dobdriver's maps

[eugenelavery]

Great maps as always, dobdriver/drunkapple.  I have already used your Bunbury and Maldives maps for my CJ and am now moving on to your Dubai map - so you can see I put your maps to good use.  I was wondering if you could do a map of Antananarivo in Madagascar?  I think you will find the geography of Antananarivo very interesting.

[dobdriver]

G'day Devotees,

Well what a week it's been, the map-o-matic is warmed up and a couple of the more intricate maps have finally rolled off her. Phew!!

Thanks Guillaume, Yes La Réunion is quite a sight. Did you ever work with the Luxembourg maps?

Welcome Abcd, Thanks mate. Calgary unfortunately in un-conducive to adding the rivers as the lowest point of the map is lower than the rivers. As a n aside I always try to add what water I can and if a map is dry well there is no water or there is dry land lower than the water. I will probably cut and turn Toronto as others have also asked for a cut down version.

Welcome mate, Thanks and I have a La Crosse map bubbling away as I type.

That Sounds cool Supremec, I look forward to seeing it. Thanks.

Welcome also RubiconMango, I have begun a map of Townsend and will be ready soon, Thanks.

Thanks Johnsmith, it was your lucky day.

G'Day Eugene, Cool your CJ is looking great mate and a map of Antananarivo will soon be available. Cheers.


Now the other fun part.


What's in the box today, hmmm I wonder. (rustle, rustle, rustle). No not Russell.



And first passed the post today is a request courtesy of Paulo, Thanks old mate.



Rio de Janeiro is 55.296km x 41.984km.


Garota de Ipanema




Up next is courtesy of Johnsmith, Thanks mate.



Mt Whitney is 53.248km x 45.056km.


A particularly spectacular joint.



And on his heels is a request courtesy of Smithers, thanks mate.



Kremenchuk is 32.768km x 32.768km.


Cruisin' on the Dnieper.



Unfortunately I have temporarily misplaced this requestors details, Sorry.



Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky is 53.248km x 53.248km.


Need room for a sub!



And last for today is courtesy of Waterclaw, Thanks mate.



Turku is 45.056km x 49.152km.


The 2011 Capital of Culture in Europe.


And so say all of us... Until next time.
Thanks for looking and have a great day.


Thanks and cheers
dobs.

[Izidor44]

Hi Dob'

I always feel admirative about your skills : it's marvellous.

Thanks for mapping an ukrainian map ! Kremenchug is really REALLY impressive !!

Did you edit the water elevation on that map ? I mean, how did you manage the possible difference of elevation between various water areas ?

Often, those big rivers have many dams and hydro-electical massive constructions : water is then "higher" above the dam and lower after passing through it. I didn't check this location, so I'm just guessing.

...and Ukraine... ah ! ...have you tried the red vodka, the one with pepper ? Woooch ! 

Na zdarovie !

Izi

[epicblunder]

The Rio map is great, but the Petropavolosk one is Awesome!

[StanislavSoltys1]

Excellent maps! I like the one based on the city from Kamchatka, may use it. How's my Sitka map going? I can't wait for it's release.

[NeoMaestro9318]

I couldn't help but notice a lack of mountain goat Sim territory during my absence...!

(Yep, forgot my previous password. FFFUUU-)

[Sciurus]

Stunning maps!
Well not yet, 'cause I wait for having more of my BATs to recreate my region...


Guillaume

[art128]

Great maps dobs. You're doing a fantastic job!

I really enjoyed your Hiroshima version, was great to play on it. If I can have my HDD problem resolved, I'll definetely work on it again untill the last 16x16m tile is filled.

The onl thing I had to do is level a little bit the ground to have an unity around the river, so I can use my River beds MMPs as I explained in my MD to 976.

Anyway, thanks for all the hard works you've done making these maps. Anytime soon I am sure we will have all the parts of the Earth in SC4!

[Sgwk372]

G'Day Devotees,

Well I've been tinkering down in the map factory once again, almost caught up on all the requests. Just a few to go. the old girls' got steam comin' out her ears.

So todays show is again another request map(s) courtesy of GMT, Thanks GMT. This is a pack of four maps.



LA Northwest

LA Southwest

LA Northeast

LA Southeast

Each map is 73.728km x 49.152km.



If One has the where with all and a puter with horsepower these maps will join seamlessly in a single large (monster) map 36 tiles by 24 tiles for an unprecedented SC4 view of the whole Los Angeles basin.

Thanks GMT, I cannot wait to see it. We don't want names, just pics will be fine. 


And that my friends, is your lot for the day.


Thanks for looking and have a great day.

Cheers
dobs

Oh These maps are awesome! I really want that monster map.

