# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Regional/World Mapping >  unexplored Lands

## kacey

I cringe a little at starting a new thread here because so many go unfinished, but I really want to learn how to do a detailed cross-blended hypsometric shaded relief world map that I can use as a base to make smaller regional maps later on.

I've only just blocked out the main land masses so far, and just started adding some detail to a small area today, but I thought I'd start a WIP to get some critique as I'm finding this style of coasts difficult to get a handle on.

The grey areas are just a rough block out that will probably change quite a bit, and the white part is where I've started to try and refine things a little.



Here's a close up section at it's original size.

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## Chashio

Good luck.  :Smile:  I've had a mind to do this on numerous occasions but... the patience.  :Confused:  

First impressions: I like the land shapes a lot. The coastline detailing so far is good but might be a tad too regular-ish without many changes in detail-type and density, if that makes sense.

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## kacey

Thanks for the helpful critique Chashio  :Smile:  That makes total sense. I was actually wondering if it was too regular myself after looking back at my reference of earth. I noticed that the coasts of our own planet are actually quite smooth compared to most fantasy maps which is what I'm used to looking at, so breaking the habit of trying to make bumpy coasts is what I'm having the most trouble with. I've started trying another way this after noon so I'll redo that section...I imagine it's going to take a couple of passes before I get it right.

Again... Really appreciate the critique, it really is helpful because I can't always point out what's wrong when things don't seem quite right.

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## Mouse

A cross-blended hypsometric shaded relief map?

Me simple mouse, and not understand!

I do like the land shapes, but if this is a equirectangular projection you may need to account for the distortion at the poles a lot more in the near polar regions.

Best way to work out what it will look like wrapped around a globe is to stick it in G-Projector, or FT3, and see what the resulting spherical projections actually look like.

EDIT: Do you mean a relief map with coloured contours? (I have to simplify these things for myself)  :Wink:

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## kacey

> A cross-blended hypsometric shaded relief map?
> 
> Me simple mouse, and not understand!
> 
> I do like the land shapes, but if this is a equirectangular projection you may need to account for the distortion at the poles a lot more in the near polar regions.
> 
> Best way to work out what it will look like wrapped around a globe is to stick it in G-Projector, or FT3, and see what the resulting spherical projections actually look like.
> 
> EDIT: Do you mean a relief map with coloured contours? (I have to simplify these things for myself)


Thanks for the suggestions Mouse  :Smile: 

This is what I'm after...



Edit...This example is from naturalearthdata.com the original image is massive so I had to shrink it down quite a bit.

It is equirectangular, but I'm a little torn on how to handle it in regards to distortion. I downloaded G.Projector, and I do get significant distortion at the south pole. The big issue is how do you deal with this? I want to be able to cut out sections for regional maps, and if I draw it distorted then those regional maps will look really weird...

Is there a way to draw it distorted and then have G.Projector straighten it back out for me for regional sections? 

I mostly want to use this map to plan out the climate, and terrain and then use it as a base for smaller sections and other world building, and planning, like where resources are, and how did people migrate around the planet and to plan out different trade relationships, political boundaries, genetic lines and so on...

Above all I need it to be useful for both world and regional maps, do you have any suggestions on what are the best projections to get a distorted world map to give me properly projected regional maps?

I really do need allot of help with this, I've never done a world map, I know nothing about tectonics, and know verry little about how climates are distributed on a whole planet.

Any critique is helpful, and I really appreciate the suggestions.

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## Mouse

Gosh!  No small feat then  :Razz: 

I'm afraid I'm not really the person to talk to about different projections.  You may need to talk to someone like Waldronate, but at a guess if you work on this initial equirectangular map to make it look good when projected on the globe, you should then be able to use it to make all kinds of different projections more suitable and specific to the regional maps.  

G Projector is only good for things up to about 4000 pixels wide (I think), so its only really to get the general shape of things right before you really get into the drawing.

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## J.Edward

> Is there a way to draw it distorted and then have G.Projector straighten it back out for me for regional sections?


In a sense, yes, Kacey, G.projector can, sort of.
You can make it distorted on your equirectangular map so that it looks right on the globe.
Then in G.projector you can play with the various projections to get something that is 'closer to flat' and then do your new drawing based on that.
I've done that before. You can also create an equirectangular map and apply it to a sphere in Photoshop via the 3d tools.
I've used that to good effect to tweak my north/south polar regions to be a bit more interesting.
There are options, but you really do have to tweak it based on its real look on the globe, i think.

Oh, and the newest versions of G.projector handles much larger files and output up to 20,000 pixels last i checked [much larger than previous].

One thing I would say that I sometimes forget in my own planet creating....
It is helpful to work out at least some of the tectonic plates and where they collide to create mountains.
Then get some of those rough mountain range lines in so you can plan large water features and also changes in elevation that can lead to islands and such.
I've gotten better about this over time, but it used to bite me in the butt all the time.

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## johnvanvliet

just a mix of the DEM and "Participation map "  

i would not worry too much about the exact coast line right now , that WILL change a bit while eroding the Height map you have to make first 

so just a decent coast line for know 
Then place mountains and basins ,badlands deserts and so on 

run through wilbur ( or r.terraform using GRASS ) to eroid 

then a rain/heat map and rain shadow map 
-- have a look at "worldengine" for examples 
https://github.com/Mindwerks/worldengine

the color gradient used in post #5 looks to be one of these
http://soliton.vm.bytemark.co.uk/pub.../wkp/template/
or close 
http://soliton.vm.bytemark.co.uk/pub...wkp/index.html

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## kacey

Thanks guy's! Getting to know how more experienced world builders go about their processes is invaluable to me and as a result I've changed my game plan on how I'm going to tackle this project.

First off I know this all looks very sloppy right now, I've only just been blocking things in with the lasso tool so far and am very much in the planning stages still.




> One thing I would say that I sometimes forget in my own planet creating....
> It is helpful to work out at least some of the tectonic plates and where they collide to create mountains.
> Then get some of those rough mountain range lines in so you can plan large water features and also changes in elevation that can lead to islands and such.


Thanks J.Edward, I Hadn't thought about this so I made a really quick sketch tonight, and again I know little to nothing about tectonics because every time I try to read about it I want to smash my head into a wall, but here it is. Keep in mind I'll be changing the coasts more so this is just an idea, but let me know if it's at all plausible or if it's just a total mess that doesn't make any sense at all.






> just a mix of the DEM and "Participation map "  
> 
> i would not worry too much about the exact coast line right now , that WILL change a bit while eroding the Height map you have to make first 
> 
> so just a decent coast line for know


Thanks for the links and advice, I'm hoping to use some of the techniques I was reading about in some of pixie's threads for the height map... I've never made one before. I'll also be using Wilbur. I've had some luck testing out some tutorials by Arsheesh using height maps I just grabbed from the internet, the only things is I may need to wait until I'm done building my new computer because it's not letting me use a very good resolution for the size I'm working with. I'm just waiting for my cooling system to get here then I'll have the whole computer built and it should be able to handle it, unless this is a common problem with Wilbur?

Anyhow... I started detailing part of the lower right corner, it need's allot of work and clean up still. I'm not done the section yet, but do you think this level of detail will be ok for making a height map and running it through Wilbur? I didn't realize I could work on refining the coast afterwards so thanks for the tip.

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## selden

G.projector can convert equirectangular to a multitude of other projections, but it doesn't provide a way to get back to equirectangular.

For reprojection to equirectangular, I like to use the MMPS command-line program "project". Drawings of local areas can be treated as if they were created using a gnomonic projection, which doesn't cause too bad a distortion. See http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~arcus/mmps/ (I built  the programs under Cygwin for Windows.)

Of course, there are much more sophisticated techniques which can be applied if you use one of the GIS packages, but they require a much greater investment in learning how to install and use than I'm willing to consider. Johnvanvliet might be able to suggest one of the easier ones.

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## kacey

Thanks Selden, I'll have to look into that link a little further when I get more time later today, but when I've looked into GIS packages before they just baffle me completely so I'm hoping to avoid that learning curve, it seems though that I may not have a choice. I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed by all the learning involved in making this type of map.

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## selden

For your amusement, here's what happened when I used MMPS (under Cygwin) to project the south pole in gnomonic  (where one could make appropriate changes, but I didn't)



and here it is reprojected to equirectangular.  One could then use appropriate tools to merge it with the original artwork, although MMPS could do that for you, too.



Here's the script that I used.



```
#! /usr/bin/sh -x
#
# project equirectangular to gnomonic
#
convert detail_colored.jpg tmp.ppm
project \
    gnomonic \
    -scale 2 -lat -90 -long 0 -w 2500 -h 2500 \
    -f tmp.ppm >tmp2.ppm
convert tmp2.ppm south_pole.jpg
#
# project gnomonic to equirectangular
#
project \
    -i gnomonic \
    -scale 2 -lat -90 -long 0 -w 5000 -h 2500 \
    -f tmp2.ppm >tmp3.ppm
convert tmp3.ppm eq_south_pole.jpg
```

"project" is the MMPS re-projection utility and "convert" is the ImageMagick image format conversion utility.

p.s.
Note that .ppm is a lossless, uncompressed image format. Of course, any intermediate editing should be done in a similarly lossless image format like png or bmp, for example, using a lossy format like jpg only for the final image.

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## johnvanvliet

also for JUST fixing a polar pinch .
The Gimp has had a built in tool for 20 years , to remap to polar and back .


crop

 

map southpole

 

zoom in 

 

fixes ( resynthesizer plugin 



remaped back 





.

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## kacey

Wow guy's! I can't believe you took the time to do all this, I really appreciate it, and it's neat to see it this way. Thank you so much!




> Here's the script that I used.
> 
> 
> 
> ```
> #! /usr/bin/sh -x
> #
> # project equirectangular to gnomonic
> #
> ...


Selden, this goes way beyond what I'm capable of, the longer I look at it the stupider I feel... I would have to pay you to do this for me because I don't understand a word of it.




> also for JUST fixing a polar pinch .
> The Gimp has had a built in tool for 20 years , to remap to polar and back .
> 
> 
> crop
> 
>  
> 
> map southpole
> ...


Johnvanvliet, this one made a little more sense, and I wondered if I could do something similar in PhotoShop, and it turns out I can :Smile:  I was even able to save it out as an obj and import it into zbrush, and I'm thinking if I redo the uv seams then I can get all the areas I need flattened out for regional sections without distortion. I had no idea what PhotoShop could do in 3D so I was pretty surprised to find this out just playing around tonight.

I also found that I can export heightmaps out on a sphere from PhotoShop, or on a flat plane, and import them easily to zbrush where I can use the map as a displacement so I think theres some room for experimentation there too.

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## selden

Well, I use Paint.Net and I'm not at all familiar with Zbrush, so I guess we're even.  :Wink:

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## johnvanvliet

i use blender and not zbrush but for heightmaps they really do need to be 16 bit or 32 bit float grayscale images 
gimp2.8 is ONLY 8 bit 
now
Gimp 2.9 DEVELOPMENT can work with 16 bit and 32 bit data 
( so can photoshop, but they are using a monthly fee  )

as i recal PS has a similar plugin 

as for time , that only took 15 min while watching the news and i bet selden took the same amount of time

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## selden

I took a little longer than that because I wanted to provide a readable script. I prefer to use command-line software instead of GUI software when I can, if only because operations are exactly reproducible no matter what the input image looks like. When I do things visually I can never get things to come out the same way twice, and it can be a royal pain if I'm near the end of a multi-step procedure and discover I messed something up near the beginning.

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## kacey

> Well, I use Paint.Net and I'm not at all familiar with Zbrush, so I guess we're even.


I've never tried Paint.net before but looked into it just now after reading this comment so I may have to give it a try. I do use Gimp sometimes though because there are a few things it can do that PhotoShop can't.




> i use blender and not zbrush but for heightmaps they really do need to be 16 bit or 32 bit float grayscale images 
> gimp2.8 is ONLY 8 bit 
> now
> Gimp 2.9 DEVELOPMENT can work with 16 bit and 32 bit data 
> ( so can photoshop, but they are using a monthly fee  )
> 
> as i recal PS has a similar plugin 
> 
> as for time , that only took 15 min while watching the news and i bet selden took the same amount of time


I know I can do 16 and 32 bit images but I'm not sure what you mean by float? This is sort of new territory for me, I'm used to just trying to make things look pretty so when I get to the height map part of it I'm going to be pretty lost I think. And then there's figuring out the climate omg I'm starting to wonder what I've gotten myself into. I'm still just trying to figure out all this projection stuff, at this point I've completely given up on trying to add any coastal detail, I'm just trying to make shapes that work without distorting too much in each projection, and it's taking forever.




