# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Regional/World Mapping >  World Map WIP in GIMP

## Karro

Well... so a couple weeks ago I lost my job, and the following week began the process of moving into a new house where eventually I will be living with my fiancee/wife.  So... the past couple weeks I've been relatively incommunicado (sans internet  :Frown:  ).

But I got a moment here on some borrowed wi-fi, and thought I'd take advantage of some of the learning on GIMP I've been doing and have another go at my world map.

Yeah, like roughly 50% of all readers of fantasy stories and novels, I'm in the process of writing just such a novel (have been for years).  And like roughly 50% of those writing fantasy novels, I made my own map.  Only recently, in an attempt to actually improve my writing, I restarted the whole thing from scratch, and consequently started mapping from scratch.

So here, using the early stages of RobA's GIMP tutorial for regional maps is an attempt at a world map (roughly mercator projection-ish).  The sea and base land are from those early steps of the tutorial.  The mountains, forests, jungles, deserts, and arctic tundras are just blobs of color thrown on to start getting a feel for it.

I started this map by trying to consider the underlying tectonics and the effects it would have on geography (this required me to move some continents around to fit the tectonics).  The first map shows as a red line the tectonic boundaries with color-coded plate movements.  The second is without the tectonics.

The gray blobs are mountains and hills.  The green blobs are forests, while the gray-green blobs are rainforests and swamp/wetlands.  The yellow-ish blobs are deserts, and the white-ish blobs are tundra and frozen arctic ice.





The images are reduced in size by 50% from the originals, then you have the jpeg artifacts.

My current thoughts: I like how varied and interesting the north-western continent is.  I'm not completely sure that the southern continents, in particular, have as much variety in coastline and appearance as perhaps they ought.  I'm open to suggestions on improvements or thoughts.  I tried to place the different zones in logical places (deserts on the leeward side of mountains or along the equator, rainforests along the tropics and in places with abundant rainfall, etc.), but I'm not 100% sure I got it all right.  I'm guessing the leeward side of mountains are on the western side rather than the eastern side in the southern hemisphere, assuming the trade winds blow in the opposite direction down there (east-to-west instead of west-to-east).

Anyway... comments and critiques are most welcome.

----------


## Midgardsormr

I'm not sure if the winds would be reversed in the southern hemisphere.  The coriolis force is, but that governs only cyclonic patterns.  The planet is still moving beneath the air, so wind should still generally blow from the west, even in the other hemisphere.

I'm no meteorologist, though, or even a hydraulic engineer, so I could be entirely wrong.

----------


## su_liam

For climate help try The Climate Cookbook.  While your at it look over Creating an Earthlike World on the same site. Very informative, fairly simple.

Hint: The equator isn't so hot a place for deserts. Well... it's hot, but not very dry.

----------


## Karro

> I'm not sure if the winds would be reversed in the southern hemisphere.  The coriolis force is, but that governs only cyclonic patterns.  The planet is still moving beneath the air, so wind should still generally blow from the west, even in the other hemisphere.
> 
> I'm no meteorologist, though, or even a hydraulic engineer, so I could be entirely wrong.


Yeah, I couldn't remember for certain, but I seem to think I recall maybe from middle school science classes a map of earthly trade winds that showed them reversed in the southern hemisphere.  I could very easily be misremembering that.  I will need to look it up, I suppose.




> For climate help try The Climate Cookbook.  While your at it look over Creating an Earthlike World on the same site. Very informative, fairly simple.
> 
> Hint: The equator isn't so hot a place for deserts. Well... it's hot, but not very dry.


