Fun With Wilbur, Volume 2

The Tesselation Tool

The tessellation tool is a vector-based tool that allows arbitrary forms to be created. Set a base height for the stroke and then draw a stroke. Set another height and draw another stroke and so on. After the basic strokes are in place, generating the surface will interpolate between the strokes.

Draw the outline at level 0

Draw a desired coastline.

Draw the ridges

Draw from the outer to the center to make it easier to loft the ridges in the next stroke.

Loft the ridges

Select a stroke and then Tesselation>>Loft Stroke.

Generate the Surface

Click the Generate button. We’re still using the default map edges (+/- 1 in X and Y) so we’ll just use a small forced height to get a good level.

Add a round base

Use the gradient tool with radial gradient and a high value of 0.1 and operation of Add

.

Span a good height range

Filter>>Mathematical>>Span with low = 1000 and high = 2000.

Add a little noise

Filter>>Noise>>Percentage noise with 5% noise

Fill Basins

Filter>>Fill>>Fill Basins with slope = -1

Incise Flow

Filter>>Erosion>>Incise Flow with Blur = 1, Amount = 3, Flow Exponent = 0.25, Effect Blend = 0.2.

Push some areas below sea level

Filter>>Mathematical>>Span with low = -250 and high = 1000

Fluvial Erosion

Filter>>Erosion>>Precipiton-Based

Up from the depths

Filter>>Mathematical>>Offset (Add) with a value of 30 to lift everything up a little.

Resample to higher resolution

Want more detail? Resample the surface. Surface>>Resample>>Simple

Add some noise

Filter>>Noise>>Absolute Magnitude Noise with magnitude = 25.

Fill Basins

Filter>>Fill>>Fill Basins with slope = -1

Incise Flow

Adds nice valleys

Blur to remove the fuzz from the coasts

Filter>>Blur>>Gaussian Blur with sigma = 0.75

A little fluvial erosion at the end

And it still vaguely matches the original tesselation