> I took a little longer than that because I wanted to provide a readable script. I prefer to use command-line software instead of GUI software when I can, if only because operations are exactly reproducible no matter what the input image looks like. When I do things visually I can never get things to come out the same way twice, and it can be a royal pain if I'm near the end of a multi-step procedure and discover I messed something up near the beginning.


So many times I've done something in PhotoShop and not been able to reproduce it and it is frustrating. 

This might be a stupid question, but do you need a special programme to run these scripts? I wouldn't even know where to plug them into, it would be nice to try some of them because I have run across tutorials using them before but had no idea how to even start. Theres also been data that I wasn't able to get because I just didn't even know how to open it, so when I'm searching for height maps of earth and other mapping images I always have to search for things that are already converted into other formats and this usually means low resolution.

What is the best way to view dem data set's? Is there any gis software that's easy to use and understand?

I hadn't originally intended to project this onto a globe, but now that I've been playing around with it it's kind of fun to see things develop as they would on an actual planet. It really changes the way I look at map making. Unfortunately I'll have to make allot of ugly maps before I'm able to get anything that's even half way appealing to look at.

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## johnvanvliet

> This might be a stupid question, but do you need a special programme to run these scripts?


maybe 
that is a bash shell script 
win 10 is suppose to be able to run a bash terminal - but seeing as a DUMPED microsoft in 2005 ??? i do not know 

a bash or csh shell is not really complex  - just a normal everyday text based interface to the Operating system 
MATLAB now that is a pain in the rear end ( matlab runs on windows and apple and linux ) 

for earth DEM's a lot are in ArcGis format or in 16 bit signed tiff or raw ( -32767 to + 32768  values ) 
normally i use GDAL for that type of data 

do not worry too much i have been at this for 20 years so 
digital imaging data is a bit complex

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## selden

> I've never tried Paint.net before but looked into it just now after reading this comment so I may have to give it a try. I do use Gimp sometimes though because there are a few things it can do that PhotoShop can't.


Unlike John, I actually do relatively little with planetary surface maps. I'm more into (relatively simple) 3D models and star distributions and writing my own programs to help with the problems I encounter with those. As a result, the GUI software that I tend to prefer is the kind that has a relatively short learning curve. That's one of the reasons I prefer Paint.Net to Gimp and Anim8or to Blender, even though they aren't as sophisticated.




> I know I can do 16 and 32 bit images but I'm not sure what you mean by float?


"Float" is short for "floating point numbers." It's how computers represent non-integer values using (usually) 32 or 64 bits. It lets you represent colors or height values with a much larger range but somewhat less precision than 32 bit integers can provide.



> This is sort of new territory for me, I'm used to just trying to make things look pretty so when I get to the height map part of it I'm going to be pretty lost I think. And then there's figuring out the climate omg I'm starting to wonder what I've gotten myself into. I'm still just trying to figure out all this projection stuff, at this point I've completely given up on trying to add any coastal detail, I'm just trying to make shapes that work without distorting too much in each projection, and it's taking forever.


All of the topics you mention can be studied to as great a depth as you want. It's easy to get lost in the details. Sometimes it pays to back off so you can decide which aspect of a design you really want to concentrate on and try not to let yourself be distracted too much by other aspects.




> So many times I've done something in PhotoShop and not been able to reproduce it and it is frustrating. 
> 
> This might be a stupid question, but do you need a special programme to run these scripts?


Yes.

That script is the equivalent of a Windows .BAT file, but written for use with the Bash command shell instead of the Windows COM language.

In my case, I'm using Cygwin under Windows 7 for access to Bash, MMPS, ImageMagick and many other utilities. (Cygwin also works under other versions of Windows, including Windows 10.) It provides an interactive environment which is very similar to Linux, including a variety of shell command languages. The Bash script that I provided above contains several instructions to Windows, telling it to run the programs _convert_ and _project_. Their command lines include qualifiers which tell those programs which image files to process and what to do to them. 

As John mentioned, Microsoft has developed their own equivalent to Cygwin for Windows 10 (but initially based on Ubuntu) which supposedly will be provided as part of the Fall Creators Update. Right now it's available as a developer's Beta test for those in the Insider program. In principle the script that I provided should work fine with that.



> I wouldn't even know where to plug them into, it would be nice to try some of them because I have run across tutorials using them before but had no idea how to even start. Theres also been data that I wasn't able to get because I just didn't even know how to open it, so when I'm searching for height maps of earth and other mapping images I always have to search for things that are already converted into other formats and this usually means low resolution.


Yup, it can be frustrating at times.



> What is the best way to view dem data set's? Is there any gis software that's easy to use and understand?


It's been a while since I did anything with DEMs, but 3DEM has been a favorite of mine. Although the original Web site is gone, it's still available with a little searching. Some info and a Windows installer is available at http://www.hangsim.com/3dem/



> I hadn't originally intended to project this onto a globe, but now that I've been playing around with it it's kind of fun to see things develop as they would on an actual planet. It really changes the way I look at map making.


That's very much the case for me, too.  :Wink: 



(I like to use Celestia to view planets in 3D.)




> Unfortunately I'll have to make allot of ugly maps before I'm able to get anything that's even half way appealing to look at.


Take your time and enjoy the work as much as you can. Baby steps!

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## kacey

Thanks John and Selden! You guy's have given me more information then I can handle, so much so that I haven't had much time to work on the actual map. 

So I've decided to take you're advice Selden and back off a little, and now I'm just focusing on learning about tectonics, and trying to get the coasts in place which is not a small job. I've started to gain some rhythm jumping between Equirectangular, Robinson, and the Winkle Triple projections to even out the distortion and then periodically checking it on a 3D globe, though all the back and forth has changed the coasts drastically and I'm still just working with basic forms for now until I can get to a compromise that I can deal with in regards to distortion.

I hope to get an update up soon, but I'd like to get a little further ahead before I do that.

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## kacey

I've decided to scrap the way I was doing things. Trying to get clean "real world style" coasts and worrying constantly about weather or not my land masses would work on a globe at the poles became really draining and time consuming and was making me completely miserable. I really wasn't having fun anymore, and started to resent the project so I had a little hissy fit and scribbled all over it... 

I'm much happier now and I'm finally starting to get some land masses that I like even though they may not be realistic or scientifically sound. It's just way more fun doing it this way. I might even do it in a hand drawn or painterly style. I'm still going to try and make a height map, I'll just have to see how many times I want to throw my computer at the wall trying to figure out how before I totally give up on my original idea.

I'm just trying to clean things up now, I'll have to go over these lines again at least one more time to get a decent land and sea mask but overall I'm much happier with the way things are going.

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## Voolf

I have no clue what is "cross-blended hypsometric shaded relief", but the coastlines look pretty awesome already.

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## Caenwyr

> I have no clue what is "cross-blended hypsometric shaded relief", but the coastlines look pretty awesome already.


I concur! Doing that realistic style is a pain in the butt, and the best result you can ever hope to achieve is something that looks a lot like maps everyone has already seen before - after all that's the whole point. In this new style, however, I very much like your land shapes, AND I think the brush strokes look lovely and of a completely effortless beauty. As in all types of art, making it look simple while it's actually very hard is the true indication of skill.

And those little brush strokes do exactly that. You're making me jealous, just with those strokes! That's awesome!  :Very Happy:

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## kacey

> I have no clue what is "cross-blended hypsometric shaded relief", but the coastlines look pretty awesome already.


Thanks Voolf, you can see an example of what I was aiming for in post #5 on the first page of this thread. I actually used this map of earth to create this map https://cartographersguild.com/album...chmentid=94065 by cutting and pasting parts of the earth map and setting the blend mode to linear burn over a texture background. I really like the colours it gives this way and was hoping to use my world map to do the same for regional maps of this world.




> I concur! Doing that realistic style is a pain in the butt, and the best result you can ever hope to achieve is something that looks a lot like maps everyone has already seen before - after all that's the whole point. In this new style, however, I very much like your land shapes, AND I think the brush strokes look lovely and of a completely effortless beauty. As in all types of art, making it look simple while it's actually very hard is the true indication of skill.
> 
> And those little brush strokes do exactly that. You're making me jealous, just with those strokes! That's awesome!


Thanks Caenwyr, what a nice comment! Though I will need to clean away all those little strokes for the final coast I may still use them for a hand drawn style just for fun.

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## Voolf

That is awesome Kacey. I am going to look more closely to this thread. How will you make the relief, draw yourself or use some software to generate it?

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## Chashio

Glad you are having more fun now.  :Smile:  I've done the same thing before, many times.
I love your sketchy line work coasts and land shapes.  :Smile:

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## kacey

> That is awesome Kacey. I am going to look more closely to this thread. How will you make the relief, draw yourself or use some software to generate it?


Thanks Voolf... I'm not entirely sure how I'll do the relief, I imagine it will be allot of trial and error on this one, and I'm really hoping to get some help from the experts here at the guild. I've been going over a couple of tutorials I found by Arsheesh, Pixie, and a2area that seem useful so I'll probably try to mix a few of the techniques from them... I'll definitely be making a grey scale height map though which is a little daunting since I don't really know what I'm doing.

I have a few ideas in mind and have done a couple of small tests using Wilbur with good results, but my surface doesn't like doing the rivers for some reason, I keep getting a little window saying Wilbur is not responding. When I do a smaller size image it does work though so I'm chalking that up to a lack of computing power so I'm not too worried since I just got my new desktop put together this weekend and it's running really well. I'm still waiting on my cooling system though, apparently it's somewhere in Germany right now, but I got impatient and installed the one from my old computer and it seems to be doing the job. I'm not going to push it too far just yet though because the plate isn't quite big enough to cover the entire processor, and I'm so paranoid about over heating the CPU that I'm constantly checking the temperatures which seem to be holding steady at around 57 degrees. Chances are I'll just be finishing up the coast by the time the new one gets here I haven't had much time to work on maps lately.




> Glad you are having more fun now.  I've done the same thing before, many times.
> I love your sketchy line work coasts and land shapes.


Thanks Chashio! I appreciate the kind words, and thanks for the nice rep comment too.

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## Voolf

> and I'm so paranoid about over heating the CPU that I'm constantly checking the temperatures which seem to be holding steady at around 57 degrees. Chances are I'll just be finishing up the coast by the time the new one gets here I haven't had much time to work on maps lately.


57 degrees is save temperature. When i am playing PC games my cpu and gpu temps go above 80 degrees and i am using my pc for more than 3 years already without a problem  :Smile: . I did clean it once though because of dust i had 90+ stress temps haha

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## kacey

> 57 degrees is save temperature. When i am playing PC games my cpu and gpu temps go above 80 degrees and i am using my pc for more than 3 years already without a problem . I did clean it once though because of dust i had 90+ stress temps haha



This makes me feel a little better about it, and I asked my fiancée what temperatures he was getting on the gpu when he was running his games and it hasn't gone above 30 so I think I can relax a little now... It's just too bad that my monitor had to go and die last night.

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## waldronate

> I have a few ideas in mind and have done a couple of small tests using Wilbur with good results, but my surface doesn't like doing the rivers for some reason, I keep getting a little window saying Wilbur is not responding. When I do a smaller size image it does work though so I'm chalking that up to a lack of computing power so I'm not too worried since I just got my new desktop put together this weekend and it's running really well.


Wilbur doesn't update the UI like it should while it's doing the initial flow computations. Those computations are a bit more than O(n*n*n) (the time taken is on the order of the square of the number of pixels), so larger surfaces take much longer than you would expect. As an example, if we define a 1000x1000 pixel surface (1M pixels) to take 1 time unit, then a 2000x2000 pixel surface (4M pixels) would take more than 16 times as long. There are also effects relating to the total length and complexity of river channels. The short answer is to wait. Sometimes you'll need to wait 10 minutes or more, during which the OS will whine about the program not responding. If the Wilbur CPU usage is remaining consistent (Ctrl+Shift+Esc to bring up task manager) during the find rivers operation, then it's probably still doing useful work. There are also a couple of size breakpoints where the speed will dramatically slow: surfaces larger than the CPU cache that require fetching from main memory and surfaces larger than main memory that require fetching from disk. Wilbur isn't very smart about how it manages memory, so it tends to be pretty sensitive to switching to slower storage.

