Creating a new fractal world from my old flat photoshop map

Rachel Faith

OK, I am new, and after searching for some more intelligent ways to make a world map I came across this app.

I currently have a flat rectangle world map with 4 major continents, similar to earth size and position but obviously unique. This is a bmp or png or jpg made in CS2 Photoshop a few years ago. Using a few cut and paste trees, some layers for rivers and mountains, etc. The map is huge. Over 200MB and very detailed. It took me months to draw it all out. But it is JUST a single flat image file. Nothing special, no code or weather and it is not 3d where it can look like a globe or anything other than what you would get with a pic and a scanner.

I want to use this map and this detail in Fractal or whatever else works here for mapping. Is this the right program? Is what I am saying making sense? Can someone point me in the right starting direction. I tried the "creator" in FT but it seems that I need either a random world or data to import. All I have is an image file. What steps do I take to start this if it is possible to recreate my flat map world into this app?

Thanks

JimP

FT creates worlds. If you already have a world map drawing, you can import into CC3 and trace the bmp/png and create a map.

JimP

Here is my tutorials page entrance.

The FTPro to CC3 one shows how to import a png/bmp into CC3 and make a map from it.

tutorial entrance

Monsen

Before you start, make sure you are certain what you want. ProFantasy sells two main programs, Fractal Terrains (FT) and Campaign Cartographer 3 (CC3).

Fractal Terrains is designed for making planetary maps, and lets you view the map on a globe, or any of the more and less common map projections. It is great for maps of whole worlds because of this. But it is not good for regional maps. You cannot use it to map a country with cities and roads and such.
Example maps: http://www.profantasy.com/products/ft_examples.asp
One way to import worlds into FT is through a greyscale contour map. Ralf has a tutorial here: http://www.jhendor.de/cc2/tutorials.html. The tutorial starts by explaining how to make a greyscale contour map from CC2, obviously, the process will be different for you since you start out with a photoshop image, but you may get some ideas. The rest of the tutorial is the importing, which should be basically the same no matter the original source of the map.


Campaign Cartographer 3 (CC3) on the other hand is also great for world maps. But it does not allow you to view your world on a globe or change map projection. It uses vector entities for drawing, which means that it is very easy to change elements after they are drawn, like moving the coastline a bit, or adding some extra mountains. CC3 also allows you to make detail maps of areas more easily, it is easy to map out a region of your world, with forests, man made objects like cities and roads.
If you wish use Campaign Cartographer, JimPs tutorials will help you import your map into CC3.
Example Maps: http://www.profantasy.com/products/cc3_gallery.asp

Rachel Faith

Monsen: Thanks for that reply and the good links. You understood perfectly my intent. But let me be clear for others also. Yes, I want the globe whole world effect. I also want the more detailed regional with roads and cities. I understand I will need to buy both of those applications and that is not a problem. It is understanding the "how" or more precisely the effort and time it will take me to "do" what I wish to do an recreating it and if that is worth the time. As you can see, I already HAVE this map and can edit splice, cut and redo parts of it into regional sections, but the level up detail will have to be redrawn in photoshop anyway. So if this app can speed up the drawing and details, I am all about that.

Now, here are my next set of questions, as I understand more about these apps.

I have a physical old flat globe. I wish to print, cut and glue my world onto that surface and set it on the desk in my room. FT is the best app for this purpose and does this? FT is the best app for taking my flat and thus obviously somewhat distorted continents and modifying them to project correctly for globe view and printing?

Is there some way to set the boundaries and and shapes in detail so that I get the exact global shifts I seek without over distorting them when going from my flat map to the global view?

Heck, let me be sure I even understand that right.... looking at this very map I uploaded, are my northern most continents projected correctly already? How do I KEEP those sizes and shapes and distances when creating the global view?

Last question: Should I import this into FT first and then use that data to make the CC3 regional maps OR... should I import this into CC3 as a single world map and use THAT new data map to import into FT to make the globe? Is either choice or option superior or easier than the other?

Many thanks !

