# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Regional/World Mapping >  Eriond: A World Map

## arsheesh

I've had an ongoing project now for some time to map out the various regions of my Eriond map, which is the basis of a homebrew campaign setting I'm working on.  Well I decided that it was high time I actually did a world map (the previous map really only featured the known lands of a single continent).  

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## ravells

Good luck! I'm sure it will be a humdinger!

----------


## Diamond

Should be awesome, dude.  Looking forward to it.

----------


## Eilathen

Very cool. As someone who really liked your Eriond map, I will certainly follow this WIP. Looking forward to how this one's turning out. If it's anywhere near as good as the Eriond map is, it will rock...hard  :Very Happy:

----------


## arsheesh

Thanks for your support guys.  I have a feeling this one might take a while to complete but I'm really excited to begin working on it.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Katto

Nice landshape. Keep on!

----------


## arsheesh

Well here's an update.  I've got the lions share of the work on the land-scape done.  Next up I think I'm going to work on creating a sea shelf.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Ascension

Looks great, man.  That kidney bean lake in the west looks sort of plain, tho.  Not in need of any fixing or anything, per se.

----------


## arsheesh

Yeah, think you have something there A, but after all the work I've put into this map I'm not sure it would really pay to go back and fix it now.  Also, I just realized that when I flattened the last WIP I had an extra color adjustment layer visible that I had meant to to turn off.  Here's the map without that layer on (the colors should be more vibrant, and the sea less dark).

----------


## ravells

I can see what the big A is saying about the lakes, but I think it's damn stunning. Wish I could do maps like this.

----------


## Steel General

Looking really good so far...

----------


## Diamond

Is there any reason you can't create a 'Lake Fix Layer', use the color picker to match whatever color you'll eventually have the lake shallows, and just go in by hand and and make a bit more of a ragged coast?  That's what I do when my lakes end up looking too regular in shape.

Looking awesome, by the way.

----------


## gaaran

Looking fantastic like always Arsheesh! I was going to suggest for the two lakes that don't have much in the was of random coast, that you could always make them a little bigger and cut away some jagged coastlines. Obviously, I'm not sure how you have your layers and design all set up, just a thought.

----------


## arsheesh

Thanks for the suggestions guys.  The method I am using for this map involves several steps, beginning with a greyscale heightmap which I run through Wilbur to generate rivers and a bit'o terrain, then import back to GIMP to do the bump map and (several) color maps.  So any changes would need to occur to the height map first, and then be applied to the other layers.  But perhaps it would be worth it to do so.  Hm, more on this later.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Coyotemax

that will look awesome wrapped around a globe  :Smile:

----------


## Jaxilon

Hey this is cool stuff Arsheesh. I'm looking forward to watching you finish this baby.

----------


## Coyotemax

(oh yeah, stolen for the inspiration folder, lol)
Those are some very nice landmasses.  I'm still working on that one, lately I've taken to snagging islands from realworld maps and twisting them around to make coastlines.  Works fine on the smaller maps but continent sized ones still take me bloody ages before i'm happy.

----------


## Ascension

I'm with Diamond here.  Just pick the solid color for water shallows and go back and hand paint with a scatter brush to break up the coast.  Way easier than re-editing everything from start and should take all of 2 minutes.  Rivers should stay intact if you don't go hog-wild with the coast.

----------


## Diamond

Something like this:

----------


## arsheesh

@Diamond & Ascension: Wow, that turned out much better than I thought!  I'll go ahead and give it a try, and thanks for the tip.

@Coyotemax, yeah I've never tried the globe thing before but I was planning on experimenting with it for this map. 

@Jax, thanks for the encouragement bro!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## arsheesh

Well first off, thanks to A and Diamond for help with the lakes, I think they look more natural now.  Second, I've been working on some different methods for doing a sea shelf and bumps and such.  I wanted it to look subtle.  So far the picture on the right is the best that I've been able to achieve.  However I'm not sure about it yet.  What do you think, is it an improvement over the original flat sea color (pictured to the left), or does the original look better?

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Eilathen

That IS very subtle ^^ But i do like it better than the "all dark" version. Nice map!