I will admit to having very little patience at the best of times, so I don't do well waiting for the program to finish its work on large surfaces. I developed the multi-resolution techniques described at https://www.cartographersguild.com/a...chmentid=80066 to try to reduce my total waiting time. The main elements get roughed in at the lower resolutions to where you're happy with them and then the details can be etched on top of that. How small you want to start with depends entirely on your level of patience. I tend to start out small and chop in things where it's only taking a few seconds to process on my elderly i7-3770. The surface has a somewhat different appearance than one eroded fully at the higher resolution, but I'm willing to live with spending a total of 15 minutes or so rather than 15 minutes or so per iteration. Then again, I usually don't care too much about smaller details, either...

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## kacey

Thanks Waldronate, this is really helpful!

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## kacey

I still have quite allot of work to do before I'm fully satisfied with this coast, but I thought I'd post an update of where I'm at with it. I'm just trying to get things cleaned up a little right now, but I think I have the basic shapes in place. I'm having some resolution issues with the left most continent, I think I accidentally scaled it up a touch with the free transform tool when I was moving it, but I'm not too worried because I'll have to do the lines again anyways. And these colours are just placeholders for now until I decide on a style.



And I threw it into G.Projector so you can see the distortion. I tried to tell myself I didn't care, but I do so I still have a bit of tweaking to do at the poles.



Let me know if you see any glaring issues, or if there's areas that just don't seem right. I'm thinking that these continents might be a little big, especially the one on the left. I'm hoping to get this part over with soon so I can start adding more details, and islands and get moving on the elevation. I really have no idea where the plates should be or how to place the mountains so any ideas on that would be really helpful.

----------


## Chashio

Nice progress on this, kacey! Your latest post put a smile on my face... memories of my first world map attempt with G.Projector... even the same colors, hehe. [Yours looks better than mine did]

----------


## johnvanvliet

just a bit on the south pole 

an example --------------------------------------------------                                                Then fixed 
  

remapped back to Simple Cylindrical

----------


## Mouse

Maybe it would be easier if you didn't try to draw the map as an equirectangular map at all to start with, but used that azimuthal projection as the 'master'?  I think you're creating something really beautiful, but at the same time I also think you are making it more difficult for yourself than it really needs to be by working on it in equirectangular.  Maybe turn the work method inside out and start with the azimuthal, then produce an equirectangular from the azimuthal?

I'm awake in the middle of the night (again!), so I'm a bit hazy and disorganised about reading right the way back through the thread, but I think I remember you saying you were only doing the outline as a world map, then working on the regions separately.  If that's the case, then the equirectangular isn't something you really need to worry about till right at the end of the process, and only then so that you can produce an image that you can wrap around a globe in 3D view in any of the more common apps that allow you to do that.

----------


## kacey

> Nice progress on this, kacey! Your latest post put a smile on my face... memories of my first world map attempt with G.Projector... even the same colors, hehe. [Yours looks better than mine did]


Thanks Chashio, I'd love to see that first map. 




> just a bit on the south pole 
> 
> an example --------------------------------------------------                                                Then fixed 
>   
> 
> remapped back to Simple Cylindrical


Thanks Johnvanvliet, I really appreciate that you take the extra time to do this, it's really nice. You seem to be able to get the poles looking better then then I can. I'm finding it very frustrating, every time I change them then something else needs adjusting and getting the coast finished has become a real chore... Would you mind if I used you're version, or something very similar on the map? I really like that you've made it work without changing the basic shape too much which is something I haven't been able to accomplish yet.




> Maybe it would be easier if you didn't try to draw the map as an equirectangular map at all to start with, but used that azimuthal projection as the 'master'?  I think you're creating something really beautiful, but at the same time I also think you are making it more difficult for yourself than it really needs to be by working on it in equirectangular.  Maybe turn the work method inside out and start with the azimuthal, then produce an equirectangular from the azimuthal?
> 
> I'm awake in the middle of the night (again!), so I'm a bit hazy and disorganised about reading right the way back through the thread, but I think I remember you saying you were only doing the outline as a world map, then working on the regions separately.  If that's the case, then the equirectangular isn't something you really need to worry about till right at the end of the process, and only then so that you can produce an image that you can wrap around a globe in 3D view in any of the more common apps that allow you to do that.


G.Projector only lets me import a few projections, I have gone back and forth a few times with the Robinson, and winkle triple though it still has some major distortion in those. How would I go from Azimuthal back to equirectangular? Is there software that can do this?

I do want to do smaller regional maps, and continent maps as well, and city's too. I would like to have a world that I can build in, and create characters, and histories, and possibly do some landscape paintings too, but first I need some basic maps. I would like my elevation, and climate maps to be in equirectangular or Robinson just because when I see other maps like that I really like how they look, and it's what I'm used to seeing when I'm looking at maps of earth.

Here's what I need before I will feel ready to start tracking the migration of people around this planet, which is my big goal right now...

A finished coast line
Elevation map 
Climate map
And a map showing where different resources are.

I've started doing some work on elevation on the top right continent, but mostly just testing style at this point, I'm a little torn on what size I should be working with for a map like this. I'm used to doing regional maps so I'm getting a little confused about the scale of things and I'm still not happy with the land masses on the left hand side.... There's just something bugging me about them.

----------


## Mouse

Hmmm.  I see your problem there.

Maybe someone else knows an app that will work with it in reverse?

----------


## johnvanvliet

gimp has had a built in tool for at least the last 17 years , if not 20 
under distorts " polar coordinates "

you can remap to the north or south pole 
fix it 
remap back to simple cylindrical 

crop the south and rescale to a square 



south pole fixed using "resysenthizer " inpainting tool ( or you can just redraw it )


remap back with the built in tool 
 

resize back to the original size

----------


## Chashio

I believe there is a tool/app still floating around here somewhere... it's called ReprojectImage. I asked about being able to do a similar function because I like to sketch worlds in azimuthal, etc. and was directed that way. But it's not for huge images or final renders... you'd have to redraw from the example, and there may be easier options, like what john shows.

https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...l=1#post197147

----------


## selden

If you're comfortable with command-line software and Linux or Cygwin under Windows, there's also Matthew's Map Projection Software. See http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~arcus/mmps/

----------


## kacey

> gimp has had a built in tool for at least the last 17 years , if not 20 
> under distorts " polar coordinates "
> 
> you can remap to the north or south pole 
> fix it 
> remap back to simple cylindrical 
> 
> crop the south and rescale to a square 
> 
> ...


Gimp doesn't work very well on my tablet because of scaling and it not being very touch freindly, so I went poking around in all the tabs in PhotoShop to see if it had something similar... and it does! So this is very helpful...Thank you, the polar coordinates filter in PhotoShop seems to work in the exact same way.





> I believe there is a tool/app still floating around here somewhere... it's called ReprojectImage. I asked about being able to do a similar function because I like to sketch worlds in azimuthal, etc. and was directed that way. But it's not for huge images or final renders... you'd have to redraw from the example, and there may be easier options, like what john shows.
> 
> https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...l=1#post197147


Thanks Chashio, this is the type of thing that I need but after following the links I came up with a dead page  :Frown:  I wonder if it's even still available.




> If you're comfortable with command-line software and Linux or Cygwin under Windows, there's also Matthew's Map Projection Software. See http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~arcus/mmps/


I'm really not comfortable using command line software. I've tried to understand it but when I look at these pages my mind goes completely blank blank...I just don't get it.

----------


## waldronate

> Thanks Chashio, this is the type of thing that I need but after following the links I came up with a dead page  I wonder if it's even still available.


 http://www.fracterra.com/ReprojectImage.zip should work. I updated the old link.

----------


## kacey

> http://www.fracterra.com/ReprojectImage.zip should work. I updated the old link.


Thank you so much waldronate, but theres a problem with the file, every time I try to download it windows sais it contains a virus and blocks it. I'm pretty confident that you wouldn't send me a virus so what's going on? Is there a way around this...

----------


## johnvanvliet

> every time I try to download it windows sais it contains a virus and  blocks it. I'm pretty confident that you wouldn't send me a virus so  what's going on? Is there a way around this...


that sounds like the NEW Microsoft NORMAL behavior

Windows Explorer now has a VIRUS WARNING  from anything that is NOT in the Microsoft store of from a Microsoft site 

they REALLY WANT YOU TO BUY $$$$$ from the MS windows store 

that link and software is SAFE


basically Microsoft is just yelling 
* " the sky is falling ,  the sky is falling" *

----------


## waldronate

> Thank you so much waldronate, but theres a problem with the file, every time I try to download it windows sais it contains a virus and blocks it. I'm pretty confident that you wouldn't send me a virus so what's going on? Is there a way around this...


I don't get that warning on my system. I do get a "potentially unsafe file type of .msi" when I open the zip, though. What version of Windows are you running?

----------


## kacey

I'm running windows 10... I've had issues before, but usually you get a window pop up that asks if you trust that the download is from a safe source, and then it's a proceed at you're own risk sort of thing. This time it's different, it's not letting me download it at all, windows is convinced that it contains a virus and isn't allowing me to make the decision on weather I should trust the source or not... hmm this is very annoying.

----------


## johnvanvliet

if win10 is doing a basic "whois"  this might explain it 



> NOTICE: The expiration date displayed in this record is the date the
> registrar's sponsorship of the domain name registration in the registry is
> currently set to expire. This date does not necessarily reflect the expiration
> date of the domain name registrant's agreement with the sponsoring
> registrar.  Users may consult the sponsoring registrar's Whois database to
> view the registrar's reported date of expiration for this registration.


or it dose not like "iplocal"


```
 ip-143-95-226-87.iplocal (143.95.226.87)  55.092 ms  53.465 ms  54.833 ms
```

----------


## waldronate

The expiration date for the domain is 04-apr-2022, so I hope that's not it. None of my machines here are showing that sort of problem, even the basic Win10 installation with nothing else on it.

http://www.fracterra.com/ReprojectImage32.msi is just the raw installer without being in a zip file. On my machine, Windows is showing a "file is corrupt or invalid signature" message for this file when I download it in Edge. I was able to click the "View Downloads" button and access the file that way, however. The signature issue is a weird one, because it was recently compiled with Visual Studio 2013. Maybe I should recompile with VS2015 and see if that resolves things. Not today, though.

----------


## kacey

I finally got it to work with Chashio's help and it seems to be running fine... Now I just have to figure out how it works, though from a quick first glance it looks pretty straight forward.

Thanks Waldronate, maybe I'll get this coast done after all.

----------


## kacey

I thought I'd post an update on the state of this world since I've made some major changes in the layout because I wanted it to be a little more "Earth Like". So far this is still in the sketching phase but I think it's starting to improve a bit. I started detailing that center sea area on the eastern continent just because I got excited about it, but the rest is still just blobs that need to be refined. The poles are working out much better now, that piece on the bottom was just causing me too much grief so I removed it completely, I'll work out the south pole later... Right now I have about 20 different versions of this map cluttering up my computer just from trying to sort out the poles, and how things were appearing in the other projections that I plan on using.

I still have allot of time to put in before I'm happy with the coast, but I really want to get it right because I know the next stages of figuring out the plates and the topography are going to be really time consuming so I'd like a solid base to start.

I'd love to here some thoughts on the shapes of the land masses in general, do you guy's think I'll be able to sort out some reasonably plausible plate tectonics with this layout? Will I be able to generate some realistic earth like climates? And do you think I'll be able to get some interesting regional maps and cultures out of it? I know there's still a ton of work to be done before I get to those points I just don't want to waste any more time on this coast.

----------


## randigpanzrall

intersting set of continents !! Especially when watching the thumbnail. I just can recommend to focuss hardly an the edges and the coastlines because all of us are tending to sharp peeks and kind of swirly coastlines. Keep on with this good job !!

----------


## kacey

Thanks randigpanzrall! I appreciate the feedback and I feel a little better now about refining those western continents.

----------


## Mouse

Wow!  I haven't visited this thread for a while for some reason, but this is coming on quite spectacularly.