[dobdriver]

G'Day Devotees,

I only have a couple of maps completed this week, but I have been busy in the backstore. I have updated over 200 of my maps on the stex, many only requiring some new pics and quite a few also require new readmes. Most of the TD maps will be totally updated and to that end I have completed and uploaded new maps for Wellington, Mt Ruapehu, Mt Cook, Bundaberg and Albany. On the lex I have updated and uploaded maps of Albany, Lake Onoke and Nth Stradbroke Island. I have finished a new map of Brissy but as yet it is not rendered so that will have to wait.

I know our catalogue looks a little disfunctional at the minute but I have worked my way through about 3/4 of it and so should updated soon.


G'Day Izi,
Thanks mate and yours too, you are making some wonderful maps. I can't remember offhand if I lowered it,(most American maps are lowered), but if it was, it was the same amount all over. I never like to twist terrain to fit water as the elevation falls become inaccurate and so there goes the accuracy tag. Water just has to fit where it fits, so to speak.

Thanks Epic, How's your maps going? I almost have Yakatat Bay finished.

Thanks Stan, Sitka's bubbling along nicely, there is a fair bit of detail to capture.

Maestro old mate, How ya been? Yeah there been a few that haven't been too mountain goatish. Although some are deceiving as I changed the colours in terraformer so everything wasn't white. ;<).

Yes where are your bats Guillaume? Thanks mate.

G'Day Art, That's not good to hear, harddrive woes bring nothing but misery and lost bytes. Thanks mate.

G'day SG and welcome. That mate is your job to stitch them together. GMT was trying to but I think he had trouble scrolling to the top left after about the 32^nd tile.


Okay, a small show today.



And out of the box first is a request courtesy of RubiconMango, Thanks mate.



Townsend is 40.96km x 40.96km.


All those lakes, but unfortunately the lie of the land precludes adding them. ie the lowest points of the map are not water.



And next and last is courtesy of a request by JoeChang, Thanks mate.



Gwaii Haanas is 81.92km x 65.536km.

Up North.


So brings us to another close, until next time.


Thanks for looking and have a great day.


Cheers
dobs

[epicblunder]

That Gwaii Haanas map looks great.   
That name always sounds weird to me - the other native and 'first nation' names on this part of the pacific coast sound nothing like that.  I think i liked 'Queen Charlotte' better, even though i never met the gal.   

Thanks Epic, How's your maps going? I almost have Yakatat Bay finished.

The mapping is going slow right now, RL has been busy and i've been working on some other custom content.  That's awesome that you're still doing Yakutat, i figured you would have stopped that one when i started doing my own maps.  I took a stab at doing it but i don't know how to deal with the large holes on the mountainsides in the SRTM data.  How did you deal with that, find a different dataset?

Also, I've been experimenting with watermasks a bit.  How do you achieve the smoothly descending seafloor on your maps (like, say, the hawaiian island maps)?  I'm only a newbie with photoshop, but what i've been doing is making a two-layer watermask, the bottom one the ~245m for shoreline, the upper layer deeper water (~225m), then blending the two together and with the land .png by hand using the blur tool.  It seems to work great for rivers but for actual shoreline, bays, ocean, etc. it's functional but doesn't look great.

[Sciurus]

Where are my BATs? In my computer   I keep it secret for the moment (the real excuse is: I have a problem with the PIM-X I cannot resolve...)
Great maps! I prefer this one: Gwaii Haanas!! It looks waaw!!



Guillaume

[StanislavSoltys1]

Thanks Dob,  thought you forgot about it. lol Nice maps this show!

[gn_leugim]

nice maps man, keep them up and coming

[eugenelavery]

Hey dobdriver,

I know you already have one request going from me but I would like to add another one to the list if possible - the island of St. Barthelemy in the Caribbean.  Keep up the great work!

[dobdriver]

After battling for what seemed like æons with the Dragon of Ha Long Bay, drunkapple returned victorious, but did he return unscathed...

G'day Devotees,

Sounds a bit melodramatic from that old reprobate I think, anyhow again only a couple to upload from the map-o-matic this week. Again I have been busy updating Team Downunder maps on the stex and lex and this week sees Broome, Geelong, Phillip Island, Things Southern Vales, Alice Springs, Bungle Bungles, Mt Augustus, Uluru, McLaren Vale and Kaikoura updated with 1 second and 1/2 second DEM data and uploaded. Only forty left and the stex will be be finished.    Phew!

G'Day Epic, Thanks it does seem like an odd name.

How did you deal with that, find a different dataset?

Of course 

Also, I've been experimenting with watermasks a bit.  How do you achieve the smoothly descending seafloor on your maps (like, say, the hawaiian island maps)?  I'm only a newbie with photoshop, but what i've been doing is making a two-layer watermask, the bottom one the ~245m for shoreline, the upper layer deeper water (~225m), then blending the two together and with the land .png by hand using the blur tool.  It seems to work great for rivers but for actual shoreline, bays, ocean, etc. it's functional but doesn't look great.

