Where might I go from here?

[XCali]

I find this amazing. In my opinion, the land is great, I love the style. Where I do feel there is still some work that needs to be done is the ocean and lakes. The bright blue color is coming over as too cartoony.

Great job so far.

[MrBragg]

What do you mean by de terrace operation?.

De-terrace would basically be a filter that tries to detect and smooth sharp edges. This is implemented in Wilbur, though I don't have much experience with it. If you want, you could send me a b/w heightmaps and I could try it for you so you could see the results.

BOth seem to be better for smale scale regions though?

Gaea is definitely geared more toward small scales, though I've seen some examples of people using for continent-scale maps by fiddling with the nodes / parameters.

[rbnvgl]

I find this amazing. In my opinion, the land is great, I love the style. Where I do feel there is still some work that needs to be done is the ocean and lakes. The bright blue color is coming over as too cartoony.

Great job so far.

Thank you. If you mean the second map where i tried to combine it with the 3d experiment, that was just to try it out. The colors I`m aiming for are rather near the first picture i posted. If you mean that though, i should re-calibrate my screen.

De-terrace would basically be a filter that tries to detect and smooth sharp edges. This is implemented in Wilbur, though I don't have much experience with it. If you want, you could send me a b/w heightmaps and I could try it for you so you could see the results.

That`s nice. I send you the heightmap i used for the render via wetransfer.

[rbnvgl]

Just a status update. Played around again with heightmaps and Blender today. Think I will just try to form a crude heightmap out of my painted map so far. The first result is quite promising, even if this is again a work intensive thing if it should turn out right. For now I changed the grey values to get the heights better. On the other hand it seems to be the one with the most control, without buying a few hundred euros worth of tools that are not made for the sizes i need...
Now I just need to figure out, how this color-Ramp transparency thing in blender really works, so that i can make the sea (Black) transparent and include the bathymetry in there. Then I can fully concentrate on the heightmap to make the best of the render.

[rbnvgl]

And an experiment with added bathymetry in adequate heights, put together in photoshop (i hope I can get this transparency issue soon, then i could put it together in blender too).
Looks much more terracy because the height differences are wider. Still a good amount of work to do... but the rendering looks fine. I think the goal is set, now on to solve this erosion thing... either by tools or by painting...



Edit:
I think I found my method... painting the heightmap with the smudge tool in PS. Its not ultrarealistic, it gets kinda more surreal terrain, but they are near credible enough. Just experimented with a part of the bathymetry and really liked the result. Also it`s a playful approach, you toss height and depth around and just see what you get.

[rbnvgl]

Another style test. Getting near the thing i want. I`m a bit unhappy, that some areas still look terracy (can work on that, even if its more time consuming than thought) and that at least in the test area i choose, bathymetry is much more contrasted than the land. But that impression might fade, as soon as mountain areas are included.

[Falconius]

Oh wow, this is cool. I'm sorry I missed it for so long.