HELP ME make a satellite map of a fictional country!!!

TheOwl

I am experimenting with Bryce 7 Pro.

I made this land mass that is supposed to be representing a fictional nation but it is not enough for me.

The things I want to add to it is:

1.) Make a convincing shoreline.
2.) Flatten certain areas for the coastal and inland cities.
3.) Make trails linking one city with another.
3.) Modify the texture to show and separate the flat lands, forests and mountain regions from each other.

sriesch

Given the variety of things you want to do, possibly this may turn out to be a more complex project with multiple approaches. There are several things you may want to research and/or consider.
For starters, it may help us to know how you have created the material currently in use (if you want to use it as a starting point and not replace it completely.) A screenshot of the Materials Lab would be helpful.

If you are looking to completely replace your material, the first thing I would look at would be something that changes the materials based on altitude (look at one of the existing materials as a starting point.) That would allow you to have different colors representing the coastal areas, flat lands, cities, forests, and mountain regains simply based on altitude, so you could create it all with a single terrain, perhaps with the coastal areas, flat lands, and trails sharing the same lowest part of the material, forests in the middle, and mountains at the top.
Another option is to have multiple overlapping terrains, perhaps one for the coastlines, one for the trails, and one for the forests and mountains. The advantage to this would be allowing the use of different materials for various parts of the terrain, so you could keep your existing material but draw dark lines in the Terrain Editor so the lower material would show through.
In either case, I would suggest making the cities a different material on a different object rather than trying to get it as part of the terrain material, which might be very difficult. Either make a second terrain or just apply the city material to flattened stones which can be easily (re)positioned at the appropriate places.

TheOwl

Sean Riesch said:

Another option is to have multiple overlapping terrains, perhaps one for the coastlines, one for the trails, and one for the forests and mountains. The advantage to this would be allowing the use of different materials for various parts of the terrain, so you could keep your existing material but draw dark lines in the Terrain Editor so the lower material would show through.
In either case, I would suggest making the cities a different material on a different object rather than trying to get it as part of the terrain material, which might be very difficult. Either make a second terrain or just apply the city material to flattened stones which can be easily (re)positioned at the appropriate places.

You know what this might be a more efficient technique to follow. Have separate land masses for the shore, flat land, forest and mountains.

OK I will see what I can do with this and I will update as soon as I got a workable model.

sriesch

Once you get one terrain completed, you can copy it and use it as a starting point for a second terrain that will perhaps be roughly the same shape but stick up through or out past the first one in spots. Of course the down side to doing this is if you want to make any changes, you would have to make the same change to both terrains, or delete and recreate one of them, which could be very difficult if your changes aren't minor.