Thank you very much. I don't have any other projects planned. This is my magna opus.
I have described this process many times. It's quite simple. But it wastes a lot of time.
All my maps are based on a height map. I realized pretty quickly that with a good height map you can create a variety of map styles, from realistic satellite simulations to hill shades.
Therefore, the basis of all my work is to edit the height map.
A height map is a boring black and white image. Where black is the bottom. White is a mountain peak.
For convenience, when I draw in Photoshop, I overlay a gradient map on top, which colors my black and white height map according to the height. This makes the job easier.
How to make a height crater? There are many paths and a lot of little tricks.
I mainly use a real world height map - DEM, you can see how to extract them in this Morne tutorial.
https://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=47393
I sew a bunch of small pieces into one fabric. By masking and scaling, changing brightness and contrast, you can achieve good results. Don't use large pieces.
Then I need to marry it all together. I use Wilbur for this. After running with Wilbur, I again supplement with piles from DEM. And again Wilbur and so many, many times. In some difficult places, I manually draw a height map, mixing it with DEM.
But the basis of "realism" is not so much a height map as an understanding of geology and tectonics. I pay quite a lot of attention to gplates. So that my mountains and faults are justified. Although I have many “controversial” decisions that I cannot explain. This is due to the fact that I did not start making the world from scratch in gplates, but already had a ready-made map in my head, which was difficult to fit into a plausible world.
When the height map is ready, you can see what you got. I use photoshop.
Create an empty layer and fill it with gray. Copy the height map. Create an alpha channel. Insert a height map into the alpha channel. Select the gray layer. Select lighting filter effects. Endless light. Select your alpha channel with the height map in the filter. Extrude. (9-15 is enough). Ready. You have received a shaded height map.
Now place a height map with a gradient map on top of the shaded map. Set the opacity to 50 or set the layer effect to multiply. Ready!
If you want to take a satellite image, use textures instead of a gradient map. Simple textures of sand and grass are enough, the main thing is not the texture, but the slight noise and color. In the layer settings, you can “hide” part of the layer depending on the brightness of the pixel by moving the bar 0-255. Because We have a height map, so you can color only certain areas of heights.
Repeat this process many times, add different layers, sand, snow, forest, swamps and you will get the desired result.
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