Will you work out the world-details as thoroughly as the Eriond-part you already have? A lot of work ahead of you  :Very Happy: 
Btw, any chance your Obsidian Portal will see an update with more fluff for all the regions? There are still a lot of empty spaces, and curious minds want to know  :Wink:

----------


## arsheesh

I will probably end up doing multiple versions of the map, some of which will be more detailed than others.  As far as my OP site goes, I do plan on continuing to update it as time allows, but life has gotten pretty full of late, and most of my free time has been spent on map creation.  It's nice to know that people are still interested in it though: thanks for the encouragement Eilathen!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Anannsul

WOW...  this map is.. amazing!   *envies*

----------


## arsheesh

Thanks Anannsul!  So I've been playing around with transforming the map into a globe, and here is what I've come up with:



Just for fun, I also did a global rotation view of the planet (as seen below).  Not sure how, if at all, this will figure into the final image, but it was a fun exercise at any rate.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Diamond

Lookin' awesome, dude.

----------


## Moe

That looks great, arsheesh!
Could you tell me what program you used to create the globes?

Cheers,
>Moe

----------


## eViLe_eAgLe

Fractal Terrains I believe  :Smile: 
But I think you should edit that in photoshop to give it a atmosphere!

----------


## Moe

> Fractal Terrains I believe


Mh... I don't have FT, though. Is there another way to form a globe? A free one preferred.

>Moe

----------


## eViLe_eAgLe

Umm.. Sphereize in PS? Map to 3D ball in PS? (Might be CS5 Extended that can only do that.) Umm.. Theres a few other programs that I can't remember right now though.

----------


## moutarde

You can also use a program like Hugin to convert a square image into an orthographic projection.

----------


## Anannsul

> That looks great, arsheesh!
> Could you tell me what program you used to create the globes?
> 
> Cheers,
> >Moe


GIMP  but it stretches it or something...  that globe looks great!  I only have cs3  so no globe for me unless i want it looking stretched.   :Frown:

----------


## arsheesh

> That looks great, arsheesh!
> Could you tell me what program you used to create the globes?
> 
> Cheers,
> >Moe


Actually, I did the globe effect entirely in GIMP:


Filter > Map > Map Object (under "Options" I selected "Transparent Background" and under the "Map to" drop down menu I selected "Sphere")

You can also play around with the orientation and lighting options to get the angle and lighting that you like.  However, like Anannsul mentioned, if you are doing a full world map, the resulting image turns out stretched into an oval shape like so:



Now there might be an easier way to fix this, but what I did was simply scale the image, matching the width to the height.  This gave me the global view shown on the last page.  

As far as atmosphere is concerned, I haven't figured that out just yet.  Who knows, I may tinker with it a bit.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## eViLe_eAgLe

Really? I figured you would of used FT or something similar.

----------


## arsheesh

Nope.  Don't own it.  Though if I did, I probably would have used it.  So far I've only used GIMP and Wilbur to make this map, though once I get to the labeling I'll probably bring Inkscape into the game.

----------


## Ascension

Arsheesh has Wilbur fine-tuned to get great results.  In fact I'm gonna read his stuff to do some similar work just for fun.  That's the biggest praise I can ever think to give someone.   :Smile:

----------


## arsheesh

Wow, that is high praise indeed!  

So I guess on that note I have a question to ask.  A few people over at Deviant Art and the Obsidian Portal (a campaign hosting site) have requested a tutorial for this style of map.  I'm considering writing one up, but, I have a few reservations about doing so.  First, my time is somewhat limited at the moment.  I will be moving to New Zealand in four months to begin a PhD program, and right now my wife and I are busy with all the preparations that go into such a relocation.  Second, this is a fairly difficult and time consuming style of mapping which would be difficult to explicate in a step by step walk through.  This is now the fourth map I've made using Wilbur, and while things _have_ gotten easier, I've had to tweak things in almost every map.  So while I could attempt to write up a tutorial, I would imagine that it would still be really difficult for new-comers to follow along with.  So, bearing these two reservations in mind, my question is, is there interest from people here in such a tutorial?  If enough people seem interested I'll go ahead and commit to writing up a tutorial, otherwise not.  You can either let me know in this thread or send me a PM if you are interested.  

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Yandor

I'm always interested in amazing work, I'm sure others would agree. To be honest I'm interested mostly in the wilbur end of it all. I'm sure with the reservations and time issues, I'd say reference to other tutorials saying follow these concepts up to the point of where your tutorial kicks in. Maybe even addressing some of the things you did to tweak the tutorials or things you did in brief statements, so its not a complete walk through but enough to get the idea of what you did... As I said, just suggestions! =D

----------


## arsheesh

Hm, food for thought Yandor.  On a different note, thanks to RobA for showing how to "Google" world map my world map, and to Ascension for pointing this out to me.  I must say it's really fun to watch your own world spin around on Google maps!