Water, water everywhere! It would seem some get a little peeved when requested maps don't end up with water on them, I take water addition on maps very seriously and will add as much as is feasibly possible. When I started this lark I looked at quite a few maps and was basically quite disappointed at the quality of water addition without exception. Either canyons and pissholes in the snow or undersea cliffs at the waters edge. Game water has a very small range, about 30m before it begins to get ugly. With a couple of techniques I can push it up to 40m but that really is the limit. I have gone through quite a few different trials to gather and then retain water detail, some have been a little crude.

Most know I gather water from large go-ogle satellite images lassooing the water with the mouse. A tedious but still the only way to accurately capture it. I am always on the look out for some tool to do this but alas there are none, even photoshop's quick selection fails miserably (alright for a red jumper on a blue background in a 6 by 4 snapshot, not so good for 500 green/blue islands on a green/blue sea in a 25000 pixel image though.) Anyhow after capture and transforming on to the dem (don't forget to make a dem layer copy and use levels to stretch and high light it.) one has the first layer of the water mask. We'll take it that warp wasn't used during transforming.

Next make two copies of that layer using 'control j' this will give depth and defintion to the smaller creeks.
Now with the magic wand select all the water and make a new layer below the 3 water layers, feather 1 pixel choose the colour '0a0c0c and flood fill that layer.
Press 'control d' to release the selection and focus on a water layer and magic wand it. (one doesn't want the feather), then contract it by 3.
Hide all the other layers and with the lassoo (minus) relieve the selection from any blank areas or edges (Hey one's spent hours, days weeks collecting this data, one doesn't want to sink it now with sloppy painting.)
Now this will become a template as it may take a few hours depending on how intricate the data is you don't really want to do it again do you? so press 'control c' to copy and make a new layer below everything and press'control v' to paste it. With the magic wand again select that water and focus on the top layer, feather 1 pixel press 'control c' followed by 'control v' and it will paste it into a new layer.
Ok something different now, from the menu Image>Adjustments>Replace Color - Set Fuzziness to 200, Selection, and lightness to -5 and OK.
Focus on the the template, magic wand and contract 2, feather 2, focus on the top layer, control c, control v, replace color -5.
Focus on the the template, magic wand and contract 4, feather 2, focus on the top layer, control c, control v, replace color -5.
Focus on the the template, magic wand and contract 9, feather 3, focus on the top layer, control c, control v, replace color -12.
Focus on the the template, magic wand and contract 19, feather 6, focus on the top layer, control c, control v, replace color -18.
Focus on the the template, magic wand and contract 34, feather 8, focus on the top layer, control c, control v, replace color -24.

Righto one can now delete the stretched dem layer and the water template layer, that should leave you with the dem layer and 10 layers of the water mask. Flatten it and save it.

Open it in terraformer and the lowest water level will be 119m, I set the lowest in terra to 66 and 250 in the middle box so it sucks everything from sea level down without affecting the land.

Job's done  ;<)

Ah Guillaume's secret stash of bats, well I for one can't wait to see and get them. Thanks mate.

Fear not Stan I try not to forget. 

Thanks GN, Starting to get through some of the sticklers now.

Thanks Eugene, It's your lucky week this week. 



And so to the show we go.

And without further ado todays first request is courtesy of  Phxgreenfire, Thanks mate.



Ha Long Bay is 49.152km x 45.056km.


It is said there are 775 islands in Ha Long Bay, I got a lot of them.


The next couple of requests are courtesy of Eugene, Thanks mate.



Antananarivo is 53.248km x 57.344km.


Look like they grow a bit of rice in the paddocks here.


Some more Caribbean Delights



St Barthélemy is 18.432km x 12.226km.


A beautiful albeit small small island.


And so once again we come to another end, until next.


Thanks for looking and have a great day.


Cheers
dobs

[Kitsune]

Can I make another request? I would like to have a map of Barbados.. the only one on the stex was from 2005.

[eugenelavery]

Thanks for the two maps, dobdriver.  St Barts is indeed very small but it looks to be an amazing place.  If you get a spare moment you should look up St Barts Airport on youtube - you will see some of the scariest landings imaginable.  A very challenging airport for pilots.

[epicblunder]

excellent info drunk, thanks.  I'll give it a go next time around; it certainly sounds more efficient than redrawing the watermask multiple times.  Just one question: what's this "feathering"?  It sounds like a tool but i'm not seeing one in the panel....

rather late edit:  I found the 'feather', nevermind on that one.   

[GMT]

Oh These maps are awesome! I really want that monster map.

Look a little further beyond the presentation of these maps and think about it again 

long story short: awesome maps, but the entireness can't be played due to several reasons