Creating a map for my novel

[waldronate]

Without a scale it's hard to tell precisely what's going on, but the number of water channels and multiple cuts on the lake suggest to me that the area is a tidal marshland and the whole map is about 3-5 miles across. Larger areas would tend to have a somewhat less dense and less randomly-oriented flow network.

The attached image shows what happens when finding the flow pattern for a simple valley. The amount of noise relative to the terrain is increased, effectively reducing the slope fo the landscape. At first (noise=0), the rivers follow the terrain exactly. When the noise is much greater than the terrain (noise=10 meaning that the noise is by far the dominant factor and the land is effectively flat), the rivers don't follow any sort of pattern except a general outflow at the valley exit. Noise=0.01 corresponds roughly to a stone valley, while noise=10 corresponds roughly to a tidal mud flat.

[FAHall]

The area is a little over 100 miles across.

I worked it out and I think it is 20pixels/mile.

I'm reworking the lake so it has a couple "inlets" and only 1 "outlet".


I'll post it up sometime today.

[FAHall]

Okay, I took another stab at it.

I have now mapped all of the rivers within the country I'm mapping. The landmasses to the north will get rivers, as will the southern region of my map, but I think I am going to leave those until the end, as they are not vital to the map itself.


If you guys could take another look at it and let me know how it looks as far as river realism goes, that would be great.

I'll be basing my hills, marshes, mountains, etc on where the rivers flow.


Scale: 20px = 1mile

[FAHall]

Okay, maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm having trouble with my mountains.

I'm using the brushes that Vhailor made from Ramah's Aronbor map.

My problem is that since the brushes are transparent for the "light" areas, when I lay my mountains down, the dark areas of the mountain behind are showing through.

The only solution I can think of (to still be able to change the color later) is to go through and erase the dark areas from the back mountains either as I go or once I'm all finished.


Is there a better solution to this problem?


Thanks,
Alex

[Ramah]

You have 3 choices really.

1) Keep the brushes further apart so they don't overlap.

2) Paint any brush that goes over another one on a separate layer so you can erase part of the bottom mountain easily.

3) Check out this tutorial...

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=7336

... that tells you how to use the Clone Stamp with brushes so that they mask the brush below (check the end of the thread to see an important setting - not sure if it was edited into the original post or not).

[jfrazierjr]

You have 3 choices really.

1) Keep the brushes further apart so they don't overlap.

2) Paint any brush that goes over another one on a separate layer so you can erase part of the bottom mountain easily.

3) Check out this tutorial...

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=7336

... that tells you how to use the Clone Stamp with brushes so that they mask the brush below (check the end of the thread to see an important setting - not sure if it was edited into the original post or not).

4) paint your own mountains by hand... see my sig...