January/February 2024 Challenge: 500 years on Ovryn

[Turambar]

@Turambar, it is a lot of progress! It seens to me that the techniques involved are very different from usual fantasy map making, textures and stuff, are you using some tutorial as a guide, what is your inspiration?
Also, I saw that now 500 years some mountains have snow caps, this would be why? More water in the atmosphere? I am just curious.

Thanks! I am not using any tutorials, but I certainly have learned a lot of different techniques from tutorials in the past. I am doing this all in Gimp, except that I took the base heightmap into Gaea to do a bunch of erosion work and create the water masks.

As for the snow on the mountains, prior to terraforming all water ice on Ovryn was concentrated in the southern polar ice cap (similar Mars' ice caps). Once terraforming transformed the atmosphere, the planet warmed the ice cap reduced and new water cycle initiated through terraforming led to snowfalls, both near the poles and on the high mountains. One thing I need to figure out is if I need to add a northern ice cap as well in the pre terraform stage. In theory, a single ice cap is possible depending on the planet eccentricity and some other factors, so I may just keep it that way (but then may need to reduce the northern polar region in the post terraform stage). Open to suggestions if there are any experts here who want to opine.