Monsen

Posted By: Rachel FaithI have a physical old flat globe. I wish to print, cut and glue my world onto that surface and set it on the desk in my room. FT is the best app for this purpose and does this? FT is the best app for taking my flat and thus obviously somewhat distorted continents and modifying them to project correctly for globe view and printing?

Now, I have never tried pasting anything on to a physical globe, but FT has a couple of interrupted projections I believe might help you there. (Like the 6-way sinusiodal projection on the FT product page). You should be able to try out the projections yourself in the Demo version of FT. As far as I remember, the export resolution is limited in the demo, but I believe you should be able to create a random world for testing, show it in an interrupted projection, save it as an image, and use image editing software to increase the image to fit on the globe.

Posted By: Rachel Faithlooking at this very map I uploaded, are my northern most continents projected correctly already?

That is a question of definition. It depends what kind of map projection you are using in this map. Mapping a sphere to a flat map is impossible without either using an interrupted projection, or distortion. Since you are obviously not using an interrupted projection in that image, we know that this image is distorted in reference to the actual globe. How much, and where depends on the projection used for this map. Look at this Wikipedia article for more on that subject.
One interesting point here is the distance to the polese. Assuming you are using an Equirectangular Projection, we know that the greatest distortion happen at the pole area, which is not detailed on the map. If it is ok to assume some distance to the poles, you can get away with much less distortion to the parts actually in your map.

Posted By: Rachel FaithShould I import this into FT first and then use that data to make the CC3 regional maps OR... should I import this into CC3 as a single world map and use THAT new data map to import into FT to make the globe? Is either choice or option superior or easier than the other?

Guess it depends. If you are going to use the tutorial I linked you to, it starts out with a CC2 map, and uses that to create the greyscale height fields image for use in FT. So in that case you might want to put it into CC3 first. Note however that the tutorial is based on height contours, something you won't necessarily put in a CC3 map at all. So if you can manage to convert the image to a greyscale height field image directly form PhotoShop, I might have opted to use that to take it into FT first.

jslayton

FT will do some basic forward projection work with images. The first attachment below is a trimmed screenshot of FT showing your image as an 18-slice stereographic map (I included a little white border at top and bottom to get the width:height ratio to 2:1). This number of gores is about the minimum that I'd use for slicing out and pasting onto a globe.

jslayton

The prior image assumed that the map was already in an equirectangular projection. If that's true, then the distortion would look something like the image below (another screenshot from FT, this time with an orthographic projection).

Changing the projection to reduce distortion in the polar region can be done by using a program such as Hugin to distort the two continents individually and then merging them back together with an image manipulation program such as PhotoShop or the GIMP.

Rachel Faith

WOW. That looks great. And that was done using the FT program? And I'd use the CC3 to do detail close up maps because there is no way to "zoom" or connect these two programs?

jslayton

Yes. Both images were done using FT. It is nothing more than warping your existing map to a new shape, in this case. You could certainly do detailed maps in CC3 using data exported from FT.

Sadly, there is not a way to really "connect" CC3 and FT; FT generates CC3 files of moderate-sized areas. These files can be embellished in CC3. The modified files can't be read back into FT.

An important point to consider is that FT needs terrain to generate CC3 files. The above images don't have terrain, just the original picture. However, I spent a little time fiddling about with PhotoShop and Wilbur as shown in the tutorial at http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/FunWithWilburVol4/index.html and came up with the attachment. My copy of Wilbur isn't quite working correctly at the moment so I wasn't able to get a proper drape of the image over the terrain, but it's a start. The biggest time of the whole activity was separating the land and sea areas. If you have the original Photoshop file then you may already have these items separated.

This output from Wilbur can be imported into FT and used as the basis for CC3 file export. FT can do something similar, but its erosion features are more primitive and won't quite get as good results as Wilbur does at this point.

Rachel Faith

Thanks for all the advice, I guess I need to play around with a demo and see what I can do and what questions I run into. I really do want some very detailed and close up shots, especially of the "north american" continent on my world.