# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Regional/World Mapping >  AERLAAN  A playground built for a muse

## PaGaN

Hello all and a quick thank you for stopping by!

As I mentioned in my “Introduce Yourself” post, my main reason to return to world-building is provide myself with an inexhaustible source of inspiration for various other artistic projects (though mostly painting). There is nothing more frustrating than staring at a blank canvas/screen whilst you berate yourself for not being able to think of anything cool to breathe life into.

So, what are my goals? Well, I want to build a world that is, for the most part, coherent and believable. And when I say believable I suppose I am more specifically referring to ecology, climate and biomes. No floating mountains, no rivers flowing uphill, no jungles in the middle of a desert etc…

To that end I intend to follow Pixie’s climate guide at least up to calculation of precipitation patterns for the world and then will most likely switch across to Azelor’s guide to figure out the climate zones. When it comes to the actual biomes I will probably refer to Mbartelsm’s very handy appendix.

Know upfront that Yes, I have taken artistic license in a couple of areas and I will sacrifice a little bit of plausibility for a big dollop of “Cool” each and every time.

I love fantasy so Aerlaan will grow up and be all sassy in that particular genre but will also have a few elements of a powerful long forgotten technology from an antediluvian past that will honestly have nothing to do with justifying my aforementioned “artistic licenses” (WINK WINK).

So, with that being said let’s begin at the macro level shall we? Let me present to you the Bahl System: NOTE – She isn’t finished and is likely to have a handful more planets and moons over time.



OBVIOUS DISCLAIMER 1: this is NOT to scale…LOL. I will be designing a relative size chart and relative distance chart soon(ish).
OBVIOUS DISCLAIMER 2: I am not an Astrophysicist. I know that there may well be aspects of this system that should not work. Remember that ancient tech I told you about??? Good.

Let’s take a walk:

BAHL: 
She is a K class yellow sub-giant star who has firmly started her journey of transformation into a red-giant. Her habitable zone is likewise significantly pushed out farther than ours. In human years she is rapidly approaching retirement but has a good number aeons left in her. Bahl has already consumed her inner most planet, a now unknown small rocky world that no one in the system will ever knew existed (well, maybe not “no one”…WINK WINK). What does this mean for Aerlaan? It means that Aerlaan has a gorgeous warm golden “large and in charge” mother sun looking over her.

SKAH: 
Whilst not yet consumed by his mother, this innermost planet is the second casualty of Bahl’s expansion. Skah was, in a now distant past, a handsome, habitable and inhabited world. Skah is now a barren tortured rock with almost no atmosphere left. His surface is broken by huge molten rivers that continuously form, bleed and subduct as the encroaching sun exerts increasingly disruptive forces upon this long ago paradise.

AERLAAN (& MOONS):
Here she is, the new golden child of the system brought in from the cold.



As Bahl grew, her warmth and light reached further out thawing Aerlaan and bringing her to life. Aerlaan has had at least 500,000,000 years of being inhabitable and has developed a very rich and diverse ecosystem (with a little accelerated help…WINK WINK). 
Here are some stats:

AERLAAN
A)	Orbital Period = 432 days
B)	Degrees/Solar Day (DSD) = 0.8333
C)	Solar Day = 24.00 hours
D)	Sidereal Day = 23.57 hour
E)	Diameter = 5,729,58 miles
F)	Circ = 18,000 miles  (Earth is 24,901, Mars is 13,263)

Valhenta
•	Synodic Period = 6 days
•	Sidereal Period = 5.917
•	Synodic Degrees per day = 60.8333
•	Aerlaani Orbital Degree/Period = 5
•	Periods/Year = 72
•	Semi Major Axis = 10,000 miles
•	Diameter = 350 miles

Olarune
•	Synodic Period = 16 days
•	Sidereal Period = 15.43
•	Synodic Degrees per day = 23.3333
•	Aerlaani Orbital Degree/Period = 13.333
•	Periods/Year = 27
•	Semi Major Axis = 25,000 miles
•	H)	Diameter = 800 miles

