Custom Continents with Fractal Terrain

Basically, I'm having issues making my own, non random continents while still preserving the authentic look that random generation has. My main issue seems to be with the continental shelves. I've read the manual about starting with a flat world, however once I get my continents above sea level, is there no way to apply fractal generation to it to automatically generate mountain, rivers, continental shelves and ocean depth? I don't care what's IN the continents, just their general outline and placement. I'm using Fractal Terrains 1.5.

Anyone know of a trick to keep that random generated look but with your own continental shapes?

Comments

  • I can't offer advice on how to do by drawing it yourself - but - I can restress that from my experience, the manual was right in that repeatedly randomly creating a world until you get one you like is much easier than trying to draw it yourself.
  • edited March 2008
    AnalogMan,

    I feel some of your pain. I would suggest the following way of tackling your challange:

    Generate and regenerate, Probably using the Wilber fBm method. I would also set your continental shelves somewhere between -2500 and -4500. This will give you some room for smoothing, expanding in offsets and then doing a global raise if necessary. I would start with an amount of water cover higher than you want in the end because the above convolutions will increase the size of the land masses.

    I would then do a global noise reduction of perhaps 0.8 or so. (please note that I am still trying to figure out the best sequence and settings. You might want to start with the global reduction of noise)

    You should end up with pretty flat land masses with some topography. You may be able to tweak and tease a landmass into the shape you can work with. Then build in the mountains, etc. as you need. Lastly, try and run the river algorithm and see how it comes out.

    I am slowly feeling my way to making landmasses that I think translate well on all levels to CC2/CC3. Once I have a bit more polish, I may knock up a demo and post it - probably here if Ralf will allow the screenshots.
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