I think this is relevant here because I know it would help me a lot if I could do this.

I hear Jay on the podcast saying that he was working on making a 3D digital version of his world, and I really want to do that too. Has anyone done this? Any software to recommend? I was also thinking it'd be neat if this was done for Tritterrus, or however you spell it.

Oh, I second this question! This would be very cool software...if it doesn't exist yet, someone should create it =D I have created a 2D map, but I don't know how these shapes play out on a globe. While we're at it, this software should have like...tide generators and something =P

Andrew

I wish I had the knowledge to create it, hmm...this would be a good opportunity because I think a lot of people would like it and there isn't anything like it yet (at least not a very user-friendly one that would do what we'd want it to). I gotta learn how to do this! But it would take years for me to gain such expertise. Tide generators would be cool too! Oh, and also a calculable (I'm not sure if this is the word I want, but it sounds right) gravity, air density, and other atmospheric settings so you can make an earth-like-but-tweaked world if you want. Oh, and some of my patented ahead-of-the-times-and-way-more-than-I-could-afford-even-if-it-existed wishful thinking would say, I'd also like it to make the environment 100% capable of interaction, and customization. Allowing for you to render your made-up creatures and their behavior, culture, diet, language, weapons, etc. etc. so that you could even simulate different battles that take place, as if your world really existed. It'll be years before that kind of tech exists, so I think I'll agree with Andrew, just a 3D environment with tide generators, please!

I think it's already possible, but it would be extremely expensive.

RunningWolf, same here...I know a little bit of programming but not nearly enough for this =P

Andrew

Yeah, I imagine it is, but what I meant by 'possible' was: that I can afford it for my purposes and that it will run on a simple macbook pro instead of whatever real pros use...



Yes, for now it is just a dream...perhaps someday someone will design something like that, until then or whenever we find something that does a decent job of just showing us the worlds we build,

Maybe Dieki would like to create something like that.

If he does, I would be more than happy to help him by testing and reviewing it! Anyone with the ability to make something like this should know that it's a rare thing to be able to make a program that's one-of-a-kind...sort of at least, and a good opportunity. I may even try to do it myself someday if I ever have the knowledge required.

There actually is a program that synthesizes spherical worlds and gives you a flattened projection. However, it doesn't let you take a flat map and turn it into a globe, it does however let you turn a globe into a map. Also....it's expensivish ($40).

Thanks for the reply, Seer! That sounds cool! I might be interested in that when I'm rich. Really, that does sound like something I would like (although I'm not sure that my world is a globe... but I think it could be...)
But what I mean by "3D rendition" is like if you could make a map that would be like a satellite image that you can zoom into like on google earth, and then look closely at trees, clearings, cities, mountains...like a video game world, but your own fantasy world! Wouldn't that be awesome?

My ideal feature-set for a mapping program is similar to RunningWolf's, though slightly less ambitious (I don't need it to be 3D, especially not all the time---I just want it to be like Coriakin's magic in Dawn Treader (the book), but able to fill in the gaps with something reasonable even if not quite right.) Some programs that I've tried (some time ago ... they're all Windows-only, I think, and I boot into Windows so rarely that I can't remember which of them I even have installed) and you might find useful include Terragen, FractalWorld (that link's via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, as the site has apparently been down for years), and L3DT. The one mapping program that I can heartily recommend---though it's only 2D---is AutoREALM (except that it's increasingly bit-rotted).

(If anyone's interested, I made a somewhat fuller description of my wants and review of those programs on my blog a few years ago.)

Those look like cool programs, kingjon. Yeah, I admit my specifications are pretty ambitious, I want a program that makes maps more like the movie version of Coriakin's map! I read your blog posts and I can recommend Campaign Cartographer 3, it's really nice, there are some good tutorials so you can learn the program on youtube (I used my ipod to view the video while I sat at my unconnected pc). Here's a map I made on CC3: Furim.

I've considered Campaign Cartographer. However, it's quite expensive (at least for my budget ... I don't remember what the price was), with (as far as I can see) no demo version or free trial period, so if I bought it and found it didn't suit my needs I'd have wasted my money. And when I looked into it, it looked like overkill for the part of my "requirements" it fit, but counter-productive for some other parts, and (like every other tool) ignored others. And at present I'd be wasting my money, because I now boot into Windows at most once a month or so (and then that's just to check for updates ...), but CC is Windows-only.