Therandor
•	Synodic Period = 144 days
•	Sidereal Period = 108
•	Synodic Degrees per day = 3.333
•	Aerlaani Orbital Degree/Period = 120
•	Periods/Year = 3
•	Semi Major Axis = 80,000 miles
•	Diameter = 1500 miles

The intricate interlocking precision of these celestial bodies are a favorite subject of Aerlaani philosophers who have been known to debate for entire lifetimes about the presence of an intervening hand that would have caused such a statistically unlikely array of such synchronicity (LOL…WINK WINK).

Why do the moons nest so precisely? Because new year on Aerlaan is awesome and marked by a great convention of the 3 moons above the equator. And this occurs EVERY YEAR like clockwork. Why are the moons at the size and distance they are? Because I think that there is nothing cooler than seeing giant moons coming up on a horizon. It’s an old sci-fi trope I know, but it’s STILL cool.
If you want a little more flavor then below you can find the Aerlaan “Ætheric Calender” (I’ll get into what “Æther” is later).



SHOM
(So far) the only gas giant in the system, Shom is truly a giant at about 15 times the size of Aerlaan. This big blue beauty also resides in the habitable zone. what does this mean? well it means that Shom is also mother to two large terrestrial and tidally locked moons that are also teeming with life (NOTE: I am also likely to throw a few more barren moons in there for good measure).

Pernessa
Shom's closest and most hospitable world. Life is complex and beautiful on this moon though largely confined to the planet facing side. She orbits her parent planet every 14 days and so does not have to endure as wildly fluctuating extremes as her brother moon, Elwynn. The side of Pernessa that faces away from Shom is somewhat less friendly to life however with much more extreme differences in temperature and climate (Roasting then scorching on a significant scale).

Elwynn
About twice the size of Pernessa, Elwynn is the big brother and, in the past, has taken many a beating for his little sister. His surface bear the scars of many huge impacts that have provided him with water but also, over time, unbalanced his atmosphere. Whilst Elwynn supports life, it is not as complex or rich as Pernessa. Elwynn orbits Shom every 37 days.

Storms on both of these moons are certainly something to see.

For the remainder of the system, i will more than likely add some more children to this family as they come to me but for now, that's about it. With that being said, that’s it for this post. Next post I will show you the actual landmasses, tectonics and a VERY quick and dirty elevation map. Also, what I envision Aerlaan’s atmospheric circulation would look like (spoiler alert: I have small Ferrel Cells…LOL)

See ya on the flip side!

 :Wink:

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## tatteredglyph

I hope it's okay I respond to what you've posted so far.

This is honestly very inspirational. The detail and work you've put into this so far is awesome, and the hard work is easy to see. It's paying off big time, and I've got to say, I'm not particular about the details (I honestly don't know what a locked moon is right now, but I'm gonna be doing more research) but it makes me want to learn more about this project of yours. Since I'm new, I can't really critique too much about things right now, but I kind of want to just spread positivity around at the moment. I think you're on the right track - I think it's okay to have some suspension of disbelief, it's fantasy after all. There's leeway for some disbelief in here, and I think you have a pretty good balance of it.

I also love the descriptions of the planets so far, and I'm eager to see what comes of this project of yours.

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## PaGaN

> I hope it's okay I respond to what you've posted so far.
> 
> This is honestly very inspirational. The detail and work you've put into this so far is awesome, and the hard work is easy to see. It's paying off big time, and I've got to say, I'm not particular about the details (I honestly don't know what a locked moon is right now, but I'm gonna be doing more research) but it makes me want to learn more about this project of yours. Since I'm new, I can't really critique too much about things right now, but I kind of want to just spread positivity around at the moment. I think you're on the right track - I think it's okay to have some suspension of disbelief, it's fantasy after all. There's leeway for some disbelief in here, and I think you have a pretty good balance of it.
> 
> I also love the descriptions of the planets so far, and I'm eager to see what comes of this project of yours.