Thanks for the links.  I'll definitely give them a look.  (I've also read a great PDF from a few years back - a freely distributed section of a larger for-sale e-book - about the basics of developing a realistic geography for a fantasy world.  Alas, it is one of many things lost when my harddrive crashed a couple years back, and my google-fu is too weak to find it again.)  :Frown: 

Though I don't mean to disagree with you too much, a quick study of earth-environments shows that most of the worlds major deserts appear to be near the tropics or the equator (the Sahara, Middle East/Arabian Peninsula, American Southwest).  The rest appear to be very far inland away from major water sources or the results of some sort of rainshadow effect.  Obviously, of course, I'm not fully versed in climatology and what all influences it, so I'm hoping to learn more.

----------


## su_liam

Pretty much near the tropics.  I think, with the exception of a big area of northeast Africa and a long thin bit of western South America, our "equatorial"-band of deserts is between the 10th and 30th parallels.

It looks like Somalia is in the rainshadow of the Ethiopian mountains. Western South Africa confuses me, but it seems to have something to do with cold ocean currents not adding enough moisture to the air in the first place. I also wonder if the Andes are tall enough to turn global wind patterns aside? Time for some reading!

----------


## Midgardsormr

> (I've also read a great PDF from a few years back - a freely distributed section of a larger for-sale e-book - about the basics of developing a realistic geography for a fantasy world.  Alas, it is one of many things lost when my harddrive crashed a couple years back, and my google-fu is too weak to find it again.)


You have come to the right place.  The pdf you seek is here:  http://e23.sjgames.com/credits.html?...etreat%20Press 

Scroll down to A Magical Society: Guide to Mapping.

----------


## Ascension

Awesome link Mid, wish I knew about it last week so I could have that week back spent on research and brainstorming shop ideas  :Smile:   Well worth a read.

----------


## Karro

> You have come to the right place.  The pdf you seek is here:  http://e23.sjgames.com/credits.html?...etreat%20Press 
> 
> Scroll down to A Magical Society: Guide to Mapping.


That's the very thing!  Thanks!  I think I might love you  :Wink:

----------


## Karro

Okay, I've been doing some cursory studying of the climate data and info, done some quick research on wind and ocean currents, and have a couple maps to show the results of that on this world.

The first shows the basic wind currents (the whitish arrows) assuming a world with a roughly similar axial tilt to that of Earth.  In the faint blue arrows on the oceans, we see a general look at ocean currents.  Warm water flowing away from the equator, cold water flowing back toward it.



This second map now shows, based on this data, where the wet and dry regions ought to appear, roughly.  Toward the equator is the wetest region, as two wet warm-air currents merge together.  Above (and below) that we  have the driest regions, where air is being pulled away from this by the divergent warm air currents.  Then a big swath of transitional area mid between cool wet and warm dry.  Above that is a cool wet area (which will eventually be arboreal forest, primarily), and above that the arctic (tundra and arctic) regions which are also cold and dry.



These should help me place my actual biomes and climates... if I can understand what it all means.

It does suggest that where I placed deserts and some rainforests previously is somewhat incorrect.  This will also all be influenced by rivers and lakes, which have yet to be placed.  I'm anticipating a few large lakes to shake things up a bit and provide some needed wetness in a few areas.

The major problems for me are that on the western continent pair, I had anticipated a very large sahara-like region on the isthmus and most of the norther part of the southern continent and had thoughts in my head for the development of desert-centric civilizations in that region.  Expecting much of this to suddenly become tropical rainforest changes things up a bit.  I don't know if this will require me to redo the continents a little bit in order to get things in the zones I want them, and how much time that will take, considering it took me _forever_ to get this far...

Additionally, I intentionally have a desert on the northern region of the center-right continent north of the large range there.  Most of that should be tundra and some arctic, but the desert is (or will be, since I hid all the deserts and forests on this version) an intentional abberation.

So... any thoughts or suggestions as I progress on these maps?  My goal is to make these as believable as possible before I'm done, given a few excpected caveats.

----------


## Karro

Okay...

Given what the last post seemed to indicate about the layout of the world, I have made a few changes.  There are no fancy artistic GIMP effects in these yet...  It took me forever just to make these few changes.