If you have any specific questions about it, I may be able to answer them for you (but might not be able to). Also, if it's worth it to you, I believe you can run windows on mac (is that what you're using, or are you using linux?).

Linux. (And a somewhat unusual configuration, at that.) If my desktop were working I'd be able to run Windows in a VM, and there is always Wine, but VMs and emulation layers are workarounds I'd rather not have to deal with.

Ok, I hope you find something that works!

What Jay was doing was actually on Gimp. I've considered trying it myself. Anyone want to know the gist of how he was working on it?

That's a silly question if I ever heard one. YES.

I was sort of buying time. * blinks and grins *

Anyway...what he was basically doing was nothing more than mapping his map onto a globe, so he could see what it really was like rather than always in some projection or other. If you go into gimp, it has a little thing in filters called 'animation'. Inside that, there is something called 'spinning globe'. You click it and it brings up a thing with settings for how many frames you want, and how fast the globe should be spinning, and stuff like that...the computer I do my images on has a really low amount of processing power, so I don't fiddle with the animation at all. I closed everything down and tried it this morning though (just to see, not with an actual map), and it looks like it should work.

The only thing is, the image you want to map onto the globe has to be tweaked, not the actual mapping, to get it how you want onto the globe. Fiddling with white space, stretching things, so on, until it looks like you want it to. There's no way to change, as far as I could see, how it maps onto the globe in the actual settings.

Ooh, cool! I'm planning on trying to do something like that on Blender someday... Thanks for the intelligence, agent Juliet!

By the way, awhile ago I found this program, anyone heard of Artifex Terra 3D?
It looks really nice, as you can see from the screenshots, etc. Unfortunately it's only available for PC (and a powerful one on top of that) so I cannot use it. Thought I'd bring it to this thread though in case someone else would benefit (and maybe tell me if it works good).

* salutes * A pleasure.

* is now trying to do this with her world map *

Well, hope you can get it to work!

If it works, will you show us?

Sure.... * is still trying to figure out what .gif does and doesn't do * It'll take awhile since my computer is so slow, and I have to keep tweaking it and re-rendering it. But as soon as I've got it I'll see what y'all think.

Okay.

Yeah, it'll be fun to see what you end up with.

3DMax and Maya are good programs. Maya takes a little getting used to but the possibilities for really creating your world are endless.

Any news on this, Juliet?

* shakes head very slowly * Actually, yes, quite a while ago. And I spent nearly half an hour scouring the forum for this thread and couldn't find it. * laughs * Well, here it is now. I'll dig up the .gif again.

Okay.

K, so I've discovered my most latest version still is slightly squished sidewise (as in everything is narrower than it ought to be), but here it is anyway. What d'y'all think?

Nice!!

Nice! How did you make that?

Cool!

That's neat. It would probably be helpful for envisioning your world as a whole.

Wants to know too.

Thanks, guys.

Yeah, it's nice. When it comes to positioning and the actual size of the oceans it really helped me realize where I had to adjust.

Gimp! * grins * It's a photo manipulation program, but it has a couple fun animation features tucked in on the side. I experimented with the 'map to globe'. (The original map was hand drawn, and scanned in, not computer drawn.)

Gimp? I have a Gimp 2. Do you think it would work with Photoshop?

I dunno. I've never touched or seen photoshop in my life (unless Mama let me hit the keyboard when I was three * grins *). But if you have Gimp, that should work. I don't know about the various versions of it. I don't even know what version I have. * wry * But it ought to work.

Okay.

How well do you know gimp?

Who?

The program gimp

I know Gimp, but I am more better at Photoshop.

There is a way to do it with gimp, I believe it is map to world or something like that...

Oh! Lady Rwebhu Kidh already mentioned that...

Resurrects thread.

Anyway, I have been tinkering around Gimp and I made this...

It is my world in 2D, and the second is in 3D. So do you want to make one for Triterrus (if it is still on going)?

Cool, Blayne.

Nice job, Blayne.

I've been playing around with a 3D program I found the other day--still learning how to use it, but here's something I made yesterday:




I'm planning on making different places that are in my fantasy world--we'll see how it goes.

The program is called Terraray if anyone's interested--only thing is that it's for macs only.

That looks good, Jeremiah.