Hey Tatteredglyph!

Thanks for the kind words  :Smile: 

I've got to say that seeing all the amazing work flying around this guild has got me super motivated to develop this project so you'll hopefully be seeing Aerlaan unfold over the next months (or years???...LOL). 

I'll be posting some more development today.

For me, I think, the major chunk of the work is going to be figuring out the climate zones and subsequent biomes. THAT is going to take some time. Before I even get to that though i'm going to be needing some feedback on the groundwork to make sure everything is copacetic before i climb the Everest of climate design...LOL.

Re: Tidal Locking - is when a smaller orbiting body (like a moon or a planet orbiting VERY close to its star) is prevented from rotating by the larger body it is orbiting. The smaller body kinda gets deformed a little and becomes very slightly "egg shaped" with the pointy end pointed toward the larger body. The satellite will "try" to rotate but the larger body will continuously pull the "point" back toward the larger body. Eventually the smaller body just stops trying and becomes "locked", at least this is how I understand tidal locking to work...LOL.

BTW, I just quickly swung by your Faladriand thread and will swing by again later for a deeper look and a thumbs up. i have a tip for naming that you might find useful! well, not so much of a tip but more of a practice so that you will always have a source of names to draw from.

Catch you later! 

PaGaN

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## PaGaN

AERLAAN  Whats Shakin and Under Pressure!

Hello again!

The last post laid out the Bahl system that is home to Aerlaan whilst providing some details about the world herself, namely broad planetary and lunar information.

Today I want to post more specifically about Aerlaan and present pretty much where I am at so far which is nailing down the tectonics which in turn defined the land and water masses. Once this was done I could work on conceptualizing the atmospheric circulation which then allowed me to knock out a rough map of the summer and winter pressure zones.

So, lets crack on.

1)	WHATS SHAKIN??? (Aerlaani Tectonics)

Here are the land and water masses for Aerlaan:



And here are the tectonic plates and plate movements that gave rise to the above:

KEY: 
Red = Subduction Zone
Yellow = Transform Boundary
Blue = Divergent Boundary
Dotted Boundary = Old fault/fused plate
Arrows  = direction of plate movement and rough speed (more arrows equal faster rate of drift)



Now this is where I would initially appreciate some feedback and input to start with becasue IF the tectonics are way off then the rest of the world will be out of whack and I will be staring at a huge amount of do-over which could be fun but would more than likely be annoying.

There is one thing to note about the tectonics that I have done intentionally for a desired effect and that is the large subduction zone running up the eastern landmass. The northern and southern portions of the colliding plates are subducting under each other in a kind of S configuration. This is deliberate because I want the resulting ranges to be home to some peaks that make Everest look like Ben Nevis (Im talking about 47k). 

One theory of why we apparently dont have peaks that high on earth is because the weight of the resulting mountain kinda pushes down on the plate and forces it deeper into the mantle reducing the height. Another theory is glacial erosion eating away at the root of the mountains causing them to topple before they reach those heights. It is my thinking that if these plates subduct under each other then the interlocking will 1) fuse them and 2) buoy them up.

To get an idea of how the above tectonics would shake out I did the following VERY rough topographic map using a quick and dirty gradient map in Photoshop.



2)	UNDER PRESSURE (Aerlaani atmospheric circulation and seasonal pressure zones)

Given that Aerlaan is a world somewhere beteen Mars and Earth in size this raised the question of what happens with the atmospheric circulation on a planet that size?

Mars has a weird setup in that it only has a single Hadley cell and two polar cells. Earth has the 3 cells per hemisphere that we are used to.

I had already gone through a previous version of Aerlaans atmospheric circulation using an earth normal model but then ended up thinking that what would happen if, because of her size, Aerlaan only possessed sort of proto Ferrel cells? I envisioned small cells that were kind of squashed up against the polar cells in northern summer and a little more relaxed as they crept south in northern winter.

