Quick and Dirty Relief Terrain Backgrounds

For the Sklarbro Country maps I wanted to give the feel of the National Geographic Atlas style.  The problem with doing this style from scratch is associated with the well detailed shaded terrain that lies underneath all of the other mapped data.  I did not have the time to go in and create the shaded relief by hand, so it became necessary to make a work around...

step 1: crumple up some white paper and scan it, increase it's contrast and flatten it to a greyscale

step 2: create 3 copies of the layer and rotate (90, 180, & 270) and stretch them to fit.  Set the opacity on those three layers to 25%.  Flatten  You will have something that looks like this: 

step 4: create a copy of this layer, and then clip the texture map to your landforms

step 5: using the copy you made, compress the dimensions either vertical or horizontal to create areas of high terrain variation (presumably mountains) and then select the area that is supposed to be mountainous.  Feather and then inverse the selection so you can delete the unwanted areas. and have a gradual increase in terrain relief.

step 6: play with the high relief area layer's opacity till you are happy with the result and then merge the two layers together. 

step 7: using the color dodge tool to create areas with highlights and the color burn tool to create the shadows of the mapped "terrain." Follow the rivers with the burn tool to show some erosion.  As far as the intensity of the dodge and burn, well, that is a matter of personal preference.  In the end you will now have a terrain map that looks like this:

step 8: paint white areas to mute the relief in relatively flat areas that transition to clear for the mountainous areas.  This way you can have (as in this map) coastal plains, hills, and mountains with a soft transition between the forms.

step 9: set this layer above your land color layer and below your hydro layer.  Set the layer characteristics to "Multiply" and play with the opacity till you are happy.  Mine looked something like this:

step 10: You are basically done with the terrain now.  Add your features and finish it up.  Shown here is the final terrain with features and no text elements or finishing graphics:

I hope this tutorial helps you to make something beautiful.

So, here is the final version for Sklarbro Country in all its glory.

In the beginning...

It is always difficult to start up something that has very little conceptual beginnings.  It is almost always necessary to formulate your idea before putting pencil to paper.  It is best to completely world build and determine cultural significance of roads and how they flow with the natural setting they are supposed to traverse.  You should concept the types of vehicles or locomotion will be traversing the roadways.  You should know what kind of hats people wear and what color makes their eyes shine best... Yes, that would be the best, but when does one other than Tolkien have that kind of background world building built up.  Seriously, one never has that level of detail available to them at the beginning of the project.

This is similatr to launching a new website and trying to step into the world of designing for commission.  You hold off because you want this aspect of the site to be perfect, this widget needs to be perfect, that thingamagig needs to be crossed off, this piece needs to be finished.  The problem with this mindset is that there is always something that could be finished or that you can wait for.  This site is up and live, but I am sure there are aspects of it that can use some tuning up.  Please bear with us.

Welcome to the site, please leave comments and thanks you for stopping by.

--Scott