Help: Climate Texture Needed for Fractal Terrains

Hello ProFantasy community. I'm new here and it was a couple of months ago that I bought Fractal Terrains (and now CC3+) and I'm enjoying them. Well-built software, and they even run well on Linux+Wine.

So, I've completed a FractalTerrains map. However, there is one thing left that I'm missing, and is a suitable image texture file. I downloaded the Terraformer pack and found a texture file that I want to use. But it shows areas of snow (particularly on the poles and a bit below), and in my world, there is seldom any snow (water is scarce): see first attachment.

There is another texture file without snow (see second attachment), but its texture areas for other climates (forest, grasslands, etc -- there are a few in my world) are not that vivid, and look ugly and too desertic everywhere.

I tried to edit the first texture to remove snow but that wasn't too straightforward and it ended up looking really ugly and "jagged". I also tried to manually override those "snow areas" in my world (on the poles and a bit below) by painting with Desert climate, and the texture file view still showed the snow.

So, anyone here has a similar file like the first attachment, but without snow. Or anyone here know how to edit it so it no longer has snow? (If this is a big hassle, I can pay).

I would greatly appreciate it. Please, help.

Comments

  • Ooops. Forgot the second texture file.
  • edited May 2020
    I took another look and retried; almost achieved it. But I still need to fine-tune a few things. I'm slowly learning how these climate files work.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    Unfortunately, I don't know of any beyond what comes with the program and the terraformer package, so I think the only solution is to do what you are already doing - editing it, or as an alternative, create a new one from scratch.
  • jslaytonjslayton Moderator, ProFantasy Mapmaker
    I would recommend two additions to the texture that you have here: blur it a bit to get rid of the hard edges in the map that will translate to obvious seams in the final image and add a bit of noise to the texture to avoid bland expanses of color.

    FT's climate computations are based on average annual rainfall and average annnual temperature. The base climate shader is based on a 20x16 image used to bin the rainfall/temperature information into on of the basic 10 climate types and a color table to map the climate results to colors. The textured climate shader uses the same 20x16 image to get the climate type and a table of images to color the world areas. The image climate shader directly maps the rainfall and temperature values to a color image without going through the intermediate 20x16 lookup, effectively giving you as many climate zones as you have colors in the input image.

    The basic climate shader has the advantage that it doesn't require any external image, but it's pretty bland. The Image and Textured shaders let you specify a good deal more visual interest, but the quality of the results is entirely up to the images that you feed it. The Image and Textured shaders let you use much higher resolution images than the default values that ship with the system, but it's more difficult to move the larger images around with the map.

    Notice that I mentioned "10 climate types" in the second paragraph. Those are the climate types that FT generates for land climates (except for ice). FT also defines three types of sea climates (shallow, abyssal plain, and deep trench plus ice): these types can be colored using a secondary image in the Image Climate shader. The final three climate types of the 17 climate types defined in the climate painting tool (mountains, hills, bare rock) are for special effects. One major behavioral issue with the Image Climate shader is that painted climate types are completely ignored by it, meaning that it can show completely different results from other climate tools.
  • Wow, that's a great in-depth explanation. Thanks.

    I haven't got the time to retake this, but tomorrow or during the rest of the week, I will retry with this new information.
  • 17 days later
  • edited June 2020
    I forgot to post the final result I was able to make. The map looks quite well and as I desired.
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