Hello all.

I'm starting a new thread for my world since I've decided to deviate from my Atlas maps for a bit and actually finish fleshing out the globe for Asdel. I also recently picked up learning Blender in the hopes of producing concept renders for my worldbuilding one day, and I realized yesterday Blender might be the perfect tool to create world maps—at least the baseline landmasses.

Click image for larger version.  Name: equirectangular_blender.PNG  Views: 186  Size: 1.02 MB  ID: 125774

How does it work? I can project my equirectangular map onto a sphere in Blender and texture paint directly on the globe, updating the equirectangular texture as I do so! No need to struggle against distortion any longer, and I don't have to deal with GPlates' frustratingly limited drawing tools. This is raster, obviously, so I'll have to trace back over it to get the vector coastlines.

Here's a gif, somewhat laggy as this was recorded on my laptop, of me making a few changes to the southern ice cap: https://gfycat.com/sarcasticunrulyleafbird
You can see that I can paint changes on the 3D globe, and the equirectangular map in the bottom window updates with those same changes.

This method should also work well with drawing tectonics, ocean currents, etc. should I chose to go that route.

I will be updating this thread with my progress on finishing the world map, vectorizing, heightmap, bathymetry, and climates. I haven't decided what level of detail I will be going into yet when it comes to tectonics, ocean currents, temp, climate, but we'll see.