I started my Fantasy Cartography career 20 years ago when I started my efforts to map the world of Greyhawk. Since the earliest days its been and still is constant strive to try and get better, to learn more, acquire better tools and find a better approach. Working on a single huge map also forced me to be consistent both in technique and style, so when I had found something that worked for me I stuck with it until my Flanaess map was done. 

This meant the technology used to created are from the mid 90's and ancient by todays standards, and some of my stylistic choices also feel ancient to me now too. Despite all its shortcomings, it is a work of love and I'm still very proud of my Flanaess map. But the time has come to go back and start over again, this time not from the beginning, this time with two decades of fantasy mapping experience, new tools but with the same love of the mission and the setting.

I've not only mapped for two decades I've also read hundreds of pages of text and run hundreds of hours of games in Greyhawk and most importantly I have now a large group of friends equally dedicated to the setting that can guide me even more than last time. With this said its time to go back to the Flanaess, time for my Flanaess 2 adventure!

Last time it took me over a decade thanks to lack of skills, tools and time. This time I'm better prepared so hopefully it can be done in about half the time, but I'm still looking at this as a five years plus project. It will be up to home much time I can devote to my passion, and also how I can overcome some of the hurdles and quagmires I know are lurking on the way, and the many others I'm not yet aware of. Just like last time I have to take a leap of faith, work hard and hope for the best. The known hurdles are many, from the cartographic like how to reverse engineer the Oerth and best place the Flanaess to how to best organize the project.  

The first steps where taken last night and captured in the images in this post. Its not much to brag about yet but it is the first important steps on a long journey. The first encounter on this is the realization that my Patreon setup is in dire need of a rethink. I will give it a few days of consideration while I'm off a few days of travel. I will present my ideas on how to better go forward for discussion next week.

Thank you all for your support and I hope you want to come with me on this quest to map a Game Setting all over again! 

Time to give our first Co-Creator Darlene some ideas on what to do for her first project. So on with the thinking caps and spawn some project ideas you would like her to dig into. The limits are that is should be something than can be done in about a months time, and something she can apply one of her many talents!

On Friday I will bring all the suggestions along with my own to her and let her pick the top ones that will then be put to a Patreon Poll. 

Here comes the 2nd part of how to texture things in World Machine. You can find part 1 here: https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=4WTabiD7K1U 

You can grab the World Machine file I'm using here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ib8qw54mckcjl6m/Presentation-%20Texturing%20Advanced%20finished.tmd?dl=0 

and the grass1.tif texture here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/asb34wxv9ntbjou/grass1.tif?dl=0 

and the furuondy goodlands cool green3.tif here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/84cd6x0dxsdajrx/foryondy%20goodlands%20cool%20green3.tif?dl=0 

You can see my World Machine Texturing Part 1 video here:

https://youtu.be/4WTabiD7K1U

and you can find my World Machine Introduction video here:
https://youtu.be/EMaQr-Ox_uI

 Most of you have seen that I'm not much of the typist and it distracts a lot from what I'm doing, but voice and screen share much less so. I'm not really sure but that is how my mind works.  

My plan is to start some form of video streaming/conference in the not too distance future for you guys, to be able to show what I'm doing, and answer questions.

But in the mean time, with this in mind don't hesitate to reach out and connect with me on Skype, Discord or Facebook. I spend long hours working and don't mind answering some questions or show how I solve tricky things in the tools I use, now and then.

So if you have questions please send your info as a Patreon message or to anna@ghmaps.net so we can connect. I live in California, so my time zone is PST.

Here is the link to the full resolution of my Flanaess terrain file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8bmweqqu1in5udq/2013-11-01.psb?dl=0

This version have never been shared with anyone, until now!

It is in Photoshop's, Large Document Format PSB.  Its size 69, 607 x 60,459 pixels and weighs in at 15.3GB, so download managers are needed to bring home this beast.

I've added Altitude, Texture and Bump maps of the four small islands to the Final Cartography Folder.

This will make it a little easier to work with only a single small island at a time.

Here is the link to the fold with Cartographer Content:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lbet04acuglsu4y/AADZxppuRAe_H7REX8cL5j4Pa?dl=0

Here you find Elevation Data, Masks, Texture, World Machine file and Vue file.

