Inspired by the most recent Live tutorial, here's a quick and dirty rendering of my campaign world in the Cosmographer Satellite annual. Taught myself a few new techniques in the process regarding exploding multipolies so that the land masses brought in from a Fractal Terrains export could be managed separately -- but then I had to rescue the inland seas and lakes.

This is pretty rough. I used the partially transparent forest fill over most of the land as a cheap shortcut. Just wanted to see what I could get done in an hour (though this was closer to two hours).

There were already separate threads seeking advice on the Parchment Maps and Jerion Shading approaches. I wanted to share a little about my technique for the Mike Schley style, including things that I would do differently next time.

I wanted to have some contours consistent with the other maps, so I opened the Jerion export and copied one of the contour areas onto the Schley map, just where the Jerion contour colors started to turn brown (I think around 5,000 or 7,000 feet in elevation). Playing with a technique that Ralf showed in the Jeriod shading demo, I moved that contour to a contour sheet and changed the fill to the Solid 10 fill. I added Edge Fade, Inner and Transparency effects to that sheet. I then created a second contour sheet with the same effects, and did the same thing with a somewhat higher elevation (I think it was around 11,000 feet in elevation). That worked well. I liked how it gave shading and depth without being too intense like a bevel effect would have done.

Here's what I did next that I would do differently next time. First, I look an even higher level of elevation and did the same thing. But instead of putting it on a contours sheet with a Solid 10 fill, I put it on a Land Features Hills Background sheet and changed it to the Hills Background fill style. I also added a Transparency effect to that sheet. And then I did the same with an even higher elevation, putting it on a Land Features Mountain Background and changing the fill style to the Mountain Background fill. At this point, the file got massively big. I think it had a lot of nodes to contend with. Next time I try this approach, I might still do the two Solid 10 contour imports, but instead of also importing contour lines for the hills and mountains, I will draw them on using a JPG image of the original export as a rough guide for where to draw them.

Here are a few zoomed in maps in the Jerion shading style:

And if I didn't already share it, here's the "Above" FCW:

This is really lovely. My only ever-so-slight feedback is that my old eyes are finding it a little difficult to read the legend, so I would consider increasing the opacity of the background fill/color slightly.

Don’t worry about Cobble Final. It shows as missing on mine, too. Remy said something about how that shows up and is a weird legacy fill, or something like that.

The Beaumaris Castle fills are from CA 2019 (volume 13). Did you get that one?

Moat is a water fill from Vol 13 but you could substitute any water fill you want.

Per Quenten's suggestion, I have been playing with the Line Styles for the roads. I didn't try creating a custom one, but I did try some of the other presets, and they didn't really work. I also tried checking the Paper Scale checkbox, and that had weird effects when I zoomed in.

Here's an attempt that sets the roads to be solid and leaves the guided routes as dotted lines. I like that it makes it a bit clearer which ones are actual roads. I will also put it in my WIP gallery to make it easier to zoom in. Thoughts?

Thank you!

I admit that I drew from a lot of different sources. The base is CA186 Creepy Crypts (2022), which I used in preparation for when I get to the basement/dungeon section. The main fills for the walls and floors of the tower itself come from CA149 Beaumaris Castle (2019), and the windows are from that, too. Most of the furniture comes from Dungeon Designer 3, but some are drawn from CA14 Symbol Catalogs (2008), and some of the fireplaces are from Shessar's free supplement. Some of the outside vegetation comes from CA141 Japanese Temple and CA143 Asian Town (both 2018).

Normally when designing something for the Atlas, I try to limit it to just a few styles to minimize the chance that others might be missing chunks of it. This time, I gave myself free rein to create my wizard's "dream home."

I have been looking forward to seeing what you do since you first claimed Elkton.

Also: DD4 things! Squeeee!