Here is what I mean:

Summer Atmospheric Circulation


Winter Atmospheric Circulation


The very tight zone between the mid latitude high and low would cause a very sharp mainly north blowing wind that would rise rapidly and then fall back south when it reached the upper atmosphere after dropping its moisture. This sharp rise and fall combined with the Coriolis Effect COULD lead to that zone developing into a kind of humongous horizontal vortex of winds analogous of very rare Roll Clouds that we have here on earth but on a MUCH larger scale.


(image licensed for non-commercial reuse)

As an aside, I have actually seen a roll cloud here in Toronto whilst walking my huskies one evening. It was one of the times where the word awesome is used and meant in the literal sense. There were some kids nearby that were freaking out, pointing and shouting its the rapture! Its the rapture! LOL. Granted, it WAS very supernatural looking and was just hanging there in the sky visibly rolling in a giant horizontal cloud cylinder. It was COOL!

Another cool effect of these that I envision could be the presence of a far reaching blanket of Asperitus clouds on the poleward sides of these fronts.


(image licensed for non-commercial reuse)

These asperitus clouds would be caused by the huge air turbulence and temperature differentials between the colder wetter northen air being kind of sandwiched under the warmer southern air being drawn up by the ferrel cell/polar cell boundary.

In winter as the ferrel cell moves south it will widen a bit and act almost like a normal ferrel cell as pressures ease up a bit allowing the band to widen a little and even allow some westerlies to form.

So, IF we accept my hypotheticals about the atmosphere then this leads to the following rough preliminary pressure maps for summer and winter on Aerlaan.

Summer Pressure Zones


Winter Pressure Zones


This is pretty much where I am at and I am holding there as any revisions are pretty easy at this stage. Next up will be wind and ocean patterns.

I had already figured this out for Aerlaan using a previous earth normal assumption but I think this could be more interesting.

So, all of you greater minds out there I am eager for your feedback and input.

Thank you.

PaGaN  :Wink:

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## kacey

This looks really interesting PaGaN I'll definitely be following this thread. I love how much detail you're putting into it and the calendar looks really neat.

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## PaGaN

Thanks Kacey! Much appreciated. The moons and calendar are probably one of my favourite aspects of this world (in case you couldn't tell by all the calculations that were involved to get the moons to line up perfectly each year)  :Razz:

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## randigpanzrall

Hey PaGaN, intersting project, even if I don´t have an idea, where it will go. I will look upon from time  :Smile:

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## PaGaN

Thanks randigpanzrall.

Lets call it a Journey of Discovery...LOL. Gods only know where she'll end up.

Should be interesting.

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## Azélor

> There is one thing to note about the tectonics that I have done  intentionally for a desired effect and that is the large subduction zone  running up the eastern landmass. The northern and southern portions of  the colliding plates are subducting under each other in a kind of “S”  configuration. This is deliberate because I want the resulting ranges to  be home to some peaks that make Everest look like Ben Nevis (I’m  talking about 47k).


The maximum height is limited by several factors. The most important is the hardness of the rock. It compresses and expands outward if the pressure gets too high. 
Mt Everest is not far from the theoretical limit. Olympus Mons on Mars is 3 times higher simply because the gravity is 3 times lower than on Earth. Not a coincidence. 
Also, erosion grinds the mountains overtime. 

In order to have something much higher you would either need lower gravity. 
Or mountains made of another harder material that could resist the pressure like diamond.
Both options aren't plausible much.

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## PaGaN

> The maximum height is limited by several factors. The most important is the hardness of the rock. It compresses and expands outward if the pressure gets too high. 
> Mt Everest is not far from the theoretical limit. Olympus Mons on Mars is 3 times higher simply because the gravity is 3 times lower than on Earth. Not a coincidence. 
> Also, erosion grinds the mountains overtime. 
> 
> In order to have something much higher you would either need lower gravity. 
> Or mountains made of another harder material that could resist the pressure like diamond.
> Both options aren't plausible much.