Now I'm really looking forward to the development, and particularly to the regional maps  :Smile:

----------


## randigpanzrall

No Problem kathy, I think you matched a very good and extremely promising set and composition of landmasses. I marked the areas, which I meant (to give you a better iedea):



Maybe it´s a good idea to temporarely copy existing maps of let´s say Asia into your set in a similar map-scale in order to compare, inspire but even to modify if neccessary. One thing, most of us (and even I do so, believe me) are working on a continent but acting in a scale world of a regional map 

But to say it again, these are just tips in order to strenghten a top an well composed map and because I see a great start of a great map here

----------


## randigpanzrall

To give an example:

Here´s the contnent with less grade of detailization:



and going closer it´s neccessary to become more detailed:



so don´t be afraid to allow your landmasses less details (first)

f.e. look at Australias southern coast, there is nearly no sharp panhandle to see at the continent first, and even, if you get closer, it stays smooth for many miles and miles

----------


## Azélor

You don't have to change the landscape, I'm just trying to find comparisons. 
There is only one area I could not really find the equivalent. 
I'm aware that it is a very simplistic view and that Western America doesn't exist.
Also, mountains play a big role on the climates, so I could be completely wrong.

----------


## kacey

> Wow!  I haven't visited this thread for a while for some reason, but this is coming on quite spectacularly.
> 
> Now I'm really looking forward to the development, and particularly to the regional maps


Thanks Mouse, I'm looking forward to doing some regional maps, I already have a few areas I'm excited to do, but I've had to stop myself from getting too far ahead, I'm really hoping to see this one through.




> No Problem kathy, I think you matched a very good and extremely promising set and composition of landmasses. I marked the areas, which I meant (to give you a better iedea):
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe it´s a good idea to temporarely copy existing maps of let´s say Asia into your set in a similar map-scale in order to compare, inspire but even to modify if neccessary. One thing, most of us (and even I do so, believe me) are working on a continent but acting in a scale world of a regional map 
> 
> But to say it again, these are just tips in order to strenghten a top an well composed map and because I see a great start of a great map here


Thanks for the detailed examples randigpanzrall this is actually something I've been struggling with, I've never done a whole world map before so doing regional coasts is definitely more comfortable for me, the scale of things is definitely throwing me off. I'm trying to make a more realistic earth like coast but I will admit that I really enjoy those maps with allot of jagged pointy bits, and swirling coasts. I hope in the end I can find some type of compromise between the two.




> You don't have to change the landscape, I'm just trying to find comparisons. 
> There is only one area I could not really find the equivalent. 
> I'm aware that it is a very simplistic view and that Western America doesn't exist.
> Also, mountains play a big role on the climates, so I could be completely wrong.


Thanks Azelor You're pretty spot on in you're comparison, my fiancé said the same thing yesterday and I wondered if it would be too close to earths layout. At first the Africa type continent and the Greenland type continent were a coincidence they were just a reshuffling of the previous versions of the map, but placing the western continents aside from the "western America" continent which was there before the re shuffling was definitely intentional.

I do want an earth like planet, but do you think this is too close to the same layout? Is it different enough?

I'm thinking that the Africa type continent will be different than earths climate though because it doesn't go up as high so I'm not sure there will be a giant desert at the top and I don't think I've managed to create an area yet that will be like the Mediterranean climate, but I do hope to include one. I've actually been planning on following some of you're and pixie's guides for figuring this out so any advice coming from you is deeply appreciated you're kind of a rock star when it comes to climate so I'm honoured that you stopped by my thread.

----------


## PaGaN

Hey Kacey

THis looks really interesting and i love the detailing of the coast around the inner sea.

If you wanted to get away from the initial "earth analog" when you first look at the map have you thought about centering your map on your "Pacific" instead of your "Atlantic"? Just a thought. It may shake things up enough for you to get past the analog.

Following this thread Fo'sho  :Smile: 

PaGaN

----------


## Azélor

> I do want an earth like planet, but do you think this is too close to the same layout? Is it different enough?


I don't think it is that much of a big problem. Most people might not notice.

----------


## kacey

Thanks guy's, I have tried centering the land masses on the other ocean but it just doesn't have the same flow and would take some shuffling if I were to go that route because it puts the major land masses pretty close to the edges of the map so I think I'll keep this layout. Hopefully I get some time this week to work on refining the western continents, I think they'll probably change a bit when I do that and there are some areas at the top right of the eastern most continent that I think I'll be changing too because they've been bugging me a bit. Hopefully I can muster up the patients to get through this part I'm pretty antsy to get started on the topography.

----------


## randigpanzrall

It´s funny, well? Sets who are composed similar to our worls setting seem familar and friendly to us and americans (including Canadians of cause) prefer a pacific setting, while europeans prefer an atlantic setting... must be a kind of habituation....maybe foreigners from another galaxy would hate the shape of Europe, while we love it (more or less)  :Wink:

----------


## PaGaN

> Hopefully I can muster up the patients to get through this part I'm pretty antsy to get started on the topography.


Wherever you go with this it's going to be stunning at the finish line. I ADORE your Verenthia map.

----------


## kacey

> Wherever you go with this it's going to be stunning at the finish line. I ADORE your Verenthia map.


Thanks PaGaN that was the first map I ever completed.

----------


## kacey

Can anyone recommend a text editor for creating rotation files in G.Plates? I don't know anything about any type of command lines or text based files so I'm totally lost. I tried using notepad on windows but G.Plates can't read the file... I feel stupid asking, but I need help, I really don't even know what a text based editor is or does. I'm sort of understanding how to make the rotation file I just don't know where to type the data into... I've never done so much reading in one day and felt so stupid at the end of it.

----------


## kacey

Never mind I figured it out... well my fiancé figured it out, he told me to just download notepad++ and it worked!!! I'm really excited now because I actually learned something I thought I was incapable of learning, and I was able to create several continents, move them back in time to a super continent and save the movements into a rotation file and create a shapefile which I can open in qgis. 

I don't have anything to show for it though because I was just using random shapes that have nothing to do with this map to test things out from the tutorial I've been following... but it worked! And I'm really excited about it... Now I just have to figure out how to get my map from PhotoShop into g plates so I can trace around the continents and start working on the actual map. I'm going to finish going through the tutorial first though, my little brain can't handle much more tonight. I'm going to download qgis tommorow and do the second part of the tutorial on my random shapes before trying this on the actual map... Wish me luck.

Edit... Just in case anyone else is having trouble with G.Plates here's a link to the tutorial I've been following 

https://astrographer.wordpress.com/2...ates-and-qgis/

----------


## PaGaN

Hey Kacey. Sorry, didn't see your earlier Post (actually slept last night... WOOHOO!).

I didn't do any mapping last night so no GPlates but was intending to use Macs generic text editor.

Thanks fur that link to the tut. It seems to cover more material than the other two Charerg linked to. Checking that out today for sure.

----------


## kacey

No worries PaGaN I was able to figure it out on my own with validation that I'd done things correctly by charerg over on you're thread. There's a definite advantage to learning this along side someone else at pretty near the same stage in that almost every question I need answered has already been asked by you. Like today I was going to ask how to clip the continent polygons to my original raster so they would move together, and like clockwork you had asked just before I came looking for answers, as a result I saved huge time today not waiting for Responses and was able to get the original image clipped and start moving things around, which was really neat to see btw. I'm already starting to see better where things might need to be changed, and how to better position the topography when I get to that point though I'm almost thinking about starting again from scratch with a super continent just to make things easier.

----------


## PaGaN

Yep, sounds like we are in EXACTLY the same space...lol.

I am currently working up rough supercontinent land form for import into GPlates which I will 'break up'. Pretty much at this point I know that Aerlaan is going to have no resemblance to what I started with which I'm cool with. It's really like discovering an alien world  :Very Happy: 

Also, I'm not rushing this stage. The amount of information that pixie and Charerg have shared with the guild is staggering, before I read that other thread yesterday I had never even heard of "slab pull"...LMAO

it's all good!

PaGaN

----------


## Pixie

> I had never even heard of "slab pull"...LMAO


I hadn't either when I created the tectonics for my world, and I regret it so much  :Very Happy:  

Still, ignorance may be a blessing, settling for less and all that.. 

Keep at it, guys and gals, we're watching and cheering for you.

----------


## PaGaN

> Keep at it, guys and gals, we're watching and cheering for you.


Thanks Pixie!

Whilst we have you here (sense a question coming) I think i get the 4 driving forces of plate movement (mantle convection, ridge push, slap pull and slab suction) at least enough to be able to "see" what should be happening. One thing that I am getting stuck on visualising: The continents seem to be inexorably drawn together (earth's own history tells us this by the sheer number of supercontinents that have arisen over the aeons). The thing I am getting foggy with is once a supercontinent has formed what are the major forces driving them apart? 
1) Is it the thinning over time of continental crust by convection thus forming continental rift and kickstarting the process over again?
2) Slab suction from one or more edges of the supercontinent in response to slab pull from oceanic crust being subducted?
3) Is there some king of "recoil" from continental plate convergences?
4) All of the above?
As i go through GPLates i need to have an understanding of what would realistically be happening as i break apart the supercontinent i am going to be starting with (it is also my intention to "end up" with two smaller supercontinents on their way to a head on collision (in a few million years)
I ask this here as I think Kacey and I are both at the same point ( i hope you don't mind Kacey?)
Thanks
PaGaN

----------


## Charerg

> Thanks Pixie!
> 
> Whilst we have you here (sense a question coming) I think i get the 4 driving forces of plate movement (mantle convection, ridge push, slap pull and slab suction) at least enough to be able to "see" what should be happening. One thing that I am getting stuck on visualising: The continents seem to be inexorably drawn together (earth's own history tells us this by the sheer number of supercontinents that have arisen over the aeons). The thing I am getting foggy with is once a supercontinent has formed what are the major forces driving them apart? 
> 1) Is it the thinning over time of continental crust by convection thus forming continental rift and kickstarting the process over again?
> 2) Slab suction from one or more edges of the supercontinent in response to slab pull from oceanic crust being subducted?
> 3) Is there some king of "recoil" from continental plate convergences?
> 4) All of the above?
> As i go through GPLates i need to have an understanding of what would realistically be happening as i break apart the supercontinent i am going to be starting with (it is also my intention to "end up" with two smaller supercontinents on their way to a head on collision (in a few million years)
> I ask this here as I think Kacey and I are both at the same point ( i hope you don't mind Kacey?)
> ...


In a sense, one might say that a supercontinent is actually the "natural state" of the system, and the present situation where the continents are spread relatively far apart an anomaly. All the southern continents (S. America, Africa, Australia, Antarctica and India) were essentially a single block from ca. 750 Mya when Gondwana formed all the way to the breakup of Pangaea around 150 Mya, about 600 million years. 

Also, it should be noted that even Pangaea was never really unchanging, or even composed of a single continental plate. Eurasia kept amalgating pieces of Gondwana (Amurian plate, Cathaysian plate, Cimmerian plate, South China plate) all through the lifecycle of the supercontinent, starting off with basically just Europe and Siberia, and ending up with the present day Eurasia (eastern Eurasia is also very mountainous as a result of those numerous collisions). All that geologic history shows a cycle of pieces breaking off from Gondwana (due to slab pull), with associated opening and closing of the Tethys Ocean (Proto-Tethys, Palaeo-Tethys, Neotethys and finally the Indian Ocean, the latest stage of the process). This suggests that slab pull is probably the most important factor (though not necessarily the only one).

However, it is important to remember that ultimately the renewal of oceanic crust is what drives the whole system. Continental crust is relatively stable, but oceanic crust renews itself on a cycle, and that is what fundamentally creates the Wilson Cycle (it might be more accurate to consider it as the "ocean cycle" rather than the supercontinent cycle  :Wink: ). Well, mantle dynamics probably play a role as well, but it's still fairly unclear exactly how the relationship between plate tectonics and mantle dynamics works (and in any case, I don't think you need to pay too much attention to mantle dynamics when creating a fictional world).

----------


## PaGaN

great response AS EVER. I don;t know how you do it. you respond and even MORE knowledge pours out.

So, the Wilson cycle eh? That does seem to cover how i was visualizing it. kind of like a perpetual love hate relationship between the various continental plates "oh, i miss you come back, you're so far" to "get the <expletive> away from me you make me sick!".

And yes, you're right, for our intents and purposes, just knowing "enough" is enough.

Thanks again Charerg (and Pixie)

PaGaN

----------


## PaGaN

Kacey, i found this short clip that helped to "see" the Wilson cycle in action. I found it useful.

