddling with any one component, but I thought I'd post it for others to see anyway. I followed the tutorial pretty closely and it took about 4 hours to complete.

Very, very nice work on the tutorial! Thanks!

[matfe]

very nice, BIG THANKS!

My first try (3 hours!)


The black lines should be borders. Now i have to think about how to paint cities and text...

[Mr.Sprinkles]

My first try...what a great tutorial!



My next try will be to improve upon the mountain ranges like guyanonymous has done, it really makes the map look great like Saderan.