Fractal Terrain 3 landmass question

Hello!

I have just started playing around with FT3 and I'm wondering what settings I should change to get some larger landmasses around the equator. FT3 usually places the larger solid lanmasses at the poles and then scatters islands around the equatorial region. I would like to get something closer to Earth with at least on large landmass over the equator. Thanks!

Comments

  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    edited January 2017
    Can't say I have noticed any tendency for FT3 to place larger landmasses near the poles, but watch our for what projection you use. The 'standard' Equirectangular projection will cause landmasses near the poles to appear larger, just like greenland and antarctica appear huge on most earth maps.

    Other than that, use earth-like setting of 50-70% water, and rather large landmasses, fBM with Perlin’s Improved Noise, RMF with Perlin’s Improved Noise or Wilbur Ridged multifractal and keep clicking 'next world' until you find one you like
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    This is only going to work for you if you are only using FT3 to get a decent shape and coastline...

    Try visualising the oceans as the land masses.

    I have extracted quite a few decent coastline patterns from FT3 by turning the land into the sea, and vice versa. Its not something you can do in the software (I don't think), but once you get your eye in tune with the idea you should find a few more appetizing outlines ;)
  • I have done around 1,500 worlds in FT3. Some random seeds do tend to give the land masses at the poles.

    I keep a log using Open Office on what settings I have used in case I want to get a similar world, or do the rotating world export.

    To see some examples, around 1,000, you can look at my Traveller site.
  • Monsen - Thanks! I'm using RMF with Perlin's and I found by lowering the % water to 50 and raising land size to 2.17 I got the bigger land masses I was looking for, also just getting out the measuring tool helped with my sense of scale. What seemed like a small area was actually pretty large.

    JimP - I just started and I'll make my Google Sheet now :)
  • 6 months later
  • edited July 2017
    Posted By: SchitzoflinkHello!

    I have just started playing around with FT3 and I'm wondering what settings I should change to get some larger landmasses around the equator. FT3 usually places the larger solid lanmasses at the poles and then scatters islands around the equatorial region. I would like to get something closer to Earth with at least on large landmass over the equator. Thanks!
    No to mention anything vaguely earthlike... Not gonna happen with that fractal program I guess. I generate world after word thinking "ok, it's like Indonesia, only real big." And where's the deserts? I opened up their earth map, and according to that, North Africa if a temperate forest. Well, maybe millions of years ago...
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    Posted By: shaumaI opened up their earth map, and according to that, North Africa if a temperate forest. Well, maybe millions of years ago...
    The climate model in FT is far simpler than the real earth. And the data from the ETOPO datasets which you can import into FT only contains height data, the climate has to be generated, so don't expect that to match earth, you'll need to manually paint it to accomplish that.
    As for deserts, they tend to be very rare on the default generations, but if you increase temperature and reduce rainfall (in areas or globally), you should see deserts appear.

    As for earth-like, I think that depends on the criterias for earth-like. It will never generate anything that looks exactly or very similar to the earth itself, but depending on the settings you use, I can certainly creates worlds with a few large continents.
  • Also, FT3 doesn't do rain shadows for mountain areas.
  • kathoruskathorus Traveler
    edited July 2017
    Yeah, I notice large landmasses sometimes too, it is generally stretching from the projection type. FT great at quickly generating worlds that look alright, esp. for Sci-fi games where you need a bunch of planets.

    For the semi-serious world builder, it likely won't generate what you might want in a few clicks, you will have to learn the software. The big issues for me are mountain ranges and trying to get some sort of 'plate tectonics' look.

    You will want to make sure in the World Settings that you have 'Allow Prescale Offset Editing' checked under the Edit tab.

    Then, after you get a world that looks close to what you want, use a large brush size, but low value setting (I typically use .005), start shaping the mountain ranges and coast lines, single-clicks for detail work, but you can hold down the mouse button for short paint bursts if you are leveling high/low areas. Too much in any single place will produce 'divets'.

    Spent about an hour on the attached, I think I'm starting to get to a point where I like what I see, but it has been a learning process.
  • 8 days later
  • Re the missing deserts I think the default rainfall setting in FT3, just over 51 inches per year is much too high. Wikipedia (I know) states "globally averaged annual precipitation is 990 millimeters (39 in)" so changing this setting and perhaps the random amount setting for rainfall will have an impact on desert formation.
  • jslaytonjslayton Moderator, ProFantasy Mapmaker
    The rainfall also isn't distributed in a pattern that would be consistent with Hadley and Farrel circulation. Somebody ought to fix that...
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