A new mini-tut on sat-style mountains

[cshawnsmith]

First post to this site

I'm a bit curious why you chose spotlight for the Lighting Effects instead of Directional?

I've been doing photorealistic mapmaking using data from the USGS Seamless Survey website. I've been looking to do this procedurally instead, and your technique gives a very convincing look and feel.

I'd also be interested in seeing how you setup your map (Screen 1) originally.

I checked the forums but didn't see this tutorial in PDF format. Is it possible you could work something up? I'm a slave to PDFs, unfortunately

[Ascension]

It's been so long since I started using this lighting effects (5 years now) that I don't even really remember the reason now but I know there was a reason way back when To the best of my recollection here's why: I don't use directional because it's hard to get the light coverage to work right...it has this tendency to darken stuff at the opposite end of where the light is coming from and a tendency to brighten stuff closest to the light. Of course, I may just not have found the right settings there, shrug. Spotlight gives a more subdued "soft focus" photography feel with broader coverage.

Setting up the map is covered in my various tutorials like Continent and Atlas...those are in the tuts section.

[cshawnsmith]

Much obliged. I'll check them out this weekend.

I found that the directional lighting gave me more beneficial results. But that was under very specific circumstances. I went through this tutorial three or four times, and can kind of see what your lighting system does over the long haul. I still want a PDF tutorial, but have settled with this thread (will probably cobble my own together eventually hehe). I'm contemplating working out a CS3 action script to automate most of the process.

I have to admit ... out of all the cartography tutorials I've seen, yours has been so far the best I've found -- the results are astounding. I've been working with Photoshop for the last 10 years, but it never occurred to me the level of detail you can come up with using your techniques.

My way of creating similar topography was using USGS images (which are under a General Use licence) to "paint" the topography. But there are certain instances in which the topography just doesn't gel with with you desire. Congrats on coming up with such an interesting technique.

[Steel General]

I'm contemplating working out a CS3 action script to automate most of the process. .

I think you'll find that would be most welcomed...

[cshawnsmith]

lol. I'll cobble something together this afternoon

[Ascension]

Oh yeah actions work fine for this...I've made one for each version of my style as it evolves but I've never posted them. When turning the continent tut or atlas tut into an action you will have to put in some stops for some handwork to be done. And thank you very much for the nice compliment I've been developing this style for about 5 years now, starting at Christmas '04, and it's not perfect for generating terrain but it's good enough for me. My goal is to get it to generate something more closely resembling USGS dems without actually having to use dems. I figure that I'm about halfway there, getting realistic hills is the part I'm working on.

[cshawnsmith]

I never actually used the dems. I did a short tutorial for another community of artists/writers a few weeks back. http://www.cshawnsmith.com/pstutorials/

The gist of the tutorial was using the color map at the Seamless Survey website to create the photorealistic maps using a clone stamp tool (mainly), and improving upon it with color correction, etc.

Sample image at http://www.cshawnsmith.com/pstutorials/maps/fullrez.jpg. If you gander at it, ignore the names on the map . Just wanted to throw something together for the tutorial.

The results have been satisfactory enough for some of my own personal fantasy stories, But I've been really wanting to improve upon it and come up with things similar to your techniques. Just never had the patience to experiment enough with it. Been using Photoshop for around 10 years now, and consider myself an expert, but the program is a LOT more complex than even an expert can fully comprehend. There's a lot of power here with just a few simple steps, and things that I knew about but didn't consider until your tutorials really floored me.

Very well done