Now that my Patreon have been around for a few months and two projects have seen the light of day I have started to reflect on what has worked and things that needs improvement.

The first is that projects need to be reasonable in scope, the target should be something that can be done in a month. The Crater Project fulfilled this really well, but the Island Project was a disaster in this aspect.

Going forward projects that are small scale, 100ft/pixel or less, should be limited to 8K if fully featured. For maps that are not full 3D or without things like buildings and roads  it can be 16K. Projects like the Islands will cover 10-30 miles instead of 60. 

Large scale maps, more than 100ft/pixel should be limited to 16K. This is  means that maps of whole realms of Greyhawk (or other settings) will be 200-500 miles per side.

This is with current technology, and as you all well know technology are in constant change, with better hardware and software coming out. Much improved computers are probably two years away for me, so I can't rely on that part to make things go faster of get bigger.

On the software side of things the near future looks more promising. Three things makes me hopeful, Gaea from Quadspinner, World Machine updates and new versions of Vue.

Gaea is a new fully featured terrain creation tool that is currently in early access. The reason I list it first is that it show some major progress with GPU usage and novel features that I know will speed up things and improve the results. There still a lot of features yet not fully functional, but what is ready is fantastic!

World Machine development shows real signs of coming back from its zombie state which is great news. Vue is also making advances with better features.

I will probably use all three in combination going forward, and add tools like 3DStudio Max and Unity within a year or two. Now back to the more immediate future!

The next project will bring us back to Greyhawk mapping the Lendore Isle. This is the first stage of my Flanaess 2.0 Project, to bring my Flanaess map into the new century.

The goals are:
- Create a elevation model with a resolution of 100 ft - 300ft per pixel. 

- Update the textures to match the 3D landscape and increased
 resolution.

- Masks and Splat Map data for things like biomes, vegetation, rock,
 Seasonal Textures and more.

- Elevation model for ocean (and lake) depth at around 500 ft - 1000 ft
  per pixel.

My current Flanaess map are in need of a revision as well. I have collected  a number of things to add or change during the last year, so one project will be to include them and create a 2018 revision of the map.

Darlene have some undertakings that will become a project (or several projects) this year as well.

I'm also contemplating a change of the rewards, but I will post my ideas for this in a separate post to keep the discussions of rewards separate from future projects.

Thank you again for supporting me!

What was supposed to have take a month took more than twice as long and there are still a few things left to do. The reasons are many and all my fault, from underestimating the complexity of this undertaking to my stubbornness to see it through to completion. 

This project was to "fully" visualize a set of islands 60 x 60 miles at the resolution of 10ft per pixel. This meant all the images created would be 32K, which is 32,768 x 32,768 pixels. My most detailed project to date, detailed enough to include roads and individual buildings. I' had done some tests with World Machine with this scale so I new it would work.

It did work, kinda of, what I had failed to test was to render an area the size of this project at this resolution. To render the entire islands took over four days. When you are using tiles its wisest to render all tiles in one go to get a perfect match. Textures can be easily patched up afterwards, but heightmaps are a bit more difficult. For still image renderings you can always paint over the ugly bits afterwards, but with video this gets even more difficult. With this project I wanted to see if I could make everything work. I'm proud to say I did get the results I was aiming for but at a price of glacial progress.

The next major undertaking was Photoshop editing, images 32,768 pixels are a bit too to much to handle effectively at 16bit color depth every time you have to save, and save often! Even using a SSD drive it took 10 minutes or so to save  when the file size reached around 90GB. Then there is the simple truth that a 32K project is FOUR times larger than a 16K project, I will never ever forget that after spending almost a month in Photoshop!

The last bit was to get it all setup in Vue for the scenic 3D views. This was the first time I used more advanced features like custom maps to drive Displacement, Bump and Reflections. The results are downright fantastic with vegetation and rocks that looks photo-real from a distance. 

One major part of this project are still not finished, "How To" content. It is not easy to do especially not when most of the things you want to convey are "How not to do"! But now that I have managed to get it done it will be easier to focus on what worked and tell you how to do it. I still have a hard time talking to myself in front of my computer, but I will keep trying.

I have some ideas on changing my Patreon as well, more on that in a separate post soon.