Top 10 World Map Fails | Inkarnate Stream

foreign welcome to another incarnate live stream today we're going to be covering the top 10 world map fails that means the top 10 mistakes that I kind of see users making over and over again when putting together a world map with the fantasy world style so go ahead and buckle up we're going to be covering these 10 issues if you have one of your own world maps made with the fantasy world style go ahead and open up that map and we can go ahead and maybe you can follow along kind of make some of these changes yourselves and take some notes because hey you know people make mistakes it's okay I make mistakes so let's go ahead and cover those there's going to be 10 and I'm not going to be covering um I'm not going to be going any particular order but we're going to go from 10 to 1. we're going to cover each one of these mistakes and there's no map to clone this time like I said totally recommend you kind of open up your own map and then kind of take a look at your world map and see if you've made these same mistakes so it's going to go from 10 to 1. the first mistake that I commonly see is just not using the grid the grid is your biggest Ally when you're trying to put together distances scale you're trying to figure out from one um place to another this happens often players will or players or users will ask DMS will ask hey what's how do I determine that this city is a 200 miles from this city right and the grid is going to be that trick so if you want to know the difference we want to know how do I make it so that this right here is going to be 200 miles then you can and you would need to make sure that you set the Grid at a surf specific set or measurement so it could be 200 square miles or 200 square kilometers depending on the measurement that you want to use the grid is going to be your ally right let's say that this is 500 square feet and you wanted to have a 5 hundred square foot or maybe a 50 mile square or 50 mile Forest then you would know how big a forest is this is important if you're a DM because hey you need to know the distances between two locations you need to know the scale that you're working with all those important so definitely when you're starting out your map use the Grid it's super helpful always always use that grid alright number nine what is what's going on next here and number nine we're going to have unrealistic coastlines unrealistic coastlines are caused by first making when you're making your land masses you make a giant blob first and then you start putting down all your stamps the way to make more realistic coastlines is to do that second pass that means you're going to be doing another pass with a smaller brush around your coastlines to give it more definition so if you want to make inlets you want to make uh archipelagos channels things like that so what I do is I go to the brush tool make sure it's the subtract mode I'm going to use the circle brush because the edgy brush has limitations on how small it can get so use that circular brush I'm going to set it to size seven okay and what you can do is you can go in and make archipelagos or Islands let's say I want to make this into an island right here let's say that I want to create an inlet or a bay like this okay or if I want to make maybe some you know make sure you get all that stuff out there too you can use a larger brush if you want seven is just a decent size let's say that I want to have like a series of islands up here just take that smaller brush Circle brush again don't use an edgy brush because it just again there are limitations on the size and so if you want more realistic coastlines go in with that smaller brush and just kind of carve out the more detailed parts of your landscape inlets horns maybe you want to make a nice large horn right here okay so we have horn right here maybe you want to create uh an island right here right so there's a lot of different things that you can do just make that smaller brush normally I save this part for a little bit later I've already put all the stamps down and I want to do my second pass and kind of just clean up to make some interesting shapes horns archipelagos Islands you name it so to take that smaller brush and that will kind of help to kind of make those edges not look so um so kind of Flat add a little bit more character to it take a smaller brush hit up those edges go around it that's going to be the trick number eight this another common one that I kind of see is inconsistent stamp scale and it's inconsistent stamp scale just means that you're having maybe one stamp that's at a hundred percent and another stamp it's at 20 okay and it can be in this inconsistency can be weird so what I recommend doing to fix that problem is to set the scale for all of your terrain so this terrain scale is set this mountain range is set to 80 then all the other terrain stamps should also be set to 80. trees craters uh Hills other mountains all those other things should be at that same scale then when it comes to put down your pois that's your points of interest River or towns Villages capitals then you want to set a scale specifically for those stamps okay because it's okay if you want to have your pois be at a different scale from your terrain because that depends it's a style issue that you need to decide do you want to have large pois with detail that are bigger than the terrain then make sure that all the pois are the same scale so that that way you're not having this varying wild scale discrepancy in all your stamps so super important do not do not go ahead and change the rapid change and scale because then the the line the line work and the stamps become thicker became thinner so stick with scale consistency pick the terrain size that you want to pick for the stamps pick the POA size that you want okay otherwise you're going to have some issues there let's go back up number seven another one that happens I see a lot of maps is mixing map Styles and it's okay technically to mix map Styles but there are some wildly different differences between the map Styles fantasy world or fantasy Regional is more detailed while fantasy world is at a smaller scale so there's less detail so I don't