First... I shifted the left/western two continents northward a little, and had to redraw the plate boundaries as a result:



Now, here's the new world with wind and ocean currents.  The ocean currents are slightly off because I forgot to redraw them after moving the western continents, but you can probably see where they would actually lie.



Next, the bands of alternating wet, dry, and moderate climate zones (with the air currents turned on).  I'm also showing the mountains and my new Lakes & Rivers, because these things will all interact to influence the local climate patterns.  



This will help me accurately place my deserts, forests, jungles, etc., which we now have on the next map:



There are still a few climatological anomolies, I think, but by and large I believe this is a believable and relatively realistic world.  Most of the anomolies are intentional anyway, typically the result of human influence on the environment and world.

Next (very big) step is to take this information and GIMP it up with all the pretty bells and whistles... Unless you guys have some major concerns with anything you see here.

Comments, criticism, feedback most welcome!

Thanks!

----------


## Karro

Okay... so I started a better job (better paying, but the company has more restrictive web policies and an aggressive website blocker) and then a week and a half ago I got married, which means for the past month or two I've been virtually incommunicado, especially with regards to leisure activities like this.

I'm still likely to be low on the radar for a while (I start evening grad classes in a couple weeks), but I'll try to post updates every once in a while as I work on this map.  I just wanted to show everyone the (limited) progress I've made so far.  (I wish I had more time to work on this, but life has other demands as the moment.)  My previous posts have had some reduced size images (about 50% of full size), and I tried to upload a full-size image here, but even though it's only about 1460K JPG, the system won't upload it, so here's a 75% image.

So far, no forests, mountains or other features (I know where the mountains are going, which is what gives me the ability to draw in the rivers at this stage).



There's still a chance I'll want to work more on the coastlines to get them more interesting looking, or try to add in more barrier islands (adding barrier islands is a lot easier said than done!).  Let me know what you think!

----------


## ravells

The general style looks fantastic, but to me the islands look a bit too uniformly round and blobby (technical term) - I'm not sure if it was intentional, but they somehow don't look right.

----------


## Steel General

@Ravs: blobby? ...need to add that to the WIKI for geographic terms  :Very Happy: 

Seriously tho, I agree with Ravells, love the style...not so hot on the islands being so uniform in shape. If you're stuck on what to do for the archipelago's look at some real world ones, the Philippines is a great example. Might stir up some ideas.

...and congrats on getting married!

----------


## Karro

> The general style looks fantastic, but to me the islands look a bit too uniformly round and blobby (technical term) - I'm not sure if it was intentional, but they somehow don't look right.


Yes, I realized that as I created them, and have tried to do some things to correct for that, but I thought not enough.

The source of the uniformly round and blobbiness is the method I used to sketch in the initial basic outlines: I used a round brush with a medium jitter setting.  Bigger brush for bigger islands smaller brush for smaller islands.  In some cases it worked, in many others it did not--particularly the large islands.  I'll have to go back and rework some of them.

Any particular suggestions on where on the map this is most offensive (i.e. areas you think I should focus on first)?




> @Ravs: blobby? ...need to add that to the WIKI for geographic terms 
> 
> Seriously tho, I agree with Ravells, love the style...not so hot on the islands being so uniform in shape. If you're stuck on what to do for the archipelago's look at some real world ones, the Philippines is a great example. Might stir up some ideas.
> 
> ...and congrats on getting married!


I'll take a look, thanks.

And thanks!  It's been a very exciting time for me... the only drawback being I don't get to work on these things like my maps quite so much.

----------


## Karro

Okay... tried to fancy up the islands and whatnot.  Most of the major landmasses retain their shapes as-is.  I also added a series of tiny islands along the southern edge of the map.  There are no major land-masses (at least nothing of a size worth mapping) beneath the polar caps, but these islands stand as the southern sentinels of the arctic ice.

Unfortunately... my time is so thin these days, that I've made only minor progress.