----------


## Anannsul

Wow,  I didn't even know google had that option.  o.o 

As for gimp, I was also talking about the animation > spinning globe   Even doing a map of earth africa ends up far above the equator...  the top of the map ends up disappearing.  I was fooling around with one of the many version of my own map and i basically had no polar caps.  =\

As for the tutorial.  I'd be interested.   :Smile:

----------


## Moe

> Actually, I did the globe effect entirely in GIMP


Thanks a ton! When I get the time I'll try to translate your method to PS.




> is there interest from people here in such a tutorial?


I'd be very thankful! Especially about the Wilbur part as I gave the program a short try and closed it early after being overwhelmed  :Wink: 

>Moe

----------


## arsheesh

> Thanks a ton! When I get the time I'll try to translate your method to PS.


No problem, I'm guessing PS has a similar feature but, as I'm not familiar with the program, I'm afraid I couldn't tell you how to do it.

----------


## Diamond

I'd love to see a tut; I'm always interested in other folks' work-flow, etc.  Plus, I'm kind of overwhelmed by Wilbur, and having some rough map (hah!) to follow to get started would really help.

----------


## Ascension

I'll put in a 3rd for the Wilbur part.  I think most of us experienced mappers understand the concepts and steps of the raster program parts.  You might start out with how you set up your height map to import into Wilbur, then what things you tweak in Wilbur and why you tweak them, and what other settings produce.  After that you can go over the raster steps briefly.  This would be a tut not for beginners, for sure.  You might be giving away the farm by showing the world how you do things so if you're concerned about keeping secrets then keep them secret.  On the other hand most of the less-experienced people will get lost trying to follow it and you may end up with a million questions about tiny little things and great big things that people don't read properly.  I get them all the time.

----------


## arsheesh

> On the other hand most of the less-experienced people will get lost trying to follow it and you may end up with a million questions about tiny little things and great big things that people don't read properly. I get them all the time.


Yeah that's another thing I'm worried about**: while I fully intend to remain an active member of the community while I'm in my PhD, I doubt I'll have the time to respond to the questions I'm sure to receive on a tutorial like this.  But you make a good point: since this is really a tutorial geared at more experienced mappers I can just state that outright and direct new-comers to more introductory tutorials.  Alright, I'm going to do it.  Course I expect it could take a while to complete given all that I'm currently working on.  Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Ascension

Once some of us have had enough time to sink our teeth into and it replicate it a few times we'll be able to answer questions for ya in your absence.  BTW, PhD in what?  I got my MA in psychology.

----------


## arsheesh

> Once some of us have had enough time to sink our teeth into and it replicate it a few times we'll be able to answer questions for ya in your absence.  BTW, PhD in what?  I got my MA in psychology.


That would be great.  As to your question, my PhD is in Philosophy, more particularly, in Ethics.  My dissertation will be exploring if a ready disposition to forgive ought to be considered a virtue.  While probably most people would consider this easily answered in the affirmative, there are some important reasons for thinking perhaps the answer is no.  I will try to defend the common sense notion and show how such a disposition fits in alongside other standard virtues (e.g. courage, charity, honesty etc) in enabling humans to engage in a well lived life.  I have a friend who just finished her PsyD (think that's the right acronym but I could be mistaken) so I'm _somewhat_ familiar with the field from our conversations.  What area of psychology are/were you interested in?

On another note, I've been finding it harder and harder to get time to work on the map, but I did experiment around with a title and the regional name typography.  I may change things up later though.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Len Wolff

Wow, this looks great, I especially like the mountainranges. Typografy is really nice too.

----------


## Ascension

I remember when PsyD was new and the establishment was trying to prevent it from becoming something because it was going to intrude upon their turf.  Psychiatrists look down their noses at psychologists, psychologists think their is more to mental health than just handing out medications, and both were trying to prevent the PsyDs from coming in.  My focus was in bereavement, death of a loved one, but in group therapy for various other things I practiced a cognitive-behavioral approach which most folks don't take to too well since it's rather in your face and challenging (most folks don't want to be challenged, they want to hide behind their excuses and keep on doing what they're doing that put them in the place that they are - work and change are hard, it's easy to do nothing and complain about it).  My thesis was completely unrelated - it was on enhancing creativity.  So my schooling/training was rather all over the map and not really codified into anything and since the only jobs available at the time were in child psych I got out of it and went back to art for a career.  My minor was in philosophy but that's also all over the map.

As for the labels, they might be too big but that depends on how much other info you're going to put in...but they look good so far.

----------


## Needamedic

Love the look of this map. Any tips or tricks would be appreciated. However, I too know the time constraints that limit the amount of work we can contribute to our hobbies and/or side careers.

Good luck with the re-locate. I await any tidbits to this map.

