How Long does a Terrain take?

[bustr]

I started my new project "riftval" on 11\13\17 and it's taken me up to yesterday 2\15\18 to complete the three rift valley upthrust mountain ranges that separate the three countries. Some days I put in a few hours, some days I put in 12 hours like Sat\Sun each weekend. A few times over the months I had the flu or couldn't stand the sight of the project.


11\15\17 the first day laying down the core shapes of the upthrust mountain ranges in rift valley 1 and getting started. Other than that, I was clueless to what I would create and kept looking at photos from East Africa of the Great Rift Valley. You think some of this looks weird, the real rift valley looks like it's from another galaxy. In Ethiopia there are isolated upthrust blocks 1-2 thousand feet high with a patchwork quilt of farm feilds covering every flat space on the top. Wonder if that is where Waffle got the idea for one of the medterr tile set agrarian tiles....






1\8\18 the first rift valley finished. You can see geo feature transition experiments in sand stone color at the tops of all these valley clips becasue there is a 12,000ft boarder surrounding the arena that I have to transition down into the green quilt pattern 5000ft canyon land. The color bands are elevation bands 5000, 3000, 2000, 1000, 500, 100, 30. Makes it easy to have everything running down slope to the three lakes and the task group furball pond in the center if you purposely put in an elevation gradient.





2\4\18 the second rift valley finished.





2\15\18 the third rift valley finished.

[bustr]

Now I'm starting the canyon lands in the back of each country. Those structures to the left of the map will probably be changed now that I'm having to transition into the deep running ravine.





These things are pretty simple to lay down the foundation for. Need to turn this into one larger structure that comes out with side feeder canyons into those sinuous gorges. At this prep stage it's easy to make a change that large.

[bustr]

Now I have hang of it and it just falls in place......

[bustr]

Never liked that transition above the volcano field.

[Meatwad]

Nice!

 Thanks for your hard work 

[bustr]

That's it for today, I've gotten carried away here again in the general forum. This what it takes to build things like this just getting the gross structure blocks in place. I still have the finish carving and texturing, then painting. And each one of those cuts between lobes is a potential start for a runoff canyon that will define the low spot between two ridges.

[bustr]

Drank more coffee and this is just falling in place. Only two more spans to finish.

[bustr]

Sunday morning coffee work. The gorges are ready for a canyon system. Got another pot brewing for that work.

[Ciaphas]

Looking sharp Bustr


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[SlipKnt]

Wow!!!  Really appreciate what you do.  I'm lacking a program or two from my system or I'd start trying myself. 

I wouldn't mind trying a few things. 

[bustr]

Got another pot of coffee, painted in the base outline area for the first elevation layer. Now I start stacking coins. This is just a brush set 2.5-3 miles diameter and elevations 6500, 8500, 10500 and 12000. Four passes to lay down the topo layers. Then clean up and artistic fiddling. I'm building a 3D geo map like you would cut cardboard and stack it to make a mountain.

[bustr]

One more country's canyon land in place, one more to go....

[bustr]

Canyon land for the last country is in....  Now I have to clean all this up and do the finishing work and paint.

[bustr]

Now I'm at the point I have to test making the "look" on some canyons until I like what I'm getting. I'll be playing with this for awhile, probably should just do this whole gorge and hope something happens that I like. The Smooth Catmul tool does a fine job weathering but maybe it's how far back I started the cut for this long side canyon. I'll have to keep experimenting. I threw some color and trees into this for contrast since that sandstone tile is not very good for 3D contrast visualization.

[bustr]

How you paint structures will impact what you think of them. I'm getting the finishing down to something I like better, I'm still working on a look. That sandstone tile reflects so much light it makes things look distorted. That is why when I'm prototyping I use that light green to look at the work. Then some directions will always be in shadow becasue of the sun. It always ends up being I have to touch each feature one at a time to do the finishing work.