Hi Azelor.

Thanks for coming by, i'm honored. 

You make a good point (as ever) and i'll probably be chewing on this for a day or two to figure out how attached i am to the idea. I have a feeling that Dwarves would be all in for a mountain made of diamond but seems as there won't be any Dwarves on Aerlaan...

Another thing about Olympus Mons, that also nods your point, is the sheer area of the thing. That mountain is seriously bottom heavy.

Oh well. I guess a continent spanning mountain range tortured by a gaggle of Everests would still be a sight to see  :Razz: 

Again, thank you for stopping by and hopefully you wont mind me hitting you up when i get to that other Olympus Mons...CLIMATE!

PaGaN

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## PaGaN

Hey, I think i got my first Rep! WOOT WOOT! Whoever did that thank you very much!

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## Azélor

I can visualize them but it can't be accurate unless you have a ruler or a measuring tape. Making visualization pointless in my opinion. 
Yes, the common folks here still use the imperial system, only because a lot of stuff we have come from the USA.  


You can see you repped you on your profile.

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## PaGaN

what's confusing here (Canada) is the odd mix of systems. we measure distance in km but typically use inches and feet and it seems about a 50/50 split of people measure their weight in kg or lbs...LOL. Oh well, variety is the spice of life!!!

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## Pixie

> (...) in most cases the scale on a map means a whole lot of nothing to me.


 :Very Happy:  In a number of cases, here at the guild, it means as much to the map maker himself. And, in a number of cases, nobody really pays attention...  :Wink: 

PaGaN, I just searched this image for your reference. I thought your home topography would be a good source to get a feel of "altitude in meters".

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## PaGaN

Thanks Pixie, that ref is really helpful (and the gradient is almost identical to the one Azelor uses). 

re: distance scales, i personally need them. It's a throwback to my AD&D days. I would need the scale to figure out exactly how long it would take the party to get from A to B on a full days march. Even now, when i look at fantasy i don't really see distance but instead see number of days marching required to cross said terrain...LOL

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## acrosome

If you're making a fantasy world, using SI units almost kills the verisimilitude, anyway.  It's too modern!  Work in proud feet!  Or, maybe yards, if you want to be close to a meter.  Just call a meter a "yard" and define a "foot" as 1/3 of a meter and drive on.  I plan to use Azelor's method but just I scaled my contours in 3000-foot increments.  (I know, it should be 3250.  Sue me.)

But if you really want verisimilitude, here ya go:



To make better sense, all of the SI units along the right border need to be moved up to the line above them.  And here is the source.  But come on!  What a glorious mess!  For more inspiration, the French were messed up, too.  I'll stop now, but I'm quite certain that you can google screwed up Germanic, Spanish, Chinese, Incan, Sondhay, etc. systems for yourself.

Personally, I'm going to start scaling maps in stades.   :Smile: 

And I haven't even gotten into volume, mass, area, or God-help-us _money_ yet...

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## PaGaN

OMG, that chart hurt my brain!

Rest assured, my final scale fur the map will be in miles. I'm only using metres to work through Azelor's guide.

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## acrosome

Yes.

My height is 209 barleycorns, and I weigh 14 stone...   *snicker*

My world is going to have one culture that uses the smoot, too.

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## Azélor

I think the metric system is much more straight forward. 1m = 10 dm = 100 cm = 1000 mm
But also have a lot of units we don't really use. 
We don't use hectometres, decametres very often for example. 
You can use a prefix before metre and get an almost infinite number of units. 

I remember that 1 dm3 is 1 litre. 

The change to metric has been a problem here also in Canada. 
There was a accident with a plane that run out of fuel midair because they used the numbers from the wrong system.

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## acrosome

> I think the metric system is much more straight forward. 1m = 10 dm = 100 cm = 1000 mm


Yes.  _Obviously_.

This is humor, Brother.

