3D island country map (Blender Freestyle)

[Gozdom]

Hi,

I've been sniffing around here many years ago, with plans for a children's book about politics. The book is now written, and I'm doing illustrations, all in Blender 3D with its Freestyle plugin, which provides outlines. I also needed a map, which is a compulsory element of any such "worldbuilding" book. I may still hire someone for the finishing touches, but instead of commissioning a 2D map, I decided to create the whole country in 3D. This map is going to be printed A3 size as the inside cover, for reference.

I used an orthographic camera (as opposed to perspective). The only addition I needed was contour lines, so I created a big multi-bladed razor and cut up the map mesh horizontally several times. Blender can then find these cuts and draw strokes along them. I can exclude these from renderings if I need an aerial photo or a panorama.

I may touch up the texture map later, but it's more of a chore than a challenge. It is pretty crowded.

Roads and rivers are separate objects, following a curve. They can be repositioned easily, and wrap onto the terrain. Mountains are much harder to move around, but I may push them out toward the sea.

There is a layer where cities are actually groups of tiny houses, and another one where the are replaced by dots where a more abstract map is needed. As such, the model allows for some zooming in, until forest textures and dummy buildings begin to stick out. Such closeups will be patched up manually. However, it can be used for aerial photos, as you can see on the second pic.

Names will not say much as this is not in English. They are cute words mostly borrowed from dialects.

Any advice or bugreport is welcome, thank you. I know of a few stray Freestyle strokes, these will be cleaned up manually once the map is finished.