Mountain Density

I've just begun making an island map, and was putting some mountains in it when I started wondering about the density of the mountains. I've attached the file for reference, but the question I have is this. I created a mountain terrain area, then plopped about a billion mountains into it spacing them with enough overlap to completely cover the mountain terrain area. The question I have is whether to even bother with the mountain terrian bit if I'm putting down that many plopables, or if I should do the terrain with fewer plopables, I just don't really know what works best.

As you may have guessed, I'm still very new to this, and while I understand the controls, I'm not sure of the aesthetic, so I'd appreciate any helpful feedback.

Thanks

Comments

  • edited September 2015
    I like laying down mountains and then running foothills along side them.

    I then pick a bitmap that is suitable to for tying the mountains to the foot hills so they look like they belong together.

    The bitmap that I use depends heavily on the terrain that the mountain range is in as well as the color of the mountains and hills.

    Some times it is a mountain fill bitmap if it is an area of mountains together with no foothills, sometimes is the hill fill bitmap if it match's the hills I am using , and for most, it is a color that ties the hills and mountains together.

    I will make some step by step examples to show you how I build mine.
  • edited September 2015
    The first example is using color:

    Here we have winter terrain with grey mountains.
  • edited September 2015
    Now we have placed our foothills.

    For the color option, I find that it works best if you bring the foothills in close.

    Send To Back & Deselect will help greatly in accomplishing this.

    It takes longer, but has great results.

    Since this is winter terrain, I have chosen white foothills.

    If you look carefully, you can see gaps between the mountains and the hills.
  • edited September 2015
    Next you change your sheet to Contours (Land) your Layer to Contours/Relief and your FS to Brush Solid.

    You now pick a transitional color between the mountain range and the hills.

    Click on Poly Smooth and run it around the foothills making sure that you are running along the ridgeline and were the foothills touch one another.

    When you have gone all the way around and finished refresh.
  • edited September 2015
    Now you have the finished product:
  • Here is a close up.

    You can see how the fill helps to bring the two elements together.
  • Here is a regular mountain range with no fill color:
  • Here is a close up showing a gap between the mountains:
  • edited September 2015
    You can throw a mountain background into the gap:
  • edited September 2015
    Or you can throw a mountain fill into the gap.

    You get different looks depending on how you scale it.

    It all comes down to what you like.
  • Now you place your hills.

    As you can see, you do not have to place them in as close as when you do for color fills.

    This make the process a lot faster and gives you a little more options for creativity.
  • edited September 2015
    Now you scale and fill with the hill & mountain fills (not the hill background fill - it looks like a desert).
  • edited September 2015
    Here is the close up of the gap in the mountain:

    I used a mountain fill as opposed to a background fill and scaled to my particular tastes.

    I always choose my fill type, scale, and use Polly Smooth for my fills instead of the generic fill tool.

    It seems to work out a lot better.
  • edited September 2015
    These two methods of course are just one of a variety of methods/styles that you can use for your mountains.

    They were done really quick, so they will look a lot better when time is put into them.

    I hope that this helps to give you some more ideas on building mountain ranges.


    :-)
  • Blackadder23Blackadder23 Traveler
    edited September 2015
    Those look good!
    Posted By: sauron11I've just begun making an island map, and was putting some mountains in it when I started wondering about the density of the mountains. I've attached the file for reference, but the question I have is this. I created a mountain terrain area, then plopped about a billion mountains into it spacing them with enough overlap to completely cover the mountain terrain area. The question I have is whether to even bother with the mountain terrian bit if I'm putting down that many plopables, or if I should do the terrain with fewer plopables, I just don't really know what works best.
    It depends what looks right for a given space and type of symbols. It's an art rather than a science. Just speaking for myself, I always use individual mountain and hill symbols, and I never use the bitmap fills for those terrains; I like to control where each mountain goes. But I'm sure others feel differently. Sorry that's not more helpful!
  • For continent mountain or forest areas, I just put in a color area, fractalize it, and then name it. Region maps is where I put a few symbols. Mostly to show forest types.

