Dragonsbane
Proud Grognard
I think for mine it is a matter of doing the tasks in the correct order.
Coastlines / fill in the rest of the land - do with the smallest brush, make it look fractal/jagged
Color the land grassland, since it will be the one used most on my map
Add mountains, make sure to kinda guess where tectonic plates would come together for realism
Add rivers, usually coming from mountains towards coasts, this was done with the subtract tool on smallest brush, then lakes too
Add forest object, make sure coniferous are near mountains? Sounded correct lol
Add forest textures under forest icons
Add some other textures for swamps, deserts, etc. Make sure in correct places, ie desert behind a mountain range on one side, or swamp in a area with many rivers
Add cities - on this map it was city normal dot, huge city dot with circle
Add text - 9 for city, 11 for capital city of country, 13 for city state, 21 for country name
I save it along the way as well, for example I have a version without towns or text, so I can use it to make other things, perhaps one shaded for factions, another to show monster areas, and so on
I found that taking screenshots with it super-zoomed in gave awesome results, although you need to stitch together the larger map in GIMP or Photoshop. The one you download is 1024x768 and can't show anything zoomed in. I made one that is 4k x 3k and it looks great all blown up, ready for microdetails in PS.
Coastlines / fill in the rest of the land - do with the smallest brush, make it look fractal/jagged
Color the land grassland, since it will be the one used most on my map
Add mountains, make sure to kinda guess where tectonic plates would come together for realism
Add rivers, usually coming from mountains towards coasts, this was done with the subtract tool on smallest brush, then lakes too
Add forest object, make sure coniferous are near mountains? Sounded correct lol
Add forest textures under forest icons
Add some other textures for swamps, deserts, etc. Make sure in correct places, ie desert behind a mountain range on one side, or swamp in a area with many rivers
Add cities - on this map it was city normal dot, huge city dot with circle
Add text - 9 for city, 11 for capital city of country, 13 for city state, 21 for country name
I save it along the way as well, for example I have a version without towns or text, so I can use it to make other things, perhaps one shaded for factions, another to show monster areas, and so on
I found that taking screenshots with it super-zoomed in gave awesome results, although you need to stitch together the larger map in GIMP or Photoshop. The one you download is 1024x768 and can't show anything zoomed in. I made one that is 4k x 3k and it looks great all blown up, ready for microdetails in PS.
