Looking for Tips on new World Map Landmasses

[Khaalis]

Ok I have changed a little this setup , It doesn't pretend to be correct , but I highlighted the close resemblance that the opposing coasts have between the oceanic dorsal so I removed the plaque you put underwater between the two major continents and in white line I show the resembling coastline, just like South america fits into African western coast...

then I have enlarged the polar plaques because this map is still on a sphere and those polar region should have arrows that point in different directions in the equirectangular map.
Added some other possible fracture lines .

https://i.imgur.com/Sixm74c.jpg

Thank you gain Naima. Very useful!

[woodb3kmaster]

Can you expand on this? Are you saying it is inaccurate because the caps expand onto the landmasses?

Unless I'm mistaken, Azelor was referring to the geographic poles, i.e. 90° North and South. Many map projections spread them out into lines when they're really single points, so it's not uncommon for folks who are new to global cartography to treat them like lines. This approach leads to a contradiction: a point that is both dry land and water. Working on the polar regions in a projection that shows the poles as points, and then reprojecting back to the projection of your base map (presumably equirectangular) would avoid introducing these contradictions, and is what many of the more experienced cartographers here do. Depending on what software you have access to, GIMP can transform a map to a polar projection for this purpose; G.Projector can as well, though you'd have to save the result and edit it in the program of your choice.

[Khaalis]

Unless I'm mistaken, Azelor was referring to the geographic poles, i.e. 90° North and South. Many map projections spread them out into lines when they're really single points, so it's not uncommon for folks who are new to global cartography to treat them like lines. This approach leads to a contradiction: a point that is both dry land and water. Working on the polar regions in a projection that shows the poles as points, and then reprojecting back to the projection of your base map (presumably equirectangular) would avoid introducing these contradictions, and is what many of the more experienced cartographers here do. Depending on what software you have access to, GIMP can transform a map to a polar projection for this purpose; G.Projector can as well, though you'd have to save the result and edit it in the program of your choice.

As for the poles, do yoy mean orthographic view of the poles, like this?


How do you do it in Gimp? I haven't gotten that far along yet. Still working in Fractal Terrains. I'll eventually port over to G.Projector once I am ready, but currently I feel the basic topography still needs work.

[Azélor]

What Woodb3kmaster said is perfect. The pole is a dot represented as a line on most map. It is the same dot covering the whole 90th latitude.

About the orthographic question, I think Gimp has a thing call polar distortion, or something like that. I'm not sure how good it is. The one in photoshop always seemed to give strange results. I think G.projector gives a more accurate projection.

[waldronate]

Yes, same map, just changed from "Show Altitude" view to "Show Gaia" view. I didn't see another way to get the caps to show.

I recommend being careful with the "Gaia" view in FT. It doesn't take into account any parts of FT's temperature or rainfall editing. It's there because it's pretty. One of FT's climate views (Show Climate, Show Image Climate, or Show Textured Climate) will show you ice caps (if any) on your world.

[Khaalis]

I recommend being careful with the "Gaia" view in FT. It doesn't take into account any parts of FT's temperature or rainfall editing. It's there because it's pretty. One of FT's climate views (Show Climate, Show Image Climate, or Show Textured Climate) will show you ice caps (if any) on your world.

Thanks. I was wondering if the Gaia view was of any worth. It didn't seem to be while I was playing with views. Then again, I'm not having a great experience with FT overall.