recommend that you when you're making a world map that you take a stamp from fantasy Regional or from watercolor cities or whatever and then put it onto the map because there's a inconsistency in that art you'll notice that the art for let's say this Tower right here is more simple the line work is a little bit thicker well fantasy Regional has way more detail so and it's okay to do this if you want just make sure that you use some kind of filter or you're going to have to change it HSBC wise to make it fit more with the other ones so I don't recommend Crossing Styles unless you are going to change things HSBC wise stamp or if you're going to use some kind of filter to make sure that all the stamps have some kind of cohesive coherence to them some kind of some some similarity to each other otherwise it looks a little out of place and kind of weird so if you do have mixed matching Styles go ahead and just switch out and stick with a single style that you're going to work with unless you are kind of a power user and you know how to manipulate the stamps to work within all the different styles so definitely try to stay within one style if possible because it's really not helpful another example right here notice that I'm using icons right here and then for this I'm using this orc kind of more isometric like one that just there's an inconsistency there so instead maybe use work stamps either use this isometric Style with a color on it or only use this icon style for your POI so pick one or the other don't kind of mix and match because they are very inconsistent and they look kind of weird together okay let's go with number six what's next number six is flat oceans I see this a lot when a lot of people when they're making their map is they just pick one flat color or Texture for their ocean and that's okay but it doesn't show depth it doesn't really show whether this ocean is more cold or more warm and it's an easy one to fix you just need to take another ocean color that's darker than the other one so if I just type in sea or Ocean or whichever one you want and there's a darker color go ahead and click that darker one set to BG because hey your land you want to make with the add mode of the mass tool and with the water it's going to be that BG layer or the default layer okay so what you'll do is bring the size up fairly big and then drop the opacity down 30 in between 30 and 40 is good and then what you want to do is just like you when you think of surgery when you're you don't want to accidentally touch the edge of the landmass so the the deeper that an area is the darker it's going to be so if you want some darker deeper ocean maybe it's colder then go in and then the further away it gets from Land obviously the deeper it's going to be and right away you'll notice that it already has a bit of a difference because you don't want your ocean to be that just flat one color give it a little bit of depth show where the darker regions are where it's deeper show where maybe it's colder or warmer go in in between here like this and it's just a couple strobes just make sure that it's darker apply more the further away you get from Land that's it already that kind of makes your ocean pop out just a little bit more giving a little bit more a little bit more character right let's go at number five what's next texture and stamp blending and there are two things that I mean by texture and stamp blending when it comes to texture blending I'm specifically talking about blending two different biomes one of the most contrasting biomes is a frozen or a kind of a tundra and you want to show that there's some melting and thawing going on between maybe your your Frozen area and then maybe where there's grass and dirt and one of the things you can do is use this snow Alpha texture and the snow Alpha texture is not in the fantasy world style it's actually in a different one let me just type in snow real quick and I'll show you where to find this no Alpha this is going to be in parchment world but there are also some other snow ones in uh the fantasy battle map but I'm going to use the parchment one and then you're just going to select that one make sure it's set to FG layer FG layer where your land is and just kind of go over let's go ahead and bring it all the way up to 100 by the way and just go lightly over your where your Arctic line is when your Frozen area is and don't forget to go over the whole like this and what you're doing is creating some transition to where maybe the snow is thawing a little bit that's one way that you can like blend biomes this is the easy one but what about let's say between desert and grass this one's pretty easy a smaller brush make it small make sure the softness is all the way up and then drop the opacity down to around between 40 and 50 and then just single clicks to create this diffusion so I'm going to single click like this and you'll notice that these little yellow dots start creating a transition between the sand and that one it's the same concept let's say that if that Sandy area was actually Brown you would take that same brown texture and do single click dots to diffuse that very clear line of yellow or brown or whatever the color is notice that I've got some brown right here if I just do single clicks like this along that edge it begins to kind of blend those together so that's what I mean by blender texture texturing but there's also another type of blending that's important and that is you stamp blending notice that these stamps right here are kind of this brown color and they kind of just pop out against the that green and so you could one use a brown texture and just kind of go underneath like this to make sure that that's Blended in a little bit better like this you can do this seems like it's a little bit brighter and if that doesn't do it enough for you to try to blend using texture the other trick that I can that you can use is to use the Luminosity blend mode and that way it's going to pick up whatever color is beneath it so if I take this mountain right here with the Luminosity blend mode on and I moved it over to a yellow over here and we'll copy and paste that move it over here you'll notice it's picking up the same yellow