Here is a black-and-white of what I've done so far.  Black ocean, white land.  I'll be colorizing this and making it look like what I've posted before as I get time, which will probably be taking place over the next tree or four weeks.

I already have my first midterms of grad school in about three weeks, so we'll see what that does to my time.


P.S., this is still only at 75% of actual size, due to my having trouble uploading anything larger--although the full-size file is well under the 4MB size limit, I still get errors when I try to upload.  I think my connection is just so slow that it's timing out before finishing the upload, but it could be something else.

----------


## Ascension

Holy smokes that looks good.  I'd lose my mind putting in all of those rivers.  Nice job.

----------


## Karro

> Holy smokes that looks good.  I'd lose my mind putting in all of those rivers.  Nice job.


Thanks... I'm not sure, but I may have lost mine.  Of course that's only the major rivers showing (small rivers, streams, and wadis aren't going to show on a world-map), and they're not to scale (with the full-size image being 7300 pixels wide, there's a little over 3-miles per pixel, making some of those rivers appear to be something on the order of 50-70 miles across at their widest points).

What was frustrating was that I had drawn in the major rivers of the continent of primary interest to me (the north-western one) before I discovered a slightly better and easier method that produced somewhat nicer-looking results.

----------


## Steel General

> Holy smokes that looks good.  I'd lose my mind putting in all of those rivers.  Nice job.


You'd lose your mind, and my eyeballs would jump out of my head and disappear in tiny puffs of flame.  :Very Happy: 

Looking forward to see where this goes Karro.

----------


## RobA

...from the still not yet posted FAQ on images (I really gotta get on that...)



> *Limitations*
> Unfortunately, there are also a couple of limitations. The first is file sizes. The following is a list of the file size limits:
> 
> bmp - 7.63 MB
> gif - 7.63 MB
> jpg - 4.77 MB
> png - 4.77 MB
> 
> The second limit is the actual image size. The image must be less than 30 megapixels in actual size. If you try to upload a 6000x6000 jpeg that has a file size of only 1MB, it will fail (sometimes with a blank screen, sometimes with a database error depending on the actual size...) as it is 36 megapixels. This limitation is being worked on, and will hopefully be resolved soon.
> ...


-Rob A>

----------


## Karro

> ...from the still not yet posted FAQ on images (I really gotta get on that...)
> 
> 
> -Rob A>


Ahh.... that explains it.  I knew about the 4MB file size restriction, but I did not know about the Pixel-size restriction.  I do believe _that_ must be what's causing the failure.

----------


## Karro

> You'd lose your mind, and my eyeballs would jump out of my head and disappear in tiny puffs of flame. 
> 
> Looking forward to see where this goes Karro.


Hopefully somewhere good.  In my mind's-eye, at least, it does.

My ultimate goal, and the reason I started using GIMP, is to be able to have a pleasant-looking base map that I could overlay different informational "transparencies" such as political boundaries or other information.  I'll also want to be able to peel away specific regions and zoom in for a more detailed map... but that will come later, and is lower on the priority list.

----------


## Karro

Well...

I just wasted a lot of time where I should have been studying for mid-terms.

But, I got color back in the map.  It's not quite back up to the level I had before I went back to finagle the islands into something a little more natural looking.  So there's still a long way to go!  No land features as yet, just basic land color and some ocean shores.

Next, a bit more work on the land to give it depth and character.  Then mountains.  

To do the work on the mountains, I'll probably have to flatten several layers of the image in order to reduce working size.

Does anyone happen to know if I can transfer layers between images in GIMP?

So... Midterms this week.  I must study.  I probably won't have much in the line of updates for this again in a while.

----------


## RobA

> Does anyone happen to know if I can transfer layers between images in GIMP?


You can just drag a layer at a time.  Or if you want all of them, use the "Open as Layers" command.

-Rob A>

----------


## Karro

> You can just drag a layer at a time.  Or if you want all of them, use the "Open as Layers" command.
> 
> -Rob A>


I hoped it would work something like that.

