This is not as bad as it seems, but I had a desk malfunction and it will take a few days to get things up and running again. My adjustable desk stopped working and I was a bit too eager to fix it and it came crashing down.
I live in a very earthquake prone area so thankfully I had bolted my monitors firmly onto the desk, and they made it!

New parts are on their way, and in the mean time I'll use the desk in lower mode. But it will still take a few days to get things set up again.

Thank you for your patients and support!    

When you work on complicated projects in software like World Machine, you often face problems that seems hopeless at first, but widen your view a bit and think logically and possibilities opens up.

Here is an example of how I solved (or at least improved) the creation of wetlands on flat areas surrounding lakes and rivers.

Here is a link to the latest version of the WM file. A warning - this file is my development file, so it contains some "spaghetti" that might behave as a form of cartographic web spell. So tread carefully! 🙂

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ter3mq29zrzkse1/Islands%20Low-76.tmd?dl=0

Here are the Islands and its waterways. The area is 100km (60 miles) and consist one major island, five minor islands and a number of tiny islands. The yellow along the coast are my enhanced coloring to better see the beaches gearing up for texturing.

Natural variation is important both the look of the terrain and its believably, but also to make the area interesting as a setting for your adventures. Here is a perspective that shows a little of the variation.   

Coastlines goes from extensive beaches to sharp cliffs, river deltas and archipelagos of small reefs. Terrains goes from plains to craggy highlands reaching up to over a 1000ft. Lakes, marshlands and rivers dots the landscape of these seasonal islands.

Next is to set up forestation, which will be the my focus for the next couple of days. Then it is time for texturing, which will make this bland looking thing start to come to life!

Here is the file I used in the latest video. It is a "cleaned-up" version of the file I'm using. I have removed some of the more experimental bits to lessen the confusion a bit, I know by experience that looking at a WM file you haven't created yourself is daunting. Even opening a WM-file you created yourself is daunting, if you haven't worked on it for a little while.

You can grab the file here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ydb5p5b5xuu0uq1/Presentation%20-%20Elevation%20and%20Rivers.tmd?dl=0

You will need a veresion of GeoGlyph to use this file, and you can use the Community version of GeoGlyph (that is free): http://quadspinner.com/GeoGlyph#editions

Special thanks to Quadspinner for the ReFlow macro that is part of the GeoGlyph 2 addon for world Machine. You can find out more here: http://quadspinner.com.

Just to be open about it,  Quadspinner is a backer of this Patreon. But this is not a sponsored link. I payed full price for GeoGlyph, and use it on a daily basis to improve my work.

Good luck with your Islands!

Here comes a video where I try to explain how the setup works. To be able to create large varied terrains the management of data are key.

It took me several years to figure out how to do this properly, but now I'm starting to have a proper understanding of this and hopefully even able to give that knowledge to you as well.

I'm sorry for the background noise, forgot to silence my Discord client, and my dog Minnie was keen on my attention as well.   

The waterways of our Islands are being created and I'm very pleased with the results.

I'm using a combination of Lakes, artistic rivers created using a Layout Generator and small waterways created by algorithm. This way I'm able to combine my desire to place things where I want them and have tons of details filled in automatically.

There are still a few minor tweaks still needed, but it works and we are on schedule to have this done by the end of the week.

The river algorithms can be set per Biome, so for this seasonal project they will be numerous and plentiful, but for dryer Biomes much less of them. They can also be presented but textured differently, to create dried out riverbeds for example.

A big part of getting this right is to be able to structure the process right. What do I need to create. How to best do it, auto-generate or artistic. In what order, what are needed in order to create a certain type of data.

This job is one bit programming and data management and one part artistic. Sometimes you paint using Photoshop brushes, sometimes it is by molding algorithms, and in the end is how well you manage it all.  

I just created a video describing this in detail that will be posted here for Trailblazer and Cartographer backers.

Patreon also cancelled their announced fee changes, keeping things the way they are. This is a wise move in my opinion, and hopefully Patron will follow their own advice and change things only after listening to their users both backers and creators. 

After an almost two week visit to Midgard I'm now back on the Island Project again. Major terrain building is done, what is left are a few small islands here and there to complete this area and make it more interesting.

Work on rivers and lakes are underway as well. Tried out a few different way of going about creating the water systems. In World Machine, and every other tool I have tested so far, rivers and wetlands are a major weak spot. A new generation tools and upgrades to World Machine will hopefully include proper ways of creating rivers, but for now it is a bit of a hack.

My results are what I would call acceptable, and with texturing and some post render touch up in Photoshop the results might even be good. I'll post some videos explaining the technical side of this for the Cartographer Backers soon.

Terrain with lakes and rivers I hope to have ready by the end of next week. Then it is time for vegetation which will take another week or so. Settlements and roads might be time to tackle around Christmas, and with some luck this project might be done early January. That is the plan. 

For the past 14 months I've been working on Midgard, and yesterday I handed over the last updates. The final rush to get everything wrapped up in time for the printers meant that I had to let everything else pause for a few days.

I will catch up with the Island Project, messages and updates in a day or two. December will be a month devoted fully to my Patreon, finish the Island Project, kick off Lendore Isle and hopefully manage to sneak in a few extras as well.