behind it right if I put it over here it's going to look blue if I put it over here it's going to look kind of this different color just know that when you do use the Luminosity blend mode it's going to pick up the color but it's not going to pick up how bright or how dark it is so you might have to do some minor adjustments to make sure that it fits in now if you want to avoid all of that particularly with mountains just use the mountains in the fantasy world style that have a clipping mask okay if you use that instead then you won't have to worry about it if I click this down right here it's going to pick up whatever texture is on the FG layer so if I put it right here you'll notice it's picking up that green texture right there if I put it here it's picking up that brownish texture it's on the if it's going to be on this red right here it's going to pick up that red so you could just use those mountains instead if you want to avoid that part of blending all right let's go ahead and do another one what's kind of next what do we what do we have next here let's go with number four so blending is not as complex as you think it's pretty easy stuff let's go with number four and that is text consistency it's the same thing when you had that stamp inconsistency you can also have a text inconsistency I see this on so many Maps it's where people think that they have to use a varying types of text to kind of make each Place individual looking because you're using different types of fonts colors this can be confusing to the viewer's eye so what you might want to do instead is just like you chose a specific type of stamp scale or a different stamp style do the same thing with the text if you want to have maybe the region of an area let's say you're labeling a region then maybe you want a specific pick a specific color a specific font it's curved and then maybe you want to choose a use the same font to maybe show a place but instead instead of using the curve sure you're trying to label a POI make sure they use the same font but you can change the size you can change the lines of text how many lines there are you can change that just make sure it is a consistency pois should have the same type of text font if you're making a region make sure all the regions are labeled with the same font same color same size if you're labeling the ocean make sure you use the same color font and size okay don't go crazy on all the different types because that kind of labeling is again it's confusing information so make sure there's some coherency some similarity between the text so that way you're not looking at this map Chaos on your map let's go ahead and keep going so text not complex let's go with number three and the next one is going to be flat land masses whenever you're putting down a map sometimes you're looking at it and you're thinking to yourself wait a minute why is it so flat what can I do to make my map seem like there's a little bit more height and depth and dimension to it and the trick is Cliffs Cliffs are an absolute must and I know that Cliffs because you have to place them individually and it's be kind of be kind of monotonous but hey putting down Cliffs is super important and there's a trick to putting down the cliffs you just need to line them up with Where the Line work is on the mountains so if I take a cliff let's go ahead and just select the cliff real quick if I select a cliff one moment and I'll show you how to line them up let's open up Cliffs so if I have a cliff like this and I want to place it down somewhere you can put it up against the line work so let's say that I have a mountain over here and I want to put line up the line work right along here against the edge and you would kind of expect Cliffs to be along the mountains there put them line them up right there with that line work and it's going to look like these Cliffs kind of have these mountain ranges have a ledge to it you can put another one right here right so just line up the clips with the line work and also they can just be random too they don't have to be necessarily lined up with other mountains you could just take a mountain range or take a a cliff let's go ahead and put one right next to this one right here just open this up flip it let's say I want to put one right here and so I kind of create like a little canyon right here if I want so placing down Cliffs is a great way to kind of show depth yes it's time consuming because you have to place them individually in certain places but hey if your map is looking flat The Cliffs is the way to do it watch what happens if I turn off my my Clips real quick and you'll kind of see the difference without right it'll look just a little bit flatter but without those clips okay oops ink for some reason my clips are not going down to zero one second there you go you can see the difference it just looks in my opinion a lot flatter so definitely use Cliffs to your advantage to allow for more elevations to make it look bigger that's definitely I recommend hey first time chatter both of you so glad that you're both here thank you so much let's keep going now that you know how to add some depth you can use those Cliffs let's go ahead and go with that neck with the next couple ones let's see here we're going to go up at the top hit the next ones let's go with number two hey another first time chatter hey awesome so glad you've been enjoying uh the Youtube videos we have so many more to come there's so much content so I'm super excited so number two overlapping stamps so basically when I'm looking at people's maps I do see this common error where people will have like a mountain that's kind of overlapped into the ocean a little bit and it's not a big deal just before you finish your map before it looks done to you go back and just kind of make sure that none of your mountains are accidentally kind of sticking out in the middle sometimes when you're using the edgy brush you might have a tree that's accidentally on the coastline somewhere so push in your mountains to make sure they're on the land masses make sure none of you are if you're using the edgy or using the um density brush and you're making a forest sometimes trees will bleed out off into um into