Alagaësia Realistic Map

[Larion]

This is a recreation of the map of Alagaesia from the Eragon and the Inheritance Cycle books, by Christopher Paolini.

There was a livestream earlier this week where the author mentioned some upcoming news for the series. After watching, I decided I wanted to try recreating the map of Alagaësia in my own style. I used to post more often here in the past, but kind of fell out of the habit as the years went on. I have more maps posted on my Deviant Art page.

I created this over the course of 2 days in Photoshop. I made a few tweaks to rivers and to mountain shapes due to the change in the artistic style, but other than that it's as faithful to the original map as I could make it.

Let me know what you think! Feedback is always appreciated.

[Turambar]

This is a recreation of the map of Alagaesia from the Eragon and the Inheritance Cycle books, by Christopher Paolini.

There was a livestream earlier this week where the author mentioned some upcoming news for the series. After watching, I decided I wanted to try recreating the map of Alagaësia in my own style. I used to post more often here in the past, but kind of fell out of the habit as the years went on. I have more maps posted on my Deviant Art page.

I created this over the course of 2 days in Photoshop. I made a few tweaks to rivers and to mountain shapes due to the change in the artistic style, but other than that it's as faithful to the original map as I could make it.

Let me know what you think! Feedback is always appreciated.

Very nice. What is your method for mountains? Hand drawn heightmap + Wilbur erosion?

[Larion]

Thanks! I use the Tangram Heightmapper to make custom brushes, then a dual brush to draw them. Then I go in an manually tweak them to fit and look nice. There is definitely an element of trial and error. I'm not familiar with Wilbur Erosion, I'll have to look that up.

[Turambar]

Thanks! I use the Tangram Heightmapper to make custom brushes, then a dual brush to draw them. Then I go in an manually tweak them to fit and look nice. There is definitely an element of trial and error. I'm not familiar with Wilbur Erosion, I'll have to look that up.

Nice! I have tried something similar with making brushes from DEMs, but haven't gotten it to look quite right. The program is just called Wilbur. It pretty commonly used to erode heightmaps (especially if handrawn in photoshop) and give them a mire realistic look.

[Kellerica]

Wonderful! I really enjoy how nice and soft the terrain looks, especially the ocean and rivers. So often satellite-style maps like this have a really crisp and almost noisy7pixelated look to them, but this doesn't at all and I love it. If that makes any sense.

I think the tiling on the patterns of the forests and deserts is a bit too easy to spot when zoomed out, but it's not a massive issue. Fairly sure I actually have that same forest pattern saved to my library somewhere, hehe Love the overall colour scheme of the map too.

Great work all in all. Hopefully you'll start posting your work here more regularly again! Welcome back.

[mariaoglesbyart]

This is a recreation of the map of Alagaesia from the Eragon and the Inheritance Cycle books, by Christopher Paolini.

There was a livestream earlier this week where the author mentioned some upcoming news for the series. After watching, I decided I wanted to try recreating the map of Alagaësia in my own style. I used to post more often here in the past, but kind of fell out of the habit as the years went on. I have more maps posted on my Deviant Art page.

I created this over the course of 2 days in Photoshop. I made a few tweaks to rivers and to mountain shapes due to the change in the artistic style, but other than that it's as faithful to the original map as I could make it.

Let me know what you think! Feedback is always appreciated.

This is so cool!
As a big fan of the books and a visual learner I always love seeing maps and stuff like this as companions for series. Are you planning to post somewhere and tag the author? I've found since they often have smaller followings they're more likely to respond to stuff like this

[Larion]

I posted it originally on Reddit, and the author saw the map and gave me several great compliments on it. I've been riding that high for the past 2 weeks, haha.

[Larion]

Thanks! I've sort of self-designated this particular style as like... "stylized satellite view"? Not sure if there's a better term, but it's my latest favorite way to make maps, and actually less labor intensive than some of my previous approaches. Mountains remain the trickiest thing, however. Maybe I need to look into a new or larger pattern for my forest too, haha. Usually it's not an issue, but with so MUCH forest, I can see how it might become easy to pick out the pattern, especially for the trained eye. Thanks for the feedback!

[Rubikia]

This is very impressive, amazing work! The fact you did this in only two days is mind-boggling

Glad the author liked your interpretation too, and your creation of brushes using real terrain data worked really well. May I ask which mountain ranges you took inspiration from/sampled for the brushes?

I also love the attention to detail with the dunes of the desert, but like Kellerica said with the forests I think the brush size may need to be larger or more varied as its largely the same pattern.

Really liking the gradual descent in the sea with its terrain features gives a great illusion of continental shelves too Brilliant work

[July Finn]

Really love this!

It has a realistic mood to it without feeling too satellite-image-ish or 2000s atlas-ish to take away from the feel of the world you're depicting. Great job! And it's already been said but those mountains turned out great, I should experiment more with dual brushes. I forget that that tool even exists half the time.