EDIT: also discovered this gem of a resource

----------


## kacey

Wow, you guys just loaded me with a slew of new information to pour over, thank you so much I really appreciate the big guns coming out to help those of us that are still learning. I wish I had more time right now to respond to each comment, I have so many more questions, but like always PaGaN knew exactly what I wanted to ask today, and I appreciate all the links you guy's are posting. It's nice to be able to quickly access resources and learning material. I've been reading so much lately and trying to follow all the threads that I lose track of where I found certain information and I fell asleep last night thinking about slab pull... Wait, that came out wrong, anyway I never would have known about it had you guys not been such great sources of information... Thank you.

----------


## PaGaN

> I fell asleep last night thinking about slab pull... Wait, that came out wrong


Oh Kacey...ROFLMAO

At least it wasn't Slab Suction!

 :Razz:

----------


## kacey

So I've managed to get my continents into a very temporary and rough super continent and assigned some preliminary plate id's so I can give them a test run tomorrow... hopefully. The sloppy coasts, and scribbled planning is driving me a little bonkers so I can't wait to start polishing up the edges. I just gave the land masses some numbers for now just so I can keep myself organised, they correspond with the plate id's so hopefully I don't get too confused with the next stage.

I'm having some issues with distortion right now so things will change. I'm hoping to get my rotation file ready tonight before I go to bed because I have some time tomorrow to get things a little more polished. 

I'm not sure if this is going to work, but I'm going to pull all the chunks down into the middle area where there's less distortion and then refine the edges a bit then mash them back together, it might be totally crazy and a waste of time but I'm hoping that when I drag them back that G.Plates will take care of the distortion for me. I did a little test the other day dragging a chunk from the middle of a more completed coast up to the pole and it worked out beautifully, so I'm optimistic... for now.



I'll redo the plate boundaries and id's once I take care of the coast a little, for now my main concern is getting the land masses into the middle so I can deal with the distortion issues.

----------


## Pixie

I don't want to mess up your schedule or get you confused but, please, for us who do this as drug-taking, give us a bit more... where is subduction taking place? so we can start imagining the upcoming mayhem :Very Happy:

----------


## kacey

> I don't want to mess up your schedule or get you confused but, please, for us who do this as drug-taking, give us a bit more... where is subduction taking place? so we can start imagining the upcoming mayhem


This definitely messes up my schedule, but for you Pixie I will do it. I've had this in my head for a few days now so I didn't even think to consider that maybe you can't read my mind. I guess I'll be spending my free time today figuring out how you make those perfectly zig zag'd lines to represent the movements... Forgive me if I come back with a bunch of messy arrows instead, I really have no idea what I'm doing.

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## Chashio

You are doing wonders with this, kacey  :Smile:

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## kacey

Thanks Chashio!

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## PaGaN

Looking good Kacey!

Re: showing the subduction zones etc...I don't know how and where but GPlates has the facility to cover this off for you. Maybe another WAY more learned in the ways of GPlates can chime in? (Pixie, Charerg?)

----------


## Charerg

> Looking good Kacey!
> 
> Re: showing the subduction zones etc...I don't know how and where but GPlates has the facility to cover this off for you. Maybe another WAY more learned in the ways of GPlates can chime in? (Pixie, Charerg?)


As far as I know, there's no way to show subduction zones in GPlates except manually drawing them as a feature (and at that point, you're probably better off using an image editing program anyway). It's not a simulator, so it doesn't really model any tectonic forces per se, only the movements of the plates.

----------


## Pixie

> I guess I'll be spending my free time today figuring out how you make those perfectly zig zag'd lines to represent the movements...


Please don't spend your free time like that.. and I can't even remember which zig zag lines you are thinking of.

Just add an ugly thick and blurry line on top of that work-in-progress-map-with-the-numbers, in any color. Scribbles and ugly drafts are the way to go - didn't you hear fantasy mappers are terrible in actual cartography  :Smile:

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## kacey

> Scribbles and ugly drafts are the way to go - didn't you hear fantasy mappers are terrible in actual cartography


Then I shouldn't feel too bad about this then... Don't say I didn't warn you, I can hardly understand what it means and I wasn't going to show it, most of this has changed in my mind already and needs to be re done but this is the beginning of some brain storming I was doing on the plate movement at 150ma. I'm actually thinking about using this layout for the map, I sort of like the continents sitting where they are now... I'll redo the plates in g.plates and continue the breakup once I get a bit of a more refined coast line, this is really still in the planning stages. I wish I had more time to make up a more polished version for you guys to mull over but I spend my days chasing around two very small children and right now my main concern is trying to save my house from complete devastation... It's like a tornado goes through my house every five minutes so I don't get allot of time to actually sit down and work on this, I'm lucky if I get 20 minutes at nap time.



And here is the northern land mass pulled down into the middle of the projection, I'm doing the coast this way and dragging it back up to avoid some distortion issues, it's far from polished but it's enough detail to keep me going for now, but I'm having an issue with g.plates now where for some reason when I clip the raster to the plate polygons it disappears... Any one else have this problem??? It wasn't doing that before, I could clip the raster and move it around just fine, now for some reason as soon as I add the connection my raster disappears completely... Am I missing something? Maybe I accidentally changed some setting, but I'm really frustrated and can't get it to work right now... Any ideas as to why it's doing this?

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## PaGaN

NICE! The young rift zones bewteen the major masses look pretty believable. I personally always seem to find it hard to figure out what is supposed to be happening in the mid oceans "before we get there" if you know what i mean. i know that there will be rifts, likely old and in the process of being subducted on one side or another but the oceanic area on a world with a supercontinent is HUGE so that would be one bloody big oceanic ridge system.

I like charerg's approach which, to paraphrase very loosely, was to assume that something was going on but not to worry too much about it so long as you figured out what was happening from when you start moving stuff around...LOL

Also, Kacey, i LOVE your coastlines. That northern landmass looks LOVELY. I must get some pointers from you later.

PaGaN

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## Blaidd Drwg

Awesome! I love how much thought you're putting into this.

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## kacey

Thanks guy's!

PaGaN, I struggle to figure out the "before we get there" stage too. I imagine those giant ocean plates would be subducting under the edges of the supercontinent and in a sense pulling the pieces out towards it causing the break up, I may be wrong about how it works but for now that's my thought process when it comes to getting things moving.

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## PaGaN

Hey Kacey.
As ever, we seem to thinking along exactly the same lines.

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## kacey

Just a quick update... Trying to get a simplified coast nailed down is proving really difficult. I still seem stuck in the regional state of mind so some of the features may seem a little on the big side and there may be things that are impossible... But it is fantasy after all so I'm giving myself some leeway.

I still have allot of work to do on the coast it's a little unbalanced right now... I will be adding a south pole and an Australia type continent with some islands, I even tried to make something a little like Japan but I think I may remove it, I might have gone a little too far. I'm still looking for something earth like or even just slightly different then earth because for a first world map I really need some type of reference point. maybe I'll do something a little more alien for the next one.

I'm trying not to add too much detail, I just need enough to get me through the topography and then I'll refine the coast with changes after that or I might even wait till I'm doing regional sections I don't know. 

Things are still pretty sloppy and I'm taking a break from trying to make a full tectonics model for now... There comes a time when you find yourself awake at 3am to work on a map, but still haven't given yourself enough time to have a shower before you have to walk out the door that it just has to stop. I had a dream the other day that the ground started to move and the sun fell from the sky and in the dream every one else was freaking out but I sat there wondering why the plates were moving so fast... Forget the neuro trauma center, they'll be moving me to the psych ward if I don't start working on something different.

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## Eilathen

lol...kacey ... i love your "state of mind report"  :Wink:  Hope you feel better about it! In my opinion, don't be too hard on yourself because a) this just shows how much passion you have for this hobby (which is a big plus, imho) and b) i think the map looks good already. I love the overall shapes and i can definitely see the alternate earth vibe here. Very much looking forward to more of this!

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## kacey

Thanks Eilathen, I do feel better about it though I'm struggling with the style I want to do for the topography. I'm not really sure what size I should be working with to make this useful for both world and regional maps. Right now it's 6000 by 3000...I think, it might be 7000 but it's not enough resolution I'm finding, maybe vector would be better then it won't matter so much... I do plan on doing a more modern atlas type style with contours though for the base map, but I'd like to be able to do shaded relief and hand drawn styles as well for regional sections and I also want to be able to post it in a resolution that can be seen and not get all fuzzy from shrinking it down. I guess I'll just have to see what my computer will tolerate, I don't imagine my surface will do much more then 10 000 pix without giving me some headache. I think I'll have to experiment a bit with size.

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## The Grey Stallion

I wish I understood how you create these tectonics. It is a very nice world.

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## Voolf

This project is becoming a monster Kacey, watch out not to abandon it because of to much to deal with. Keep my fingers crossed, it's developing steadily and nicely  :Wink:

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## kacey

> I wish I understood how you create these tectonics. It is a very nice world.


If you can understand any of this then you deserve an award because I sure can't. I'm actually really struggling to figure it all out so I'm hoping someone with more knowledge on this will stop by and help me clean up this mess. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to place the topography. The colors lost meaning a while ago but originally red was pulling apart, blue was going together and purple was sliding past, the black blobs on the land are areas that are relatively stable or locked into place by surrounding plates. Right now I'm trying to figure out where the shields, basins, platforms and mountains should be... And I feel completely lost. Sorry it isn't very pretty but nothing is set in stone so I don't want to waste my time making nice lines just yet.






> This project is becoming a monster Kacey, watch out not to abandon it because of to much to deal with. Keep my fingers crossed, it's developing steadily and nicely


Thanks Voolf I appreciate the encouraging words, now if I can just get through finishing the coast and figuring out the tectonics I may just be able to get back some motivation.

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## kacey

Does anyone know where I can get a high resolution topographic map of earth for reference? I'm struggling to find one big enough to see the little details, the best I've found is about 3000 pixels across and that's just not big enough. I can find high resolution shaded relief but can't find any with height and contour information.

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## PaGaN

Hey Kacey.

Don't be discouraged, all the work and thought experiments are paying off even if you don't feel it at the moment. sure, the scope of the project is big but what's the rush right? I find this stage to be particularly exciting because it's just full of possibility. It's the same when i'm working on a painting, The rough in is where the magic happens and the piece begins to reveal itself to you.

Regarding the latest WIP, the landforms look great! really nicely balanced and plausible (which you know they are because you have done the groundwork). regarding the placement of shields, you already have it. The black "blobs of stability" are the cratons of the plates right? if so then they are your shields. Given that neither of us started this process at the beginning of geological time for our worlds we just have to kind of "eyeball" where the cratons would be. Usually toward the heartland of a plate and surrounded by other less dense and more mutable material that the craton "gathers up" over the aeons.

As you know, i was all gung ho to plow into getting the world mapped once i had invested at least a cursory nod to tectonics and fast forward to today where i am now thinking that i am probably going to be doing regional maps of Aerlaan in probably a years time (if i'm lucky). But i'm fine with that, there is fun in every part of this process and we all learn loads by going through it and sharing.

Anyway, just thought you needed a little cheer from the gallery!

I love where you are at right now and know that every step along the way will be another step closer to even more awesome.

 :Wink: 

also, is THIS imahge good enough for you?



EDIT: for some reason the picture uploaded twice. sorry

PaGaN

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## randigpanzrall

Hey kacey, look at this....I Love the reworked continents so much. Absolutely well done and beautyful. Wow

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## Ilanthar

Your "whole damn world" is shaping up really nicely, Kacey. I'm envious of those splendid land shapes.
And in my opinion, as every cartographer who is willing to work out tectonics, climates, etc..., you're very brave!

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## Pixie

Hiya kacey!
First of all, your "state of mind" post made me laugh out loud, it really did. Secondly, I think the map has great shapes, they have a tectonic past which is good enough and I wouldn't bother going back to the drawing board any more.

I've been trying to find some time to write proper advice because, oh my, you so deserve it! But I've been very short on time... I had a couple of quick glances and couldn't recognize where all the original plates went to, when comparing the "pangaea" map and this latest one. Normally I'd be into breaking that sort of puzzle, but since I can't, could you provide that info? I promise, from there, I can assist in finding the topography.  :Very Happy: 

All in all, GREAT WORK SO FAR!

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## kacey

Omg I didn't realize my file names could be seen in the forum, it's a good thing I didn't use a more choice curse word...I was really frustrated when I saved that version of the map so thanks for bringing that to my attention Ilantar.   




> is THIS imahge good enough for you?
> 
> Attachment 100359Attachment 100359
> 
> PaGaN


Thanks PaGaN but I'm actually looking for something without the relief, more along the lines of randigpanzrall's current project.