Sometimes, due to file size and RAM constraints, I'm forced to merge layers, but I always save down a copy of the file before the merge so I can refer back to it if necessary.

Now I know for sure I can pull out individual layers as necessary!

Thanks!

----------


## Lizardknight

Wow!
I have looked at all your pictures. 
This is really great!

I just downloaded GIMP. Didn't know you could make something so amazing!

----------


## Karro

> Wow!
> I have looked at all your pictures. 
> This is really great!
> 
> I just downloaded GIMP. Didn't know you could make something so amazing!


Wow, thanks.  I guess you mean me, and not something RobA did?  (Because, of course, he _is_ pretty amazing.)

This is still an ongoing project - it isn't abandonned, just slow going.  I've made progress in the last few months, but nothing worth showing off, yet.  Between work and grad school eating my life, especially this semester, I'm just completely sacked for time.

If you've downloaded GIMP, make sure and check out RobA's tutorial to learn a lot of great techniques (I think he links it in his sig above).  The basic style I'm using is derived from that tutorial, though I'm making a few modifications to hopefully make it my own, as it were (though, since this is for my personal use, and I have no mapping industry aspirations, developing my own style is of a secondary concern).  

Good luck on learning GIMP!

----------


## Jykke

What I would like to see on this map, is an outer glow that isn't just pure white. Maybe starting from sand color and then transferring to light blue, and eventually darker blue. Try playing around with different kind of settings and maybe the results will give extra looks to your map. (There must be some tutorials that deal with gradient glows).

----------


## jfrazierjr

At the scale you are working in, some of my first few attempts at overhead mountain fields would probably look pretty good.  Once you get into it, get up with me if you want to try those and run into trouble.

----------


## RobA

> What I would like to see on this map, is an outer glow that isn't just pure white. Maybe starting from sand color and then transferring to light blue, and eventually darker blue. Try playing around with different kind of settings and maybe the results will give extra looks to your map. (There must be some tutorials that deal with gradient glows).


The easiest way for just a few colours is to start with the "outside" colour (dark blue in this case) and stroke the outline with a large soft brush.  Then scale the brush down and stroke again with the next colour (light blue) then shrink the brush again and stoke one more time with the "inside" colour (tan).

All on a layer under the land, of course  :Wink: 

-Rob A>

----------


## Karro

> What I would like to see on this map, is an outer glow that isn't just pure white. Maybe starting from sand color and then transferring to light blue, and eventually darker blue. Try playing around with different kind of settings and maybe the results will give extra looks to your map. (There must be some tutorials that deal with gradient glows).


Yeah, I'm not entirely satisfied with the seas/oceans/shores.  As I pointed out, it uses RobA's original regional map tutorial, and I've since learned there are some minor relating to the displace map technique he used there when we're working with a whole world map.  Color-wise, I'll probably be making some changes at some point as well.  But, for now, this is lower on my priority list; I'm more concerned right now with getting mountains done right, and from there I'll be experimenting with forests.  Hopefully I'll have mountains up sometime within the next three or four weeks.  (Yeah... it'll probably take me that long.)




> At the scale you are working in, some of my first few attempts at overhead mountain fields would probably look pretty good.  Once you get into it, get up with me if you want to try those and run into trouble.


Yeah, I've been developing, or trying to develop, a style along the lines of the mountains we were throwing around... what... almost a year ago, now.  Hopefully, the way I've adapted the style will work for a world-map at this scale.

I wrote myself a work-flow document with all the steps in a word file to kind of help me keep a consistent style.  I'm probably a third of the way through the mountain design process right now; I've got mountains laid out as to where they'll be, but they don't look like mountains yet.  I'll hopefully be taking advantage of the smudge script RobA wrote a couple weeks ago...