But even the metric guys screwed up by including both deca- and deci- as prefixes.  So, what the heck is a dm?  Is it deci- or deca-?  Yes, I know the answer, but it confuses a _lot_ of people.  Deca- just had to be the odd one out that uses two letters as its abbreviation instead of one...

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## Azélor

Just like right and left still confuse people.

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## acrosome

Having trained soldiers to march... yeah.

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## PaGaN

I need an opinion!

Do you guys think i'm on the right track in terms of working on the elevation map for climates? This is obviously not finished but i need a check and balance before i invest HOURS/DAYS (and potentially/WEEKS) into getting this bit done.

NW Aerlaan:



Zoomed out (so you can see where it relates) with very rough blocking in of low land areas and orogeny:



PaGaN

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## PaGaN

And Acrsome, notice the scale on the zoomed out map...IN MILES! LOL. Convert that into poppy seed at your pleasure  :Wink:

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## Azélor

Palettator lol. 

To solve the scale problem, you could safely use miles this way

1609
3218
4828 and so on.

So you can easily convert it to round numbers in km.

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## PaGaN

Hey Azelor, don't mock! Palettator is an AWESOME photoshop extension...LOL (Seriously, it allows you to keep reference on top of your working image and lets you sample from said image should you need to. find it via GumRoad)

Re: scale, i'm fine with miles for the finalised map but I will switch to km and do whatever i have to do to get through climate (i warn you, i will probably be bugging you A LOT when i get there, Pixie too)

 :Wink:

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## kacey

You just made my life so much easier, I'd never heard of palettator. There's something like this built right into Corel painter and I always wished I could do it in Photoshop... And now I can so thank you, I downloaded the extension and it seems to work really well... This will be really useful.

And good start on the topography, you seem to be moving along with it really quickly. I spent a week doing this type of elevation and only managed to get a tiny little patch done before I finally gave up because it was taking sooooo long, but I see you're doing big regions and saving detail for later so I might try doing it this way too.

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## PaGaN

Hey Kacey, yep, the extension is awesome and there are loads on gum road. I've spent way too much money there...lol

And you've done better than me if you slogged your way throw painter. I have tried several times but just can't get on with the interface and brush engine. Way to indoctrinated in Photoshop...lol.

Thanks for the feedback on the topo. Yeah, I was blobbing in the large areas and then refining down. My problem is stopping my eye at a certain scale. There is no way at a world scale we can hope to capture what is going on at a regional level. I'm constantly reminding myself that these maps are an "average" of what's represented (if that makes sense) i8

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## acrosome

Are you asking anything specific about the elevation maps?

I think the palette is great.  There are some areas of low ground completely surrounded by higher ground, though.  Unless those will be lakes you should fill them.

Is that inland sea going to have an outlet, or is it endorheic?  

And I prefer barleycorns, thankyouverymuch.

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## Ilanthar

Nice work, Pagan! I like the land shapes a lot and I also like where you're going with this.

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## Azélor

Looks like the north pole is still missing land in the west. Or the map is cropped?

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## PaGaN

> Nice work, Pagan! I like the land shapes a lot and I also like where you're going with this.


Thanks Ilanthar! I appreciate that.

I'm currently working out a style i like for working through the heightmaps for elevation.

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## PaGaN

> Looks like the north pole is still missing land in the west. Or the map is cropped?


Hey Azelor.

The map isn't cropped. When viewed on a sphere the north pole is actually okay. I'll grab a screenshot tonight. Currently working out a heightmap style that I like that doesn't involve me ripping off DEM data (not that there's anything wrong with that  :Wink: ...LOL). I know that elevation is the really the only output that's required for climate but, seems as i'm going to be looking at this map for quite a while as i work through climate i want a result that i can live with for the exercise.

Progress has been a bit stalled as I actually fell victim to this nasty flu that's going around at the moment. STAY AWAY FROM TORONTO! it's a plague pit right now. two weeks out and I'm still little more than a human shaped mass of phlegm and mucus...it's gross!

