[WIP] Atlas Maps of Valmere | From Real-World Height Data to Vector Map

[Redrobes]

Love the style and cleanliness of the main map. The settings that you have used and the choice of colours are excellent. The inserted map does look a bit auto-generated. Its fine but having plazas within a city not quite square is odd and the uniformity of the buildings whilst random but on the other hand of a uniform type of randomness - perhaps I should say its narrow band limited noise - it looks odd. Now generating cities is very hard for anyone and nobody has done a better job but they do look a bit out of place.

Overall tho the map is looking really good.

[morne]

Thanks for the great feedback!

The inserted map does look a bit auto-generated. Its fine but having plazas within a city not quite square is odd and the uniformity of the buildings whilst random but on the other hand of a uniform type of randomness - perhaps I should say its narrow band limited noise - it looks odd. Now generating cities is very hard for anyone and nobody has done a better job but they do look a bit out of place.

This is exactly it, I was trying to pinpoint exactly what looked off about it, and it's just so obvious it was procedurally generated. The generator is fantastic for sure, but us humans are way too good at detected that sort of thing, even subconsciously. I am trying to emulate the style of city mapping used in Pergamon's world atlas. These maps don't even show detail at a city level, not even sure if it's at a block level. I think the solution is going to be going with the hand-drawn approach.

[morne]

Here's my second attempt at the embedded city-map:



I generated large-scale topography for the area around the city and used that to hand-draw main roads in the city, forming, roughly, city blocks, instead of individual buildings. The population of the city is intended to be ~265k people.

Looking for all kinds of feedback on this, don't be afraid to be too critical! How's the city map from a realism perspective? How does the style of the city map work with the style of the main national map? Should I just give up and leave the city maps out? Any tidbit of critic is greatly appreciated!

[Robulous]

Looks amazing. I really should get into something like QGIS but seems quite a steep learning curve for the non-technical

[Skalimoi]

The city looks great compared to the last one. You definitely improved it a lot, but I do think that maybe there's still some room for improvement in the shapes. They look kind of floaty? Like they don't really belong there, mostly with the smaller urban core on the right. Hopefully I'm explaining myself. Really great work overall, though!

[morne]

Looks amazing. I really should get into something like QGIS but seems quite a steep learning curve for the non-technical

Thanks! QGIS really isn't all that bad---I also highly recommend it. Using actual mapmaking software is seriously a game-changer.

The city looks great compared to the last one. You definitely improved it a lot, but I do think that maybe there's still some room for improvement in the shapes. They look kind of floaty? Like they don't really belong there, mostly with the smaller urban core on the right. Hopefully I'm explaining myself. Really great work overall, though!

Thanks for the feedback! You're definitely on point that the shapes looked "floaty". For one, I think I made my roads too "squiggly". Most roads, especially on relatively flat elevation, should be much straighter. I also didn't have enough roads/blocks outside the city walls.

Here's what will probably be my last WIP update for this:



All that's left is to import the city data into ArcGIS Pro for labelling.

[Ryan Pourchot]

Very nice work here

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[CredePendrel]

Hey Morne!

Amazing work this is mind blowing. I have some GIS experience (with ESRI software, not QGIS) and wanted to ask about the workflow. After you have the custom heightmap are you just generating contours from the elevation data and then applying your colour scheme to them? I did some tests with a height map of iceland and generated coloured contour lines at different intervals (20m, 100m, 500m). Its not anywhere close to actually looking good yet, but it has potential. I think I need a different test area...Iceland has some prety steep elevation changes that make some parts look a bit funny....




I will try importing a more topographic like colour scheme later on but I got a bit of a start on it.

[morne]

After you have the custom heightmap are you just generating contours from the elevation data and then applying your colour scheme to them?

Yup, this is exactly what I'm doing. I used to create the vector contours in Photoshop using work paths, save as AI files, DXW, then import into QGIS to convert to shapefile. I would not recommend this process. Very time consuming.

I now use the contour tools in ArcGIS Pro and the process is very quick. The only other deviation from before is that I'll rescale my heightmap data from 0-65535 to "true" elevation values using gdal, deciding on the min and max values more or less by winging it. I'll generate contours using a few different intervals (I wish the contour tools would allow staggered intervals, but alas) then merge them, cherry picking the levels that I want for my final topography. I use this same method to generate bathymetry contours as well. Then I'll apply a unique value symbology based on contour minimum elevation. I sometimes need to manually fix layer draw order, but it's all pretty straightforward.

Btw, I think it's looking great so far!

[CredePendrel]

Ah ok thank you for your reply. I am glad I am on the right track here. This iceland image was created with the filled contour option in ArcPro. I still tend to use ArcMap for most of my day to day work.

Thanks for the tip. I was wondering how you were able to get such no-standard contour intervals into your maps, but creating multiple intervals and cherry-picking only the ones you need and merging them together makes perfect sense. Now that I understand how the workflow operates I will get back to making my custom height-map first. Iceland turned out ok for a test, but it didn't have types of mountains I was after.