> Hey kacey, look at this....I Love the reworked continents so much. Absolutely well done and beautyful. Wow


Thanks randigpanzrall you're a big inspiration for me so I'm glad you like it. Would you mind telling me what maps you used for inspiration when doing you're topography I'd really like to do something similar in style but struggle to find good reference images.




> I had a couple of quick glances and couldn't recognize where all the original plates went to, when comparing the "pangaea" map and this latest one.


You could spend eternity trying to unlock that puzzle but you won't find it. I've changed the shapes so much that I have to do the reconstruction over again I just haven't found the time to re do it yet. I'm almost at the point where I can get it back into g.plates but I'll be re starting the reconstruction backwards from the most current version, after some clean up of course so it could take some time...I look forward to you're analysis on the placement of the topography though since I'm still a little lost with it all.

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## Pixie

> You could spend eternity trying to unlock that puzzle but you won't find it. I've changed the shapes so much that I have to do the reconstruction over again I just haven't found the time to re do it yet. I'm almost at the point where I can get it back into g.plates but I'll be re starting the reconstruction backwards from the most current version, after some clean up of course so it could take some time..


You need to trust the method, kacey  :Very Happy:   Abandon the regional mapping artist in you and embrace the tectonics  :Very Happy: 
Now, seriously, this way of doing things is to move the plates first, address the coast, locally, after. If you are going to reconstruct backwards (which is a good idea), you don't really need to go all the way to pangaea, just a few "eons".

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## Warlin

Keep at this good work, Kacey. The shape of your continent is pretty nice. Hope you can achieve this absolute mass of work ! Still watching at your progress.

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## kacey

This speaks for itself...I hope, if you can read my scribbles. The placement isn't exact, I've left plates 3 and 4 static just so I could make sense of things. It's at many stages between 130 and probably 100ma I'm just trying to figure out how that center most continent came together but I got a little carried away...sorry. In reality the west most continent should be turned a little more clockwise and the east most continent should be more north, and the chunks that will make up the new land mass should be further on there way to coming together. I'm kind of tempted to use the new layout instead of the old one for the recent time and work backwards again but that makes allot more work and many more changes so I'm undecided. In a way this layout is closer to what I had in mind from the beginning. In all honesty though I'm most excited to see what happens when species 17 gets back together on the same continent and how that plays out, I've got the itch to get back into zbrush and make some creatures at different levels of evolutionary change as they drift with the plates, I imagine that tracking those changes will be a little more fun then tectonics'...but then I'd have to work out the climate at different ages too...hmm I might have to rethink that idea it seems like allot of work.

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## Azélor

That looks complicated. I never use handwriting on my maps because it's too awful.

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## kacey

> That looks complicated. I never use handwriting on my maps because it's too awful.


Lol I thought someone might say that, sorry I know it looks messy, but I really have a hard time understanding the lines people normally use, for my own sanity I need notes until I'm better able to understand how people use those lines I normally see... I really don't know how else to describe it...If I had the time I'd type it up... I'll see what I can do in the next few days to make it more understandable, in the meantime I hope some one is able to read my scratches because I'm not sure I'm understanding how the tectonics actually work.

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## Warlin

So many questions, Kacey... for the pink one, there is the possibility of breaking one of your 5, 6 or 7 plate to a smaller one that will move faster ahead then slow down to collide again when the plates will meet. 
Cheers.

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## Chashio

That's a rather neat depiction of the insanity involved in figuring this out.... much neater than when I tried it.  :Very Happy:  My brain does not want to make sense of any of it today but it looks like you're doing well. I'm digging the land shapes + distribution. Keep at it.  :Smile:

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## PaGaN

Hey Kacey.

You need to print this off and keep it handy as a remider of what you had to go through when the map is finished...LOL

IF i may suggest something? I can sense your confusion radiating off of this schematic and, trust me, i understand. It seems that you are questioning yourself about what some plates should be doing and hypothesizing over others. I think that answering your own questions is harder with this map as you are working on a "moment in time" version.

They way i am atttacking it is to take several "snapshots" of the plates from the past through to the "present". Bring them into photoshop as layers in order of age. toggle off the visibility on all but the oldest layer. Start with that layer, create a new empty layer above it. toggle visibility on and off for the next "snapshot" (the second oldest) so you can see what is changing and how things are moving, you can then mark up the oldest layer appropriately (plate zone boundaries, mountainous areas rifts etc...) for the oldest you can also mark up with the hypothesized "before we get there" mid ocean ridged divergent boundaries. 

copy this mark up layer and move it ABOVE the second oldest layer and repeat the process with chnages between the second and third age layers. etc...

As you work thorugh your newer versions of the markup "evolve" in accordance with your plate reconstructions and you should end up wiht less questions and uncertainties.

Does this make any sense to you? sorry for the poor explanation.

PaGaN

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## Azélor

No I was just saying that your handwriting is better than mine. It's not that bad actually.

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## kacey

Thanks for the feed back guy's, I'll come back later and address each comment separately I really have to run or I'll be late to pick up my son from school but I started working on some islands today, added my "Australia like" continent and the south pole so just a quick update on my progress for the day.

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## Azélor

Just out of curiosity (maybe this as already been mentioned already) 
what is your sea/land proportion?

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## kacey

> Just out of curiosity (maybe this as already been mentioned already) 
> what is your sea/land proportion?


I have absolutely no idea, I wouldn't even know how to find that out. I'm curious though now that you ask... What type of an impact could sea/land proportion have on a planet? Could it effect the climate? Or do you think there is too much land here?

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## kacey

> So many questions, Kacey... for the pink one, there is the possibility of breaking one of your 5, 6 or 7 plate to a smaller one that will move faster ahead then slow down to collide again when the plates will meet. 
> Cheers.


Thanks Warlin I really haden't considered that some plates could move faster then others, actually... stupid me I was trying to get them all the same speed and failing miserably  :Razz: ... This actually helps allot.




> That's a rather neat depiction of the insanity involved in figuring this out.... much neater than when I tried it.  My brain does not want to make sense of any of it today but it looks like you're doing well. I'm digging the land shapes + distribution. Keep at it.


Thanks Chashio... My brain doesn't really want to make sense of it either.




> Hey Kacey.
> 
> You need to print this off and keep it handy as a remider of what you had to go through when the map is finished...LOL
> 
> IF i may suggest something? I can sense your confusion radiating off of this schematic and, trust me, i understand. It seems that you are questioning yourself about what some plates should be doing and hypothesizing over others. I think that answering your own questions is harder with this map as you are working on a "moment in time" version.
> 
> They way i am atttacking it is to take several "snapshots" of the plates from the past through to the "present". Bring them into photoshop as layers in order of age. toggle off the visibility on all but the oldest layer. Start with that layer, create a new empty layer above it. toggle visibility on and off for the next "snapshot" (the second oldest) so you can see what is changing and how things are moving, you can then mark up the oldest layer appropriately (plate zone boundaries, mountainous areas rifts etc...) for the oldest you can also mark up with the hypothesized "before we get there" mid ocean ridged divergent boundaries. 
> 
> copy this mark up layer and move it ABOVE the second oldest layer and repeat the process with chnages between the second and third age layers. etc...
> ...


That's actually a really good idea PaGaN, too bad I didn't think of it earlier I'll have to give that a try.




> No I was just saying that your handwriting is better than mine. It's not that bad actually.


No worries Azelor I wasn't insulted either way.

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## PaGaN

As ever, Kacey, a great update to the landforms. I really am excited to see this world evolve.

Hopefully i should be able to do some work on my world tonight and be able to show you what i mean visually.

progress is progress!

PaGaN

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## Azélor

> I have absolutely no idea, I wouldn't even know how to find that out.  here?


You would need to convert the projection to an equal area projection. Get rid of the dotted line and other stuff hiding the map first so you don't select them. 
Using the magic wand, you compare the land pixels with the overall pixels on the map. That gives you a percentage. 
Furthermore, if you want to know how big one continent is in sq km, you take the % and multiply it by the total area of the map. 
If that sounds too complicated I could do it for you. I just need a clean copy just with land and water. 




> Or do  you think there is too much land


You have large landmasses close to the poles. These tend to be oversized when using a cylindrical projection compared to reality. 
Overall, it's hard to tell. Just by looking at it. You might have more land than Earth but not that much. 




> What type of an impact could  sea/land proportion have on a planet? Could it effect the climate?


On the world scale, I don't know. It could affect the planet's albedo since oceans retain more heat from the star than the forests, I think. 
But oceans can generate a lot of clouds from evaporation, which reduces the albedo. 

The placement of the landmasses could play a larger role. Several millions of years ago, when the strait of Magellan was closed, the climate of Antarctica was much warmer. Warm waters from the Atlantic influenced the local climate.
Now the continent is completely cut off, surrounded by a could circumpolar current, a very strong one. It's a good thing since it prevent the ice from melting too fast. 

Also, the climate in Antarctica was warmer because the atmospheric composition of the planet was different. The greenhouse effect was much stronger then leading to more uniform climates planet-wide. 

Back to your map, the impact globally is hard to estimate, or probably small. On the local level, large landmasses produce monsoons.

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## kacey

> If that sounds too complicated I could do it for you. I just need a clean copy just with land and water.


That definitely sounds too complicated...Will this do?



Keep in mind that this coast is still very much a work in progress, I made some major changes just tonight but the basic distribution is pretty much set in stone. I still have a few areas that need some major changes but not enough to impact the size by much. This is still a sketch, when I'm finally happy with the forms I'll then work on the actual coast line and clean things up.

I really appreciate the help, I can't thank you enough.

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## kacey

Here's the poles...



I'm pretty happy with the South pole, but the North pole definitely still needs some work.

And here's a better view of the oceans on a Robinson projection, it's a little easier to see areas that need fixing this way, and there are lots of areas that need fixing...

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## PaGaN

Ooooooh, pretty! You're going to have so many places to explore here Kacey. I love it.

What's wrong with the oceans? They look fine, better then fine. She with the poles. One thing about the North Pole would be that, given the small sea area, I would suspect that the whole thing would be covered by ice cap (unless your overall planetary climate is warmer than earth today).

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## Pixie

kacey, you got the whole community (maybe nothe whole lot, but a big bunch!) cheering for this  :Very Happy: 

I'm struggling to find some free time and scribble up notes on your maps, because I got quite a few things to tell you. Will come up with something (pretty awesome, I mean, to me..) soon, hang in there!

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## Azélor

It's 33,37% of land. Earth is slightly over 29%. 
It's not 100% accurate since some area here and there are not selected because the file is a little blurry due to the use of a software to change the projection.

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## Pixie

So this is a long post... or rather, one with 5 pics but not much else to say:


Your "madness map" over simplified... just the blobs and not much else.


The key idea.


Some million years afterwards..


Now it becomes to look like your landmasses... 


Final thoughts... it explains quite well the central area of the map - I just couldn't reconcile "my" plate (7) with that sea you had in the same area. Other than that, I hope you like it.

I did this in a couple of hours today, it shows the kind of information you can have for topography. It was sloppy as everything was done with little consideration to how things warp as you move them around in an equiretangular projection. It's always much easier when you don't have a "target" coastline to fit things into.

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## Azélor

> And here's a better view of the oceans on a Robinson projection, it's a  little easier to see areas that need fixing this way, and there are lots  of areas that need fixing...


I'm not sure what your problem with the North pole is. The black line is understandable.
Is it because the island doesn't fit right? 

Personally, I don't like Robinson that much. you could try another projection just to see how it looks. 
Maybe you should use the orthographic projection since it is like looking at the planet from space. 
Just saying because I don't see anything horribly wrong on the map, yet I know it's not my map...

For Pixie: I see a lot of island chains in the middle of the oceans.
I skipped the discussion on tectonics, and I'm sorry if this as already been mentioned. 
There seems to be more chains than on Earth or they are just smaller maybe?
Assuming there are more, does that mean anything from a geologic perspective? I'm thinking about shallower oceans.

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## kacey

Wow Pixie! Thank you so much for taking the time to look this over in such detail. I can't argue anything you said because, well, I have no idea what I'm doing but it seems we're on the same track so I'll try my best to keep all this in mind when I go to work on it more tonight. 




> Ooooooh, pretty! You're going to have so many places to explore here Kacey. I love it.
> 
> What's wrong with the oceans? They look fine, better then fine. She with the poles. One thing about the North Pole would be that, given the small sea area, I would suspect that the whole thing would be covered by ice cap (unless your overall planetary climate is warmer than earth today).


