Map of the Day 17: The Western Hemisphere

You've all been very patient.  It's the weekend, so here it is, as promised: Calidar's western hemisphere.

Calidar's Western Hemisphere, Equirectangular Projection

I included the Great Caldera, which bisects the two hemispheres.  Its central location means it's difficult to split the world map in two without cutting it in half.  Note where the prime meridian runs through the Great Caldera: in Ellyrium, the Byzantine-like country to the west of Meryath.

There are lots of new names here to digest.  Eerien was introduced last weekend, and revisited in my summary post yesterday.  Omfall we visited this week, but it's worth going back and comparing its shape to the shape featured on this map – the Equirectangular Projection world map here significantly deforms the true shape of the continent, whereas the Stereographic Projection used in the Omfall post largely preserves its true shape.

The two as-yet unmentioned small island continents are the Isle of Obb in Calidar's far west, separated from Eerien by a narrow channel; and Lanmarroth, which is the largest island in a chain known as the Furyan Archipelago, curving from Omfall down to Mormoroth in the extreme south.  Lanmarroth is a mountainous land which separates the Sea of Aelghin from the vast Vengrim Ocean.

Going back to Omfall, the Taslan Peninsula straddling the equator points to the east, towards the Arm of Ule, which is the westernmost promontory of a super-continent in Calidar's eastern hemisphere.  In fact, Ule is one of three major regions/subcontinents in this one huge landmass.  Like earth, Calidar has more land in its northern hemisphere than in its southern.

This brings us to the end of this part of the Calidar World Tour, as well as the third week of Map of the Day.  It has been a fun ride for me, and I have really enjoyed sharing some of the things I've been working on so hard for the past six months.  Thanks for reading!

What started out as posting one map each day has grown to become a full article with multiple images each day, which is not really sustainable, especially while at the same time working on the most important and most enjoyable cartography project of my life so far.  I really need to give it my all, and there is an awful lot still to do.  I'm going to continue posting new maps to this blog – there is lots still to share on the journey to the publication and poster maps.   But I have decided to slow down a little, to allow me more time to concentrate once more on what matters most: making beautiful maps for you all to enjoy.

I promise to post at least one new article each week, and when I have time I will post more.

Maps of the Day 10-13: Eerien

To the west of the Great Caldera lies the vast continent of Eerien.

Eerien, Equirectangular and Lambert Conformal Conic Projections

The top map is an extract from the world map, showing a little more than a quarter of the map, from the Great Caldera in the east to the Isle of Obb in the west, and from Feorad Island in the north, down to Omfall straddling the equator.  From north to south this area is 10,800 km (6,750 miles), and along the equator it's a little over 25,800 km (16,125 miles).  The top line of the map is of course a single point, being the north pole.

Points of interest include a warped view of Feorad Island (compare it with the Lambert Conformal Conic views in the Feorad article to see what a huge difference the projection makes); the positioning of the Great Caldera in regard to the surrounding terrain; the northern part of Omfall, another huge continent which stretches down to the Antarctic Circle; the Aesean Duct, a narrow sea passage bisecting the two great continents; and of course Eerien herself.

Eerien is home to Calidar's tallest mountains, its highest peak reaching a towering 8,925 m (29,281 feet).  As such, the mountain design is of great importance.

The bottom image shows the true shape of Eerien, projected onto a shape-preserving Lambert Conformal Conic Projection.

The next images show the progression of Eerien's pre-erosion height map design.  This is currently the most developed area outside of the Great Caldera, although other parts of the world are slowly catching up.

Eerien, Lambert Conformal Conic Projection

The top and bottom images are 3D views of Eerien, looking north from a point high above Omfall.  Although they are 3D views, the curvature of the world is not shown, though 3D view of Eerien on the surface of the globe is in the works for a later date.

The top image is a preview of the design, straight from Photoshop.  If you look closely, you should be able to make out that the mountains are all roughly the same height throughout the map - legions of white peaks everywhere.  Eerien is supposed to be extremely mountainous, but we wanted to introduce some variation to the heights.  Considering the sheer size of the base map – a staggering 22,737 × 14,049 pixels – it's not that easy a thing to fix.

However, I came up with an idea, which you can see in the middle image.  It's an adjustment mask which I applied to the base map.  There is a single pure white spot, which remains at full height.  All the rest are increasingly darker shades of grey, which pushed down the height of the mountain peaks under them.  This was all painted manually, and finally blurred before being applied to the height map.

The bottom image shows the result.  At first glance you may be wondering what the big deal is, but look closely and you should be able to see quite a lot of variation has been introduced into the mountain ranges.

One last point: did you notice all the pillars scattered across the bottom image?  These are there for a specific purpose, and of course are only there as temporary markers.  Would you like to hazard a guess as to what they are marking?  Hint: there are lots of them due to the sheer size of the map.

The answer is that they are scale markers, to help keep all the altitudes in sync.  There are lots of them because the map is split up into smaller parts for erosion, and each part must have a marker on it.  The height of the markers is 8,925 m, and on the height map they are pure white, marking the top of the world.

Without these markers, the programs which handle the height maps would make the highest height on each map white, and scale the rest accordingly.  That would mean mountains of 8,925 m all over the world!

he next image shows two renditions of the same height map.  I'm sure you'll agree that the colour version is much easier to read, but unfortunately when I need to make manual changes to the map, I generally have to work on the black and white version.  It's tricky, to say the least.

Eerien Eroded Height Map, Lambert Conformal Conic Projection

This is the second draft of Eerien.  In order to perform erosion on this massive continent, I had to split it up into six different sections, each up to 9,999 x 9,999 pixels.  Of course the sections had to overlap, or putting them together would have been very difficult, since rivers would run in completely different courses.

Eerien's erosion has resulted in some very interesting terrain.  My favourite part is the plateau, which has gained a Grand Canyon-like ravine.  Immediately north of the plateau are the highest mountains in the world, so it's a fascinating area all round.

3D Views of Eerien, Lambert Conformal Conic Projection

In this last image, we present five different 3D views of Eerien's terrain.

At the top you can see the continent in its entirety.




The middle row shows two different perspectives on Calidar's version of the Himalaya Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau.  These are the highest mountains in the world, although it may be difficult to see that at these distances.

The plateau itself is not entirely flat, with its most predominant feature being the massive ravine which snakes its way through.  Presumably all the runoff from the mountains to the north has carved this huge scar into the plateau over many aeons.

Finally there is a closer look at the lowlands to the north of the great mountains, and then a look at the imposing mountains themselves from nearby.

That's it for Eerien for now.  As the Kickstarter start date approaches, we will continue to reveal the World of Calidar.