> The easiest way for just a few colours is to start with the "outside" colour (dark blue in this case) and stroke the outline with a large soft brush.  Then scale the brush down and stroke again with the next colour (light blue) then shrink the brush again and stoke one more time with the "inside" colour (tan).
> 
> All on a layer under the land, of course 
> 
> -Rob A>


Nice tip.

----------


## Jykke

you can also do this easily with outer glow no additional layers needed. (this was done in few minutes with photoshop, I guess there's similar tools in gimp also. there's psd file attached for photoshop users, if they want to copy the style used here to other layers.. or just study it otherwise..)

----------


## RobA

@Jykke - there are no effect layers in gimp. 

-Rob A>

----------


## Jykke

> @Jykke - there are no effect layers in gimp. 
> 
> -Rob A>


Ah, dammit  :Very Happy:  I guess I thought too much of GIMP then, as it said to be a photoshop clone  :Wink: 

EDIT: There seem to be some type of plugins that try to emulate layer effects.. (including outer glow)
features listed here http://registry.gimp.org/node/186
Don't know if it works, but.. might be worth a try
EDIT2: Actually RobA had already posted on this http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=2742 x)

----------


## Karro

And Lo! there were Mountains!

No... my work on this project of mine never stalled, was never "put on hold", and certainly never abandonned.  It just takes a _very_ long time for me to accomplish even simple tasks in GIMP.  (No joke: it took me over an hour to run Image>Scale command to get the image down to 75% of original size to fit in CG's pixel constraints; just set up, run, then go do something else that doesn't require computing power for an hour; but a minor example of the troubles I go through for this work of love.)

So, yeah, there's still a _lot_ to do... I'm probably going to redo the oceans/seas/shallows coloring at some point.  Forests, deserts and jungles are another nightmare waiting for me in the near future.  I'm not satisfied with the foothill coloration in these mountains, particularly those around the "sandstone" style mountains (which I tried to "cover up" with something that just didn't work the way I'd planned).

So... anyway... C&C welcome, but know that the degree to which I can affirmatively respond to C&C is limited by the aforementioned computing shortages.

So, without further adieu, I give to you the latest update in this infrequently updated, as-yet-unnamed project of mine:

----------


## Gandwarf

Nice job on the mountains Karro!
Some of them are a bit too green I think, though. I like the brown ones better.

----------


## Karro

> Nice job on the mountains Karro!
> Some of them are a bit too green I think, though. I like the brown ones better.


THANKS!

The theory on the green mountains is that they are older ranges that have been weathered down more than the others and are now more heavily forested at their peaks.  I may have to go back and add a touch of other color to them, though.

----------


## Gandwarf

I see you pimped your signature  :Wink: 

Anyway, don't change the mountains if noone else comments. To me the green mountains look a bit weird though, can't help it... I guess I am used to mountains being black, grey or brown.

Oh, and maybe some (more pronounced) snowy peaks?

How's the writing going by the way?  :Very Happy:

----------


## Karro

> I see you pimped your signature


Hey, it's in my best interests to get as many comments as possible; helps me make my map (eventually) better!




> Anyway, don't change the mountains if noone else comments. To me the green mountains look a bit weird though, can't help it... I guess I am used to mountains being black, grey or brown.
> 
> Oh, and maybe some (more pronounced) snowy peaks?


Well... I might tweak it just a _little_, if I find I have time after trying to tackle some other things.  These days, that's a very big if.  (Finals coming up next week, and then an intensive mid-semester course, so won't be progressing in the near-term on this.)  But most of these mountains are variations of gray & brown!   :Smile: 

As for the snowy peaks, I found I had to reduce the opacity of the mountain color layer because the color of the hills was too intense.  But the white for the snowy peaks was on that layer, so that color got reduced as well.  I may go back and add some more white, as well, and brighten it up.




> How's the writing going by the way?


 :Razz: 

I'll worry about that later.  I feel like I have to finish this map, first!  (Since I was a kid... I just always had to have the map first, it's like a map of the story, or an outline.)