Thanks PaGaN! I appreciate the kind words. As for the oceans there's nothing terribly wrong with them, more nit picky stuff and just the sloppiness of the coast in general, I'm antsy to get all the details worked out and finally clean it up and make it look pretty that's all, and yes I imagine there will be lots of ice up there, but I'll leave that out until I get on to the climate phase....which scares me little.




> It's 33,37% of land. Earth is slightly over 29%. 
> It's not 100% accurate since some area here and there are not selected because the file is a little blurry due to the use of a software to change the projection.


Thanks for doing that Azelor it's interesting to see the results...I imagine a good chunk of that extra land is coming from the south pole which is much larger then that of earth.




> I'm not sure what your problem with the North pole is. The black line is understandable.
> Is it because the island doesn't fit right? 
> 
> Personally, I don't like Robinson that much. you could try another projection just to see how it looks. 
> Maybe you should use the orthographic projection since it is like looking at the planet from space. 
> Just saying because I don't see anything horribly wrong on the map, yet I know it's not my map...
> 
> For Pixie: I see a lot of island chains in the middle of the oceans.
> I skipped the discussion on tectonics, and I'm sorry if this as already been mentioned. 
> ...


The problem with the north pole is more or less aesthetic, there's just something that bugs me about it that I can't quite put my finger on and yes the split in the one island is bugging me it's just not fitting quite right...Really I'm just being picky is all.

I jump between different projections all the time and a 3D globe I just really like the look of the Robinson projection, it's actually one of my favorites. I always enjoy maps in this projection so I imagine its just personal taste. I know there are better options for distortion but I just can't stand looking at them to be honest... The main map will always be equirectangular.

I know the question was for Pixie but I'm adding allot of islands on purpose for no other reason then I like how they look. As much as I'd like a hyper realistic world I'm not opposed to having impossible things just for the fun of it, but if you guys can come up with a reason for it then I'm all ears... Actually when comparing my map to earth allot of these islands should be nothing more then a spec, but I've exaggerated them quite a bit just for fun though I wonder could there be more islands because of an ice age? From what I understand the extra ice at the poles could cause global water levels to be much lower, though I would have no idea how to work out that type of climate and I'm not sure you and pixies guides go over that.

----------


## Azélor

It could be an ice age or just that there is less water on the planet.

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## PaGaN

Hey Kacey, don't be scared by the climate, hopefully I'll be by your side going through it also. It's actually the bit I'm really looking forward to. You can kind of think of it as the world really revealing itself to you. How cool is it that, with the tools at it disposal and all the amazing people willing to help, we get to discover what our worlds could actually look like? It's actually kind of amazing and awesome  :Wink:

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## Pixie

> There seems to be more chains than on Earth or they are just smaller maybe?
> Assuming there are more, does that mean anything from a geologic perspective? I'm thinking about shallower oceans.


Like kacey already wrote. It's to her liking. In the final version, islands are always kind of easy to justify because there are several "origins" for islands, not necessarily from subduction arcs. But when the artist draws them as clear arcs that's when **** hits the ***.  :Very Happy: 




> Hey Kacey, don't be scared by the climate,


Compared to tectonics, climate is a different kind of cake. Tectonics is 90% inspiration, 10% sweat and you stall when inspiration isn't around. Climate is a lot of sweat, but almost no inspiration required (pun recognized... but not intended).

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## kacey

Hey Pixie... In regards to you're comment about high lands due to rifting... Will there be high lands on both sides of the separated land masses or just one? And how far inland should the highlands be? And will there be cliffs on the edges of the highlands against the water like eastern Canada and Scotland? Also what if this causes trapped water between other mountains will there be lots of lakes then? Because I'm getting some areas with trapped water, will this water just keep filling or will it go underground to escape?

I know I have more questions but I'll wait till I have an updated map...I can't wait to be done this part I'm growing really tired of it and running low on inspiration so not needing any for the climate stage will be a welcome change... My brain hurts. I'm excited for the stages that become more automated when the world begins to reveal itself to me instead of having to force it into existence.

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## kacey

Just trying to get a very basic understanding of where mountains might be... Sorry for the mess I know it's not pretty. I hope to get the coast tidied up a bit tomorrow when I have more time. I won't "actually" work on the topography until I know I'm understanding what's supposed to be going on because I know it's going to take an ungodly amount of time to complete so I'm hoping I can get some feedback on weather or not I even have this even a little correct or if I'm completely off the mark... I'm finding this all very confusing, and I'm feeling very stuck in the planning stages where things just look really, really ugly.

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## Pixie

I had a lovely big post about different kind of leftovers from continental rifting, with examples and intelligent links to nice looking maps. All gone in weird "page refresh"...  :Frown:  

Oh well, here's the short version of the post:
- have a look at Simien Mountains in Ethiopia and Yemen topography across the Red Sea, for an example of highlands alongside rifting.
- see namibian/angolan coastal topography for a different example of an older rifted area and the east africa rift from burundi to malawi for a much more recent (early stages) rifting
- southern Brazil coast is yet a different example, but more complex
- and the Bay of Biscay west of France the flattest of examples, no highlands at all here
- finally, a video on youtube by a guy called Hassan Geologist or something like that.


Also, you may not like your working map, but I think it is very promising! Very very promising..  :Wink:

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## kacey

> I had a lovely big post about different kind of leftovers from continental rifting, with examples and intelligent links to nice looking maps. All gone in weird "page refresh"...  
> 
> Oh well, here's the short version of the post:
> - have a look at Simien Mountains in Ethiopia and Yemen topography across the Red Sea, for an example of highlands alongside rifting.
> - see namibian/angolan coastal topography for a different example of an older rifted area and the east africa rift from burundi to malawi for a much more recent (early stages) rifting
> - southern Brazil coast is yet a different example, but more complex
> - and the Bay of Biscay west of France the flattest of examples, no highlands at all here
> - finally, a video on youtube by a guy called Hassan Geologist or something like that.
> 
> ...


Thanks Pixie I really appreciate all the thought you're putting in to helping me it really does help even if you lost a whole post, just knowing what places to look for has already changed some ideas I had, I just have a hard time finding topographic reference images in a decent resolution. I've lost posts like that before, actually I loose them all the time, it seems almost like there's a time limit and I've noticed that if I press the preview button every couple of lines that it doesn't happen so I've gotten into a habit of doing that...It's a real pain in the a**.

I found some interesting videos today on you tube looking for that guy Hassan the Geologist and learned some things I didn't know about so now I'm on a mission to find some high resolution references of the topography around a transform fault. Silly me I just assumed there would be regular mountains there but now I know better so thank you. There's just so many things I wouldn't even have thought to look into.

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## kacey

I'm thinking I'll take a little break from this project... I'm really struggling with topography and the style I was going for just isn't working out for me so I need to step back and rethink we're it's going from here. I was hoping to do a topographic atlas style but It turns out that I really badly suck at it so I may end up going with a more hand drawn style but I'm not sure if that will work for a world map.. Hopefully a little break will help me figure out what to do.

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## PaGaN

Hey Kacey.

I understand, trust me! But please come back to this project.

IF it helps, what i was going to do with Aerlaan was only figure out enough of the topography/elevation to be able to work through pixie and azelor's climate guides. It has been my full intention all along to do the actual render of the world map in a hand drawn style (with my biggest question being do i go top down or isometric?).

Given your already demonstrated skill i think it would be marvelous to see the Unexplored Land rendered in whatever way you see as fit.

PaGaN

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## Eilathen

Hey kacey,

Just a quick response to say this : hand drawn can totally work for a world map! We have lots of examples on the guild. And all i can do, mapwise, is hand drawn...and i did do world maps  :Wink: 
So what am i saying? I'd totally dig you doing this in hand drawn style.

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## Chashio

Hand drawn can totally work for world maps if that's the route you want to go.  :Smile:  And it's ok to do entirely random experiments that don't matter if you mess everything up in order to work out style possibilities for the piece that does matter.  :Wink:  That's what I try to remind myself to do when I get stuck on how to proceed. Good luck, kacey! You're doing amazing things.

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## Pixie

Yay for hand drawn!  :Very Happy: 

Kacey, take all the breaks you like, nobody is behind you with deadlines. But please, don't delete any of the wonderful (and I mean this!) stuff you already made. I'm just making up metrics now, but I reckon that for every 1 Mb of lovely maps, there's maybe 100 Mb of drafts, notes and half-baked versions.

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## kacey

> Hey Kacey.
> 
> I understand, trust me! But please come back to this project.
> 
> IF it helps, what i was going to do with Aerlaan was only figure out enough of the topography/elevation to be able to work through pixie and azelor's climate guides. It has been my full intention all along to do the actual render of the world map in a hand drawn style (with my biggest question being do i go top down or isometric?).
> 
> Given your already demonstrated skill i think it would be marvelous to see the Unexplored Land rendered in whatever way you see as fit.
> 
> PaGaN


Thanks PaGaN and don't worry I haven't given up, I'm still plugin away in the background, mostly doing unsuccessful style tests but still going non the less, though I did step away from it yesterday to draw robots... I'm looking for an excuse to render some metal in keyshot and I have to say I'm quite pleased with the result of my concepts and I got some inspiration for my world by doing it because it prompted me to sketch out some artifacts that might be found here as well which I'm going to sculpt in zbrush... eventually.

And I would love to see you do some hand drawn mountains, I really liked what you did with you're solar moon map thing so if the map follows suite it will be really cool.




> Hey kacey,
> 
> Just a quick response to say this : hand drawn can totally work for a world map! We have lots of examples on the guild. And all i can do, mapwise, is hand drawn...and i did do world maps 
> So what am i saying? I'd totally dig you doing this in hand drawn style.


Thanks Eilathen I was glad to see you stopped by my thread, I would love to see some of those maps you're talking about I'm still waiting for the day when you start showing us you're work.




> Hand drawn can totally work for world maps if that's the route you want to go.  And it's ok to do entirely random experiments that don't matter if you mess everything up in order to work out style possibilities for the piece that does matter.  That's what I try to remind myself to do when I get stuck on how to proceed. Good luck, kacey! You're doing amazing things.


Thanks Chashio, I always think of you when I need to stop being so picky and just sit down and sketch something out and this post reminded me of that so I took it to heart and did a whole bunch of scribbling yesterday which was really fun so thank you.




> Yay for hand drawn! 
> 
> Kacey, take all the breaks you like, nobody is behind you with deadlines. But please, don't delete any of the wonderful (and I mean this!) stuff you already made. I'm just making up metrics now, but I reckon that for every 1 Mb of lovely maps, there's maybe 100 Mb of drafts, notes and half-baked versions.


I imagine there's more then 100mb of half baked versions of this map on my computer I already deleted about 20 of them because they were taking up too much space but managed to keep several versions just in case.

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## kacey

So this is just one of the style tests that I've been working on lately, the rest are just too awful to show. Hand drawn isometric still isn't out of the question but I thought I'd try hand drawn relief first, though I'm really not all that impressed with the results so far ...I'm still on the fence. This is just a small section and if I decide to go this route I'll definitely start from scratch and do a better job it... You can consider this a sketch, just testing a new technique and I think I have some ideas on how to improve it and make it work, but until then this is just one of those half baked ideas that may or may not see the light of day again.

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## Chashio

I like that.  :Smile:

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## Voolf

> so I may end up going with a more hand drawn style but I'm not sure if that will work for a world map.. Hopefully a little break will help me figure out what to do.


It will work Kacey, it will just be a lot of work. And i know you can draw beautiful mountains already  :Wink: . Hope to see you back with this project after a break.

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## Voolf

> So this is just one of the style tests that I've been working on lately, the rest are just too awful to show. Hand drawn isometric still isn't out of the question but I thought I'd try hand drawn relief first, though I'm really not all that impressed with the results so far ...I'm still on the fence. This is just a small section and if I decide to go this route I'll definitely start from scratch and do a better job it... You can consider this a sketch, just testing a new technique and I think I have some ideas on how to improve it and make it work, but until then this is just one of those half baked ideas that may or may not see the light of day again.
> 
> Attachment 100915


I posted without even reading your last post lol. That is one great hand drawn relief Kacey, Way to go ! If you want it to be more prominent you can add darker shadow here and there where the mountains are steepest, but it already looks very good.