----------


## Diamond

That's probably some of the best use of fonts I've seen on a map.  They just 'fit'.  Like Big A said, depending on how much stuff you plan to put on there, it may get a tad crowded, but right now it looks perfect.

----------


## arsheesh

@Ascension - Yes my friend mentioned that her degree was the new kid on the block within the fields of Psychology and Psychiatry.  She works with inmates within the penitentiary system and she too takes a cognitive-behavioral approach, urging inmates towards personal responsibility.  As to the labels, I'm thinking for this version of the map that I'm going to go light on some on the political and geographical labels.  I'll probably just end up putting in the names of countries and their capitals and major geographical features.  I'm planning on doing another political version of this world map (in a more "Old Map" style) that will contain allot more of this information.

@Needamedic - Thanks man.  I'm just starting the process of putting together a tutorial, but it will likely be a while in coming.

@Diamond - Wow, really?  Well you know I played around with a whole lot of different fonts and I just keep coming back to Optimus Princeps.  As to color and style, I tried for something a bit more subdued so as not to distract attention away from the surrounding landscape.  I was actually wondering if it was a bit _too_ subdued, but I'm glad to here that you like it.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## TregMallin

I love what you've done here, Arsheesh.  This is really fantastic--almost enough that I'd like to just use this for a campaign *heh*.  

As for a tutorial, I'm all in favor.  In fact, would it be less whelming to break it into multiple tutorials?  A short one for getting the labels to blend so well, maybe a smaller one on getting the color banding just right under Gimp.  (I've tried the PS tutorial that features that kind of banding--Saderan?--but I couldn't get it to come out right under Gimp at all.)  Maybe multiple parts for working with Wilbur?

----------


## arsheesh

Thanks Treg.  This is the world map for my own homebrew campaign setting but I don't mind if you want to use it for your own non-commercial campaign setting as well.  Course if you are interested, I've also laid out allot of the detail of the western continent in my OP site (a link to which appears in my sig).  I know of at least one other person whose using it as the basis for their own campaign, and you're more than welcome to do the same if you like (or not, whatever).  

As to the tutorial, it will cover techniques for: creating and sculpting a height map; generating terrain in Wilbur; Bump-mapping; how to make use of GIMP’s “gradient map” feature to color the map based on altitude, and create diversified biomes; and an appendix showing how to turn the map into a globe.  There are other tutorials out there that describe how to do labeling, so in the interest of time I'll probably skip this step.  But you may have to be patient on this one, I'm not going to begin writing it in earnest till I finish this map.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Ascension

The last thing you may want to think about is the name Eriond.  It's the name of the new god in the Belgariad series after Garion kills the evil god Torak.

----------


## arsheesh

Hm, not familiar with the Belgariad series.  I've actually been using "Eriond" as the name of my world for about five years now, so I'm hesitant to change it now just because someone else is using it as the name of one of the gods in their world.  However, in the unlikely event that I ever decide to try and publish any of the stuff from my campaign world, I may reconsider at that point.  

Small update, created a border for the map.  I'm thinking this is probably the last update I'll do before finishing the map.  

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Harrg

As I already spoke each following map better the previous :Smile:

----------


## arsheesh

The finished version of this map can be found here.  Thanks to everyone (especially Ascension and Diamond) for your helpful feedback.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Zanan

Hello! 

I just noted that you used different fonts for the world map and the one of the realms around the Logathrian Sea. Any reason for this?

On a sidenote, you said that you made it for your Pathfinder setting. How detailed is the latter with regard to worked out realms, races, bestiary et al?

Edit: Just noted the link to the Age of Legends at Obsidian Portal.  :Idea:

----------


## arsheesh

Hey there Zanan, thanks for your interest.  The first map that you site was my very first attempt at mapping and my style of mapping has sort of evolved since then, and part of this evolution includes a new choice of fonts.  As to the Pathfinder campaign setting I'm working on, it is still very much a work in progress.  I've heavily detailed the northern regions of Western Continent, but haven't done anything with the southern regions, or for that matter, the Eastern continent (which is a new addition).  In time I hope to flesh these out in more detail.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## DgtlDrgn

Arsheesh this is thus far really amazing. I really like the contrast between the oceans and landmass, using a much darker blue than many would to make the continents really stand out. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this as it develops.

----------


## Anomolix

Wow, the map is extremely wonderful. I would totally love to work together and bring this wonderful world to life in a 3D representation through Minecraft!

----------


## arsheesh

> Wow, the map is extremely wonderful. I would totally love to work together and bring this wonderful world to life in a 3D representation through Minecraft!


Thanks Anomolix, glad you like it.  Send me PM sometime and we can talk about this further.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------

