[WIP] Fractal Terrains shading in CC3+

Royal Scribe · February 21

In a previous thread, I shared my efforts to recreate a part of my Fractal Terrains world in the parchment style. Now I am trying to use the lighted bevel techniques that Ralf demonstrated in this video to add elevation shading to a copy of the same FT export.

There are a lot of elevation layers on my export. I created Relief sheets for 20 of the levels, knowing that I wouldn't use all of them. Like in Ralf's example, I figured that the lowest one (the elevation right above the one that's at sea level) would probably end up being hidden. And I figured that some of the other ones would, too -- I discovered that bevel effects on too many elevation levels cause the shadowed area to be nearly black.

Here is the FCW file:

Lumadair_jerion-style_shading.FCW

One issue I'm experiencing is that the island has fewer elevation levels than the nearby continental land masses, which makes it tricky to make both look good. I kept the settings the same as Ralf had in his tutorial, turning off different sheets to see how they look. I'm struggling to find a combination that looks good for both the shorter mountains on the island and the larger ones on the continents. (I also haven't experimented with changing the bevel effects settings that Ralf used.)

Another thing I've discovered: there are weird banding effects on screen that don't show up on the JPG export, so it's tricky to find something that looks good

Here's the island zoomed in with only Reliefs 2 and 3 active (all of others are hidden):

Relief 2, 3

Lumadair_jerion-style_shading - zoomed 2, 3.JPG

Here's the larger area (it actually looks a little better on the export than it does on screen) with the same settings:

Relief 2, 3

Lumadair_jerion-style_shading - full 2, 3.JPG

I tested by unhiding one of the higher elevation sheets.

Relief 2, 3, 12

Lumadair_jerion-style_shading - full 2, 3, 12.JPG

And unhiding two more, including the highest (which isn't the very highest elevation, just the highest I created Relief sheets for):

Relief 2, 3, 7, 12, 20

Lumadair_jerion-style_shading - full 2, 3, 7, 12, 20.JPG

And just to see the whole enchilada, this is all of the Relief sheets unhidden except the first one for the elevation right above the elevation at sea level.

Reliefs 2-20