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## Warlin

I like it Kacey, but you should take care of your parchment, they are dirty  :Very Happy: . Hope to see you back at this project, and for the tectonic, it's a hard part after all that won't affect the beauty of your work but make it more realistic. And who care about it for fantasy world, a map should be plausible at last  :Wink: . Cheers.

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## davoush

I really like it - if only I could draw such good shaded relief! Do you use a specific technique?

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## kacey

> I like that.


Thanks Chashio!




> I posted without even reading your last post lol. That is one great hand drawn relief Kacey, Way to go ! If you want it to be more prominent you can add darker shadow here and there where the mountains are steepest, but it already looks very good.


Thanks Voolf that's a good idea when I restart this today I'll definitely take you up on that advice.




> I like it Kacey, but you should take care of your parchment, they are dirty . Hope to see you back at this project, and for the tectonic, it's a hard part after all that won't affect the beauty of your work but make it more realistic. And who care about it for fantasy world, a map should be plausible at last . Cheers.


Yes I definitely need to clean up the parchment I just threw it on quickly to post, it's actually a piece of butcher paper, normally when I use this one I remove the blood stains.... I'll get around to it don't worry :Wink:  and I'll have that land mass ready for you today I just have a little clean up to do first, I'll post it on you're thread.




> I really like it - if only I could draw such good shaded relief! Do you use a specific technique?


Thanks Davoush, I just set an inner bevel and used the standard speckle brush in photoshop. I picked a colour from the background and filled the layer then filled a mask with black and just painted it on the mask in white. I blurred the mask a few times and then painted on it again but I'm going to use separate layers and do things a little differently when I restart it... This was just a test.

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## PaGaN

Hey Kacey.

My email alert for this thread must have stopped working as i stopped by and see that i've missed some awesome updates!  :Confused:  Those mountains are going to be great, i love the direction! they look like a lot of work but at least this is part of the fun stuff! C'Mon...who doesn't love mountains???

Awesome

PaGaN

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## kacey

> Hey Kacey.
> 
> My email alert for this thread must have stopped working as i stopped by and see that i've missed some awesome updates!  Those mountains are going to be great, i love the direction! they look like a lot of work but at least this is part of the fun stuff! C'Mon...who doesn't love mountains???
> 
> Awesome
> 
> PaGaN


I've decided not to go this route for the mountains because it just doesn't give me the height information that I need for doing the climate. At most it makes it a bit prettier, but not enough for me to keep it, I really want to do a contoured height map that actually gives me some information that could be useful.

I've also decided that I don't like these land forms anymore which is why I haven't been updating it... I'm trying to figure out a new world coast right now, well I've done three world coasts since the last update and haven't been happy with any of them. It's important to me that there aren't areas that bug me, which there are many here, and that I can make interesting regional sections and I found that regional sections from this map are just kindof blah so I'm pretty much back at square one for now.

I'm sure I'm being entirely too picky but I want a project that will last for several years, and that my non mappy creations can live in.

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## PaGaN

Hey Kacey

You're a perfectionist, I get it. But don't throw the baby out with the bath water. The technique you were using looked great. Definitely keep that in your tool box. Regarding your land forms, What's bugging you? I like the proportion, the spacing, the lines.

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## kacey

The thing that's bugging me isn't the map as a whole, for a world map it doesn't bug me so much. The problem comes when I try to make regional sections, cutting the map into smaller parts just doesn't give me interesting coastlines for smaller areas that I'd like to do in hand drawn style. The goal for me is to have a reasonably sound world map that I can make several smaller regional maps from and this just isn't gonna work for that. Either way I have a new world planned out now, I just have to tidy up the coast before I can move on to topography, I will post once the coastline is done, though I'm not getting into tectonics' this time around and if I do it will be minimal because doing that the first time really made me feel like a crazy person... Who knows though maybe I'll make enough world map coasts that I don't like to create a whole universe.

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## PaGaN

LOL, I get it, I really do.

Can't wait to see what you're working on. Don't keep us hanging.

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## Chashio

Yeah, I get that too. :] Just try to not get mired in things you can play with later, at the cost of all progress. I try to remind myself of this but it's not easy to follow when I just want to get right into the little details and all the things.

also.. World maps often have very average coastlines [and other things] compared with detailed regions... when you cut up the world map into smaller sections, you could use it as a rough guideline to work from... maybe that helps a bit to look at it that way, maybe not. Good luck   :Smile:

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## kacey

Here is the new world... I need to do some major cleanup, the edges are pretty pixelated, it's very low res right now and I have a few artifacts to take care of, but this is the shape and it's not changing. 

I actually used fractal terrains this time, I never realized before that you could paint you're own land forms right in it which was really handy because the generated worlds it creates are really weird with long stringy land masses so it was nice to just paint and have the programme take care of distortion at the same time, plus it randomised the coast for me so it was a big time saver, I may simplify the coast when I finalize it and clean it up, it's a bit over detailed I think for a world map, but for regional sections this should do just fine.

I prefer the Robinson projection so I'll start with that, here is the "other ocean"



And here's the main working map



And the poles, I'm pretty happy with how well the programme dealt with distortion.



This planet is in the process of breaking apart from a large Pangea type land mass, I'm trying not to get into tectonics this time but I can't say I'm not tempted to throw it into G.Projector and see what happens.

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## Mouse

I've been reading this thread but not commenting before now because fantasy tectonics leaves me cold.  I prefer studying real world tectonics when I'm in the mood for that kind of thing.

So I didn't really have anything to say until now  :Smile: 

I really liked your old world.  I mean the new one is great, but I like the one you had before a lot more...

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## kacey

Thanks for you're honesty Mouse... Fantasy techtonics leaves me a little cold too, it's a real pain in the ass actually, something I think you just have to push you're way through if you're crazy enough to even try it. And don't worry I haven't completely discarded the old map I put too much time in for that, but for right now it's just another map that isn't finished yet. The new map may not be as nice as a whole I do agree, but I've found many regional sections within it that I'm kind of excited about. 

I'm trying to do it faster this time, the coast so far took less then a week while the other one took almost four months. I think if I can get through this one quickly I may not loose steam on it, and since I'm not attached to it like I am the other because of the time put in I'm more willing to let the small things slide...

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## Ilanthar

It's looking really good!

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## kacey

Thanks Ilanthar.

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## kacey

How much of an effect does wind and rain have on topography? Are techtonics enough to figure out elevation or should I be considering what type of effects the weather might have on the terrain as well? For example, will the side with more rain be more eroded and slope down more smoothly dropping sediments on the way to give a more gradual slope? And does the direction of the winds effect the terrain maybe distributing sediments in a different direction? Are winds effects strong enough to even have an impact on the terrain, like if there was an area constantly being pounded by heavy winds would this be enough to alter the rocks on the side of a mountain in a certain area or is this just a stupid question?

I'm about to start the topography on yet another world layout, I swear this is the last one, but I don't want to waste a bunch of time detailing it only to find out that I need to redo it after figuring out the climate because I know just how long it's going to take.

Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated, I'm not quite sure what type of approach I should be taking from this point forward. Right now all I have is a coastline and a vague idea of where mountains might be.

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## Mouse

Don't forget glaciation.  If there's been ice over an area for a few thousand years, when it retreats the valleys will be straighter, deeper, and more U shaped than ordinary river valleys.  The terminal moraine may become a natural dam for a long ribbon lake that fills the bottom of the U shape.  When these lakes touch the coast they are fjords, or in Scotland they are lochs (whether or not they reach the sea).  The mountains are sharper and steeper in glaciated areas due to the cutting of the glaciers, and they are jagged - sawtooth like ridges caused many thousands of years of ice shattering (when ice forms in the cracks during the night and expands the gap, shattering the rock).  Older ranges are more rounded and their slopes are relatively gentle - although there is the odd exception to that general rule.  It depends how hard the rock is and whether the sediment is allowed to gather at the foot of a cliff, or carried further away.

Age is another big factor.  A very young mountain range, like the Himalayas, will be much steeper and less uniform in shape than an older range, since it hasn't been anywhere near as eroded, and the sediment hasn't gathered and smoothed its lower slopes all that much.

Wind erosion is mostly important because of where it dumps the sediment.  The Badlands in China and America are composed of fine dust deposited by prehistoric winds.  The dunes of the Sahara roll slowly over the land, driven by the wind.  And some of them are unbelievably huge.

Areas where flash floods are caused by seasonal rains but which are otherwise dry may have dry gorges, and/or wadis.

Coastal shapes can be affected by coastal drift - the sea can smooth the line of the coast in the direction of the ocean current, leaving odd little bits stuck out where there is a layer of harder rock in the strata.  It can also deposit vast sand banks that eventually become land.

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## Azélor

While wind, water and temperature variation do have an impact on the landscape, old mountains are smaller and flatter.   
You might be overdoing it in my opinion if you try to include them all. The effect is spread over thousands or even millions of years. Glaciation is probably the only one worth considering. 
 In about 10 000 years, the Sahara has been a desert, a lush savanna/tropical forest and then back to a desert.  
Winds and temperatures will shift overtime. Unless we know these ancient climates as well as the current one, I think it's hard to mess up something BIGGLY.

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## kacey

Wow lots of info, I hadn't even thought about glaciation looks like I need to do some more reading before I move on.

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## PaGaN

Hey Kacey
You know I'm going through the same stages your are and have the same homework so therefore don't have the experience of mouse or Azelor but, just to get to climate, I think the thing to focus on is the elevation of the land which WILL affect precipitation and wind. I'm focusing on this first and once I know wind and rain can use that data to inform my ideas of what erosion and sedimentation has taken place and revise accordingly. Just my two cents.

Fur glaciation I found a great article that really covered it well. Will try and find the link for you and post it when I'm home.
PaGaN

Edit: lol, whilst I know Mouse has experience, I meant pixie...lol

Edit of edit: nope, I meant mouse. God's help me. I'm still medicated from this flu

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## xeyla

I would like to thank everyone who has given advice to Kacey. I'm going to take that advice for my own map I have been working on the past 2 months. I feel like I need to start over with it, concerning my mountain placements now that tectonic plates have been debated about. I never considered them when looking at maps, or dreaming up my own maps. Seems I have a lot of work ahead of me. Thank you all again.

Kacey, I really love the coastline of the new map, but I love your fist map a little more. The shapes of your land masses look awesome.

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## PaGaN

Hey Kacey

Here's that article I mentioned. You might need a coffee, it's a bit hard going...lol

http://www.fjords.com/what-is-a-fjord/

It goes beyond fjords to cover glacial erosion in general.

Happy reading... :Wink: 

PaGaN

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## PaGaN

Hey Kacey!

Where you at???

please don't tell me that article i shared caused irreversible brain damage? (I came close...wine helped!)

LOL

PaGaN

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## kacey

> Hey Kacey!
> 
> Where you at???
> 
> please don't tell me that article i shared caused irreversible brain damage? (I came close...wine helped!)
> 
> LOL
> 
> PaGaN


No the article didn't cause brain damage, but the project was definitely pushing me into a complete and total mental breakdown so I had to set it aside for a while, plus I've had every single cold and flu imaginable go through my house this year. I don't remember the last time I could actually breath through my nose, but I think this is the first week in several months that I wasn't spending the majority of my time cleaning boogers off of tiny faces.

Since my last update I drew up another 4 world coasts, started the elevation on two of them but couldn't decide which one to go with. After that I started two challenges for a change of pace but decided not to enter them for fear of not finishing then came back to the project. After looking over the different base maps for a few days I was still undecided on the general layout so I started drawing up an entire solar system so that I didn't have to choose just one... Then I started reading about moons, now that may have caused some damage :Wink:  I'm still recovering from plate techtonics so I may have pushed it a bit too far.

I came up with about 3 full pages of possible names for the five planets, and the new moons and started thinking about races... since then I've been focusing all my free time on learning Zbrush and Mari for character creation, but I nearly through my computer across the room several times today trying to learn retopology so I came here for a little break, sorry it took so long to respond I've been neglecting the guild lately.

I'll get back to mapping eventually, but for now I just don't have anything mappy to show.

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## ThomasR

> ... plus I've had every single cold and flu imaginable go through my house this year. I don't remember the last time I could actually breath through my nose, but I think this is the first week in several months that I wasn't spending the majority of my time cleaning boogers off of tiny faces.


We should start a club !

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## Eilathen

Oh no, sounds horrible, kacey (and Thomas)! I'll send you guys lots of good vibes and anti-viral and bacterial wishes. Hope you both will feel well asap!

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