RPG campaign world building project
As yet another new user to both FT and CC3+, I have a question about how the two programmes interact and how to work on scanned handwritten maps.
I am aware, that related questions have been asked before, but sadly I have a hard time understanding the answers, so I will try with a different line of questioning.
The project in short is to start off the campaign by creating the world, we are going to play in. The players will take on the role of gods and in a session of play, sculpt the world with sand, paint, play dough and the like. We will end up with a rough looking physical, 3D landscape. My thought is to take a picture from directly above the model and try to work on it digitally, filling the low points with seas and making the high points into mountains. Ideally, FT would handle this. The function of partitioning the world map into smaller maps would help me greatly.
The question is: how do I import the picture of the physical model into FT? Is it at all possible? Do I have to go through another program?
Note: The final result doesn't have to be accurate. The model, we will create, isn't a precise model of Creation. It is the gods' first rough draft, so the end result can be very different from the model. It's all about the process
Thank you for your time.
I am aware, that related questions have been asked before, but sadly I have a hard time understanding the answers, so I will try with a different line of questioning.
The project in short is to start off the campaign by creating the world, we are going to play in. The players will take on the role of gods and in a session of play, sculpt the world with sand, paint, play dough and the like. We will end up with a rough looking physical, 3D landscape. My thought is to take a picture from directly above the model and try to work on it digitally, filling the low points with seas and making the high points into mountains. Ideally, FT would handle this. The function of partitioning the world map into smaller maps would help me greatly.
The question is: how do I import the picture of the physical model into FT? Is it at all possible? Do I have to go through another program?
Note: The final result doesn't have to be accurate. The model, we will create, isn't a precise model of Creation. It is the gods' first rough draft, so the end result can be very different from the model. It's all about the process
Thank you for your time.
Comments
You can import into FT3 based on height data, but a picture of a sculpted landscape would hardly count as that, and would require quite some work to prepare. One way to import is to use an image as a base which have different colors for each height contour in the map, but your photo of the model would need to be heavily pre-processed in an image editor to make something like that from it.
The idea with having the computer on the table is beautiful in it's simplicity. I actually hadn't considered that. I will, however, try to rule out the other options first, before resigning to that solution.
As it is connected to one of the basic koncepts of the campaign, I am still interested in trying to import some sort of handmade model. The idea is to collectively design a sigil or glyph, which is the central symbol of everything. I would like that symbol to be reflected in the landscape of the world.
What if I import a simple 2D drawing. Would FT be able to make a map out of that? Could the program fractalize the edges and create som sort of topography out of the rest?
What if the model was painted in different colors, that could be interpreted by the program as height contours?
What kind of pre-processing would that entail? Unfortunately it is not within my means to purchase photoshop, but I have GIMP 2 and am currently struggling to make use of it.
(and thank you for the swift answer)
[Image_7046] [Image_7047] [Image_7048]
With importing the image I made through the lengthy process from an image, then converting to greyscale, then into wilbur and finally finishing in Fractal Terrain. I found that the input image no matter what I tried would not give me the breadth of altitude that should of been possible.
With Fractal you can get as a default -30 000 to +30 000 feet. Yet no matter what I input for my image it would not get into these parameters.
The program is pretty good but there are some major failings.
I have found you cannot manipulate climates. Every setting is based on realistic mathematics. You can make changes to altitude, rainfall and temperature. Those in turn manipulate the climate. So not very good for creating a fantasy setting where other factors could come into play.
The manipulation of the map itself is difficult to be precise even when using a mask selection. For an example I wanted a plateau as one of my countries. I could find no way to manipulate the selected are to give me a smooth elevation in that region. I tried a multitude of brush styles and settings.
With all this being said, the best option is to keep randomly producing worlds until you get one that is close to what you want.
Exporting the map is a pretty cool feature, but not wholly perfect. It takes massive work if you want to have maps that represent the countries and not just the precise segmented regions that are produced. I have yet to try attempt making the regions into country maps.
I outputted into 275 maps and it took me a week to label down four layers of the map with country names and backwards links to layers above. So it is a massive undertaking if you go for a lot of maps.
Next problem: I can't seem to get Wilbur to work properly. After I install it, it simply doesn't turn up. I'm using Windows 10 - is that the issue?
That will save me a lot of hassle
Guess I will go for another solution
This is where I found mine. There were two different versions of wilbur but this was the one that worked. I do not recall if I used it in a previous version of windows though. I may have it running in windows 8.
"C:\Program Files\Slayton Software\Wilbur 1.85 (64-bit)"
Ooooh that is a great idea so I can try link my text bodies to full country sized maps. I may have to give it a try, thanks for the suggestion.