    Closer in maps, say, under 500 miles across, I put in lots of symbols.
  • edited September 2015
    Thanks for the complement Blackadder23!

    There are all kinds of ways to do this, it really does come down to style and available tools.

    As you collect annuals, you will have more options in both symbols and bitmaps.

    I have used symbols & bitmaps from different sets within the base style that I chose for my current project.

    As an example, I grabbed bitmaps & symbols from Dungeon Designer for building Helgrind because I needed lava, ash covered valley floor, and lava-rock cliffs along the coast.

    I then used the skeleton symbols to place around the "Lake of the Dead".

    Keep playing around with it and you will develop your own unique style.

    That is what makes this such a wonderful product.

    :-)
  • These are all awesome ideas. As I'm just starting, I don't actually have a style yet (unless noob is a style, lol), but that will come with time. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the annuals or such, so I've gotta make do with the base installs of CC3+, CD3, and DD3, but it looks like there's plenty there to have fun with.

    I do have another semi-related question though. How do you handle creating entire worlds? I see with FT3 you can create the world and it will work its way down to increasingly small and detailed maps, but what if you want to go the other way? For instance, I create a region for my players and when they've done it all and are ready to move out, create a larger area, maybe continent, which accurately includes the smaller region they already know. And up and up until there's suddenly an entire world.
  • I have built Crestar up from a set of 5mm hex paper I drew up in the early 1980s, and I have remade Crestar as two rectangular areas made in FT3. exported and then drawn up in CC3.

    I found it much harder to start small and go up in scale. Which is why I removed old maps, and started big and slowly going smaller and smaller.

    Your experience may differ.
  • That is a hard one saouron11,

    I am now working on 4th version of my game world, but the first Profantasy version.

    Since I have a good idea of the whole world, I started in the top left corner of my world map and started building regions.

    I found out that their are certain limitations on how big and detailed you can go based on the number of nodes in your map and the number of symbols you are using.

    I had to find a work around.

    Now that the challenge has been addressed, I can now get back to working on the world.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Since you are starting from scratch,

    I would suggest making a very general world map and then make serparte regional maps as you need them.

    You can slowly build the detailed parts of your world as you need to.

    The general world map is there jus to to give you guide so to speak.

    Just an idea.

    :-)
  • So, I've been considering getting FT3 so that I can go from macro to micro, but I have two concerns resulting from the vids I've watched on it. Please let me know if these are true or can be adjusted.

    1) It doesn't seem to allow me to create the world I want on my own, or at least edit it to my liking. From the vid, it looks like I creates a world, or I can have it choose the next and next till I find one that I like, but does not seem to have a way for me to say I like 90% of it and will manually adjust the last 10%. Is that accurate?

    2) I hate the coloring (at least the ones from the vid I saw) which were all altitude based, and had white oceans that became white oceans in CC3 regional and smaller maps. It is relatively easy to change that into something that I like better?

    Thanks,
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
    1) You can edit your world to your liking in FT3. I do recommend creating random worlds until you find something you like instead of starting from scratch and then edit that, otherwise I would probably recommend just starting with a world map in CC3.

    2) You can create your own coloring schemes in FT3, and you can also use image files as climate fills. The latter won't transfer to an exported CC3 map however.
  • I also found FT3 good for islands.

    1) create a world with lage areas in FT3

    2) save as png

    3) import the png file into Irfanview, etc. and just copy a part of a land mass. Copy and paste nto another copy of Irfanview and save.

    4) import that second png into CC3 at a smaller scale.

    Say the original map was 1000x800, import it in as 100x80.

    5) add symbols, and text. Now you have an island.

    I used this method to create a number of the islands on Crestar.
  • This mountain tutorial is great, very helpful. Thanks for posting it, Charles! Like Sauron, I wasn't really happy with the way my mountains looked in my first map ( http://forum.profantasy.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=5231&page=1#Item_1 ), so this should help for when i finally have time to get around to redoing the mountain ranges.
  • edited October 2015
    Thanks Barliman!

    I am glad that it has inspired you - I am looking forward to seeing your future endeavors.

    :-)
Sign In or Register to comment.