Actually, last night, as I was doing some things around the house like wash some dishes, I thought up a pretty snappy first line for the book.  Didn't write it down yet, though  :Frown:

----------


## altasilvapuer

Really glad to see another WIP on this map, Karro!  Yours was the map that first got me to decide to make my own, and was one of the big guides I followed to make it.  And as I near a sort of completion on it, I've also started another, too.

I think the issue with the green mountains is just that you don't have any forests around them, yet.  The only forests you've laid so far seem to be on the 'older' mountain ranges.  They also seem every bit as craggy as the 'newer' ones, which might also be part of it.  The older mountains are usually smaller and forested because they're more eroded, and thus smoother (relatively, anyway), unless I'm mistaken.

And as for the long save times, I hear you on that.  Geidor gets updated (and more scarily, _saved_) very infrequently, because it takes me currently about an hour and a half, minimum, to go from full-resolution PSD unsaved to having a properly-sized JPG to upload to the CG.

Can't wait to see more on your project!

-asp

----------


## Gandwarf

Ah yeah... it might be the green mountains stop looking so strange when there's forests around it.

----------


## Karro

> Really glad to see another WIP on this map, Karro!  Yours was the map that first got me to decide to make my own, and was one of the big guides I followed to make it.  And as I near a sort of completion on it, I've also started another, too.
> 
> I think the issue with the green mountains is just that you don't have any forests around them, yet.  The only forests you've laid so far seem to be on the 'older' mountain ranges.  They also seem every bit as craggy as the 'newer' ones, which might also be part of it.  The older mountains are usually smaller and forested because they're more eroded, and thus smoother (relatively, anyway), unless I'm mistaken.
> 
> And as for the long save times, I hear you on that.  Geidor gets updated (and more scarily, _saved_) very infrequently, because it takes me currently about an hour and a half, minimum, to go from full-resolution PSD unsaved to having a properly-sized JPG to upload to the CG.
> 
> Can't wait to see more on your project!
> 
> -asp



Thanks, ASP!

You're right in that the older, more forested hills will tend to be less craggy and more rounded.

I, however, am probably not going to find the internal reserves of fortitude I would need to go back and mack those forested hills _less_ craggy...

...Unless... wait... there might be a simple way.  I'll have to see.

I might start working on this again in a couple weeks, or it might be after the regular semester gets started toward the end of August.  Who knows... depends on when free time re-emerges from the dark place it always runs off to when it sees its own shadow.

----------


## Ascension

If you define a selection and then blur it just 1 or 2 pixels it will take out a lot of the cragginess in those selected areas.

----------


## Karro

> If you define a selection and then blur it just 1 or 2 pixels it will take out a lot of the cragginess in those selected areas.


Yeah, I plan to do something like this, selecting just the regions on what should be the low-hills and blurring the overlay bumpmap layer in those areas a tad.   I'll let you all know if that works.

----------


## Coyotemax

And I thought I put a lot of thought in my maps..  and then i read the process behind setting up yours..

*inspired*

Thanks for posting all that!

----------


## Karro

> And I thought I put a lot of thought in my maps..  and then i read the process behind setting up yours..
> 
> *inspired*
> 
> Thanks for posting all that!


Hey, that's what this place is for!

I figured... if I'm going to make a real effort at writing a gosh-darn novel in this world, I better be satisfied that this world is as real as I can possibly make it (magic notwithstanding)!

----------


## Wildeman40

> For climate help try The Climate Cookbook.  While your at it look over Creating an Earthlike World on the same site. Very informative, fairly simple.
> 
> Hint: The equator isn't so hot a place for deserts. Well... it's hot, but not very dry.


These links are now broken. Just wanted to let you know.

----------


## Non Serviam

> These links are now broken. Just wanted to let you know.


Here are working links to:-

The Climate Cookbook
Creating an Earthlike World

Hope this helps!

----------