the water like that yeah so just what I recommend is just that when you go to do your your second pass to make your land to make your uh land masses or your coastlines to have a little bit more definition to them be look carefully as you're going around the coastlines and look for any stamps that might be bleeding over into your ocean this happens all the time I do this all the time actually and I even forget to proof I had to look over it so definitely when you do your coastlines zoom in and look for those kind of overlapping mistakes and there's also another kind of overlapping mistake that happens is sometimes you wanted to show that a tower was on top of a dune or on top of a mountain and you might accidentally put the stamp behind it so just be sure that you're make sure that your mountains are overlapping properly look carefully if I hear sometimes I'll see that a mountain is on top of another Mountain on top of these trees so there's these layering inconsistencies that happen so just make sure that when you go for that final pass to look over your map make sure that they're the layering consistency is there look carefully right here see how I have a there's a hill right here where they're supposed to be a cliff right here so I'll just move that hill over to here okay so just look for problems like that I make this mistake all the freaking time so just go when you go to zoom in take a look take a closer look and make sure that all the stamps are where they need to be there's not any inconsistencies with overlapping it happens all the freaking time very common mistake all right last mistake that I kind of see with people is not using filters okay and you may say well hey filters aren't really that big of a deal actually they are filters can mean a lot they can set the mood and the environment for your entire map and they can mean a lot to giving more visibility if you're a a DM or you're making maps for as a private contractor and you're trying to make money selling your Maps you want your maps to pop out more so that people are like whoa that's different from other people's maps so to grab attention to yourself and to help with making Maps pop out more throw down a couple filters to give it a little bit more pop and there are a couple filters that I totally recommend one of those is just Clarity Clarity is going to sharpen up things it's going to make it pop out more it's a great way to kind of bring out more color look how kind of more dull it is when I turn it off I turn it back on and it kind of pops out more so very very helpful to use your Clarity the other one that I recommend is and if there's not a lot of land masses along the edges and you're not you don't have a frame you can totally use this the the vignette um stamp it's in texture open up the texture catalog and then go ahead and click the Incarnate tag once you click the Incarnate tag inside of the filter catalog it's going to give you the filters for every single style okay because if you don't you're going to end up only in the single style so go grab a vignette stamp or vignette throw it down let it load up for a second here and there's a lot of different things you can do you can like push it all the way up so that the edges are dark and by putting a dark silhouette or vignette around the edge you're putting a lot of light and focus on the land masses and more in the center of the map making it pop out more you can even play with blend modes to see what they kind of do I like to use sometimes use overlay because overlay just kind of adds kind of this burn like effect to the darker areas and makes the areas a little bit more brighter but we'll go with normal for now and the last thing the last other thing that I like to do is to throw down uh some kind of filter that's going to throw down some artifacts on the map so you could throw down old paper a grain uh paper tear all of those are great ones uh let's go throw down old paper let's say that you want your map to have some more artifacts to it still looks kind of flat to you so you pick old paper right here and then you're going to choose that overlay blend mode oh yeah spotlight's another great choice by the way yeah absolutely and then I'd like to change it to repeat so the artifacts aren't quite as massive bring the size down and if you want you can bring it all the way down to negative five and it won't that means that only the FG and the BG layer will be affected by the filter but the stamps will remain unaffected so that's one thing you can use if you don't like that artifact look then change it maybe change it to um what other user said earlier by throwing down a spotlight okay you throw it on a spotlight it's going to create a light in the center causing it to pop out more okay so anyway these are the top 10 things that I've noticed definitely go back to your own Maps make sure that you're not making these mistakes sure a lot of map making is interpretive but my suggestion is is that you follow these 10 things and right away your Maps will probably be just a little bit better so follow those 10 things make sure that is consistency make sure that things look good and they pop out and that way you can get more clients if you're a if you're a private contractor or if you're a d or if you're a DM and you just want better world maps for your campaign something you've got some eye candy for your players right everyone wants that stuff all right well hey that's it those are the top 10 we've got a castle stream coming up next week next Wednesday and it's going to be a whole series on castles throughout kind of history and we're going to be starting with the very first kind of Castle which is a hill for it and then we'll kind of move on from there to all the different types of capsules that you can make all going to be in the fantasy battle mask Style hey thank you so much everybody really appreciate you being here in the Stream I'll see you next week in the meantime please stay safe and healthy avidazen my friends Mary map making thank you

Channel: Inkarnate

Views: 17,145

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Id: 376McF76slA

Length: 25min 38sec (1538 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 13 2023