Hi all,

Long time lurker first time poster. I've been experimenting for quite some time, trying to figure out the best techniques and tools to create nice looking topographic atlas-style maps in the vain of vorropohaiah and artifexian. I think I've finally landed on a workflow/process that works for me and produces nice results. This process has involved using GMTED2010 SRTM heightmaps to create the base terrain in photoshop, GDAL for projecting high resolution heightmaps to various projections, World Machine and Wilbur for some minor terrain manipulation and locating rivers and lakes, G.Projector for figuring out projections and creating graticules, VulgarLang for generating names, G Plates for figuring distances and scaling, Songs of the Eons for generating Köppen climates, and finally Affinity Designer for creating the map in vector format.

All that said, here is an in-progress version of the first map of the world, the Empire of Antuza, a nation that acts as the antagonist of a series of novels I am working on:

Click image for larger version.  Name: empire-of-antuza-wip.png  Views: 241  Size: 8.28 MB  ID: 123916

Still working on the ocean depth heightmap, and I need to fill in the adjacent nations and a few other minor details before I can call this done.

Would love to hear feedback on city/road placements, as I mostly did it by feel---placing intial settlements near rivers, cities are closer together near the capital, etc. Most of this part of the continent is a tropical monsoon climate.