I anticipate that i should have something to show in about a couple of weeks.

PaGaN

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## PaGaN

Azelor, on closer inspection, you were right. The north polar landmass was JUST touching the north pole with the thinnest of connections closing in the body of water at the north pole.

I changed the outlines to give a broader margin to the land and reduce ambiguity.



and the Polar view



That polar pinching is a real beeyatch! I seriously need to think of a way to work on elevation at the poles. I'm thinking that I may need to work the heightmaps for those areas up in 3d space, expand the texture put to flattened layer and then cut and paste back in. either that or leave the area ambiguously ice covered....hmmmm (rubs chin in contemplation)

PaGaN

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## Pixie

> That polar pinching is a real beeyatch! I seriously need to think of a way to work on elevation at the poles.


I'm years into drawing a detailed heightmap.. and I still avoid the polar areas. I honestly and deeply admire the way you plunge in. 

For the heightmap, this might be a little too late. Or maybe unnecessary as you've done like that all along, but... are you using separate layers for separate heights? You should.. each height as a solid single-color shape. It's the only way you'll be able to change color scheme in the future, maybe even producing grayscale heightmaps and porting them to wilbur.

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## PaGaN

Hey Pixie!

I'm not working on separate layers but DON'T panic! i got it covered...LOL

I'm actually working in greyscale with a gradient map layer on top (which is super easy to change up, which i do often). I actually spend most of the time wiht the gradient turned off and just flick it on to check the range of elevations i'm at. 

At the moment I'm working out the broad areas and getting the regions up to the heights they need to be at and then I will make a more detailed pass to get some nice features that should hopefully translate well for the next step which (you read my mind) will be to take the final greyscale heightmap into Wilbur and then take the Wilbur output into Gimp for the bump map. 

I've got to say that I'm really impressed with the bump map filter in Gimp. Unless i've missed something i really don't think Photoshop has anything like that, at least not that easy to generate and manipulate (though i'm by no means an expert in PS, i've probably just not discovered the right filter/tool etc...)

I'm actually really enjoying this phase, it's very erm, relaxing???...LOL. a little bit of land sculpting. My opinion may well change when i have to tackle the poles but i'll cross that bridge when i get to it (soon). I think my plan of working the poles up on a globe and then flattening that material layer out SHOULD work. I figured out that using the lasso tool on a 3d object to define the area you are rendering speeds up the rendering of the strokes A LOT! before that, it was slower than frozen mollasses.

PaGaN

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## PaGaN

Hi all! 

just wanted to let you know i'm still alive and haven't come to a mortal end at the hands of one of the worst flu seasons i've seen in over 10 years in Toronto (my husband is now a seething bag of infection....urrrrgh! WILL IT EVER END?)

I am still working on the heightmap for Aerlaan and, true to form for me, my previous statement of "just enough information to allow me to figure out climate" has fallen by the wayside. This is actually taking longer than i thought as i keep on thinking about how the relief is going to look when porten into wilbur for the texture map so, as i'm working, i'm thinking about interesting landforms etc...

i'm pretty much done with the lowlands, will be refining working on the foothills next and then, finally, the actual mountain ranges.

there is also one other reason for slow progress (hangs head in shame...) WORD TO THE WISE: DON'T BUY A PS4 VR SKYRIM BUNDLE FOR CHRISTMAS! That thing was a significant time suck until i locked it away in a drawer!!!

LOL.

Anyway, that's about it for now. just wanted to reassure you guys that Aerlaan is not forgotten! FAR FROM IT!

PaGaN

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## Charerg

Nice to hear you're still working on this!

And maybe some WIP previews to whet our appetite for more, so to speak?  :Wink:

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## kacey

Hey PaGaN, are you sure you’re still alive? Just checking in to see where you were at with this and I see you haven’t posted in a while....Are you still working on this or have you checked yourself in?

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