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.

Map of the Day 9: Feorad Isle

Welcome to week two of Map of the Day–the Calidar World Tour!

Feorad Isle – Calidar's northernmost land, Lambert Conformal Conic Projection

Feorad Isle, First Draft
Equirectangular Projection

Feorad Isle, First Draft
Lambert Conformal Conic Projection

We begin our world tour this week with a look at the top of the world–the north pole.  There is no land at the pole itself, but there's an island close to it, which is known as Feorad Isle.  It's likely a cold, mostly frozen land, the vast majority of which lies firmly within the Arctic Circle – which on Calidar lies at 66.5ºN.

Continuing last week's discussion of projection problems, the north and south polar areas of any world pose a particularly thorny problem for world builders working with a rectangular base map, such as the Equirectangular Projection.  The problem is that areas north of 60ºN and south of 60ºS are stretched progressively more and more, until the single point of a pole is represented by the whole top or bottom edge of the map.

Feorad Isle, Second Draft
Lambert Conformal Conic Projection

Draw landforms in the normal way, and they will invariably end up spiky and squashed-looking.  You can see this in the first draft images on the left.  The solution is to reproject the map to a more suitable projection, and design the area using that projection.  Later, this can be projected back to Equirectangular and added back in to the base map – where of course it will now look stretched, but that's as it should be on that projection.

Feorad Isle, Second Draft
Equirectangular Projection

The second draft black and white images show the fixed coastlines, first edited on a Lambert Conformal Conic Projection, then reprojected back to the base Equirectangular Projection.

It's important to consider projections when designing terrain, too, because otherwise the terrain will end up just as warped as the coastlines here were.  This is why each of Calidar's continents has been designed using a projection chosen for that continent.  The Great Caldera is circular, and away from the equator, so it uses the Stereographic Projection.  Feorad Isle is close to the north pole, and so could use Polar Stereographic, but the other side of the pole is uninteresting, with no land, so instead I chose the Lambert Conformal Conic, whose shape is very efficient in this case.

Mountain Design
Lambert Conformal Conic Projection

Looking at these images again, I wonder if perhaps I have gone a little too far in reducing the spikiness of the terrain.  What do you think?  Please let me know in the comments.

After the coastlines have been fixed, it's time to build a height map, working from +Bruce Heard's mountain design.  In this case, the design was squished by the projection change, so it required quite a bit of tweaking; working in an appropriate projection is important not just for coastlines, but also for terrain design.  Even a long mountain range painted onto the Equirectangular projection maps above will be squashed down to a much shorter one when reprojected into Lambert Conformal Conic – or onto a globe.

Pre-erosion terrain design–satellite

Pre-erosion terrain design–3D view

Once the base height map has been designed, it's time for simulated erosion.  In the 3D views here you can see the map in its initial design stage, then in its finished stage.  Note the very distinctive valleys carved into the land, and also how the blobby orange hills turn into sculpted peaks.

Post-erosion terrain design–satellite

Post-erosion terrain design–3D view

As with the black and white coastline maps, the finished height maps are reprojected into Equirectangular form and added to the world map.  In this way, the world map is slowly taking form. Once its complete, we'll be able to produce accurate maps of any section of the world in whatever projection is needed.


Next time on our world tour, we will journey southwards to one of Calidar's biggest continents of all.