Herwin Wielink - first use, and a few questions
Loopysue
ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
Hi Everyone
This is a map for a fantasy novel I am writing. I was trying to create something along the lines of Tolkien's Middle Earth maps for Lord of the Rings, but it didn't quite work out like that in the end. I have a few problems with the rivers appearing in neatly cut corridors through the trees, which is down to the edge fade on the trees. Does anyone have a trick for making them look more natural?
Thanks for any interest.
This is a map for a fantasy novel I am writing. I was trying to create something along the lines of Tolkien's Middle Earth maps for Lord of the Rings, but it didn't quite work out like that in the end. I have a few problems with the rivers appearing in neatly cut corridors through the trees, which is down to the edge fade on the trees. Does anyone have a trick for making them look more natural?
Thanks for any interest.
Comments
Wow, that looks amazing. It must have taken you hours and hours to get them all looking just right like that. I hadn't thought of using a combinations of symbols and fills. I'll give it a try
By the way - how do you put a picture in the message like that? I've seen everyone else doing it on other posts, but I can't seem to paste anything in.
Thank you, both.
While you are waiting, here is a second map I tried - of Ethran, the twin planet to Errispa (sorry about the low res. its a very large map!)
Your second one is gorgeous! Just looking at the map, you guess there is a strong story behind it. It really makes me want to read that story!
The first map is proving to be an increasing pain in the neck. Its 3/4 of a Equirectangular projection imported from FT3, but being a beginner I got everything far too massive and can only realistically render parts of the image at any one time. Not ideal if you want to produce just one image for a web page or blog. I may even have to start all over again, owing to another problem.
I crashed the machine trying to put all those tree symbols on the map. It looked really nice, though not as good as Dkarr's, but then it all disappeared... I cleared all the trees off the autosaved version, then set about an alternative - glow, to cut a hollow through the trees instead of trying to make the trees come up to the edge of the river. Since I was editing the area anyway I also tried to put a bit more detail in the rivers. They were too simplified for the scale, which is maybe why you thought it might be a small island. Unfortunately, the crash has left me with a different problem - those blue lines that one of the others was talking about earlier have got into my trees.
All comments welcome
but I think the rivers should be a little bit wider
in comparison to the mountains the seems to be to small
I'm having a project rethink about this problem. It seems I have to balance the burning desire to map the entire world on one map, so that it feels complete to me, and the sacrifice of detail this will require.
In the meantime, is it possible to taper a line, for example a river line, so that you don't have to have some kind of square blunt end, no matter how fine the line is? A rounded end would do... just not so square!
I'm trying to work out what I did with it so that I can repeat the appeal factor with a new version of the Errispa map.
I have hit a problem (not with the software), trying to work out how to force a shaded relief bitmap taken from FT3 to texturize the landscape of the new landmass I've chosen as being more suitable for the Errispa map. The pictures show 'with' and 'without' the bitmap with an overlay blend effect on the landmass (please excuse the sketched in bits and bobs lying around the place), but as soon as I add any texture beneath it, hoping to add the relief to the texture, all I get is a mess with some very odd looking mountain shaped clouds on it (lol).
I need to texturize the entire map with this one vast bitmap image. Please can you tell me how to do this?
Apart from that the size of the bitmap (necessary for the relief to cover the entire world in reasonable detail) has cause three crashes so far, but that's understandable
You know, I don't know if this will work, but it's definitely worth a try...
Somewhere in these forums there is a tutorial from Shessar, a very innovative mapper here at the forums. The tutorial is for making battle maps featuring streams and cliffs. Now the one about her streams might actually help you. You see, she figured out how to bring depth to a river or stream with a series of underlying sheets. If you look at my Ardenvale town map you can see what I mean... I used her tutorial to make the river. In it you can see part of the riverbed, the fish(excuse their large size- plot point), and even some white water.
I understand that you aren't mapping a stream or river... But the techniques she used MIGHT be adaptable to what you want to do., That seems to be my thing...seeing how one concept can be adapted and used for another.
I'll have a look at that tutorial in a moment. I just have to go and try something first. You've sparked a parallel idea.
Thank you LadieStorm
Thanks for the tip LadieStorm.
While I'm still absorbing the possibilities here is a bit of fun I messed around with earlier when I was bashing my head against a brick wall with this relief map problem.
I used the greyscale image from FT3 and used it to make an actual 3D model in another bit of software (Vue Pioneer), then married up a JPEG image of the CC3+ map with nothing but the sea and the land, and cheated spectacularly to get the visual result I wanted... kind of. Its really not the same as having drawn the thing though - nowhere near as satisfying, and actually doesn't look as cool. Its also takes forever to get the image lined up with the model.
I will work out how to get around the depth issue I'm having with the Errispa Map eventually
It would be far easier if I could just shove the thing into place on the screen (lol)
All very complicated, but this is what happens when I get myself in a bit of a circular left-right-180-degree tangle.
The only reason I have trouble steering FT3 it is because I tried to run before I could walk and ended up falling flat on my face. I'm not proud. I think its funny. I was in a right old muddle. Didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I put it up here because I thought it would make you smile
On a more serious front, I seem to have hit a complete impasse with the Errispa map. I think I will leave it be for a couple of days and come back to it - get on with some writing instead. The Errispa map is for the second book in the series anyway. The Ethran map goes with the first.
It might interest you to know that a map he drew when he was a bored schoolboy (35 years before publishing the first in the series) is what started Orson Scott Card on his Mither Mage series.
He's one of my unwitting mentors, along with Tolkien, Alastair Reynolds (Revelation Space and Chasm City), Douglas Adams (Hitchhikers and Dirk Gently), Ursula Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea)... and a couple of others. Oh yes, and especially just now (possibly a passing phase but I'm not sure) - Christopher Paolini (Eragon)... although I regard him as part of the Tolkien pattern in my head. He claims Tolkien as one of his inspirations as well.