I'm a History-Geography teacher-in-training, and today my mentor told me today that I have to teach plate tectonics to the children in a useful and fun way the next month, in order to be evaluated as teacher. And just when I came home... this video was uploaded! It's super handy and super easy to understand! Can I borrow some ideas for teaching the children plate tectonics? Thanks in advance :D
Aaron Speedy I wish I could tell you, just for posterity - Alas, I barely remember, and my reconstruction is almost entirely based on reverse engineering my response. The general claim was some crackpot theory that plate tectonics were bogus, the logic being that no one's ever seen them move. Something tiring and silly like that. The exact details are lost to time, and the irony there is quite a chuckle.
ryathoma This is entirely missing the point. Yes, plate tectonics can't be *directly* observed based on the time scales during which it takes place, but we've observed the consequences of plate tectonics *enough* to form strong hypotheses that explain many of the phenomena we see around our world - And in fact, these predictions seem to hold rather well when observing other planets. There's still so, so much we don't know, of course. You always have to remember that we've seen only a sliver of everything in the universe that can be learned from. I wouldn't discourage actual criticism of plate tectonics, but dismissing it on the basis that you only want to know about things that occur on your timescale throws out most science along with it. You may as well stick to microbiology and bemoan how we can't do any real science on things larger than a thumb. Which is a ridiculous notion. Plate tectonics is a tentative, but workable and solid model. The idea that the world is static leaves more questions unanswered, and plate tectonics is *already used economically*. Oil companies will find oil these days by noting previously discovered oil reserves, and then look at where they originated and how they moved away from locations that used to neighbor them - Then, they often find oil in those regions, which are now distant and seemingly unrelated, but share their origins with the reserve that was found by humans first.
"the more islands the merrier!" I think I subconsciously remembered that line and followed it way too much in my last map because it ended up with so many coastal islands that it looked as if every continent was surrounded by a swarm of lumpy bees AND REMEMBER, these islands were visible from a whole planetary map view so I'd say that each of them were about the size of a small central-European country! I've been chilling out on the coastal islands in my new redesign
Protip for making up large island/ continent shapes: get a small bag of rice and pasta shells, shake, pour onto piece of paper and draw round the outline of the mess you just made. Works surprisingly well
To add on to the list of things you can use to make random shapes, I recently used the peel of an orange to make my fantasy map, which also helps since oranges are already spherical, so the map will (theoretically) look better in a spherical projection!
this works very well for random cool land shapes for real it's kind of amazing, you can also use beans if you dont have rice or pasta, works exactly the same
Plate tectonics is a mistaken theory which was created to explain the observation of continental drift. However, more detailed studies have shown that ALL the continents fit together perfectly on ALL sides once you put the oceanic crust back into the rift zones. .... on a much smaller planet. The original 'supercontinent' was not an island stuck to one side of the earth, it was an earth completely covered by continental plates, all joined up. No part of the oceanic floor is older than 200 million years. 200 millions years ago the continental crust (covering the entire planet) started to crack and rift as the earth began to expand. The rift valleys widened and became the oceans, as the shallow seas on land drained into them. There is no subduction and continents do not swim about and crash into each other. Subduction is an imaginary process which was invented to explain how the oceans can ALL be spreading at the same time. There are two possibilities (1) subduction eats up oceanic crust as fast as it is created (2) the earth is expanding. All of the continents as they are today fit together perfectly on a much smaller earth with the oceanic crust removed. What are the chances of this happening as a result of the continents sliding about willy nilly for millions of years? Zero. See for yourself. It is self evident. kzclip.org/video/vqF-vvi5uUA/бейне.html
+ThreeNPlusOne Oh, I see... My bad. It is not the case here in my country, so I made an assumption. KZclip and Google both want the populace to be dumb it seems. Dumb population is easier to control after all.
Anonymous71475 I didn't mean MY recommended is filled with the Paul Brothers. Default recommendations if you use incognito or create a new account have content like that. Glad that youtube would only recommend one of those two if I watched 5 of him in a row.
Love how nobody seems to be mentioning the fact that you offered to make a more in-depth tutorial on how to do this. Frankly speaking, i would love to see that. You always think of things from the ground up in a way that I envy, so i'm sure that despite any length it would be both entertaining and informative. Anyone else on board with Artifexian making a full in-depth tutorial on this alone?
Please please PLEASE continue with this! Most especially, I'm desperate for a lengthy, in-depth, intimidating video about how to turn a map like this into something with CLIMATES and WEATHER and WIND and CURRENTS. Pretty please? Love your content, so glad you've stuck around for so long, and super happy that Patreon is working for you~
I'd be down for a GPlates tutorial, and maybe something on how to create Photoshop elevation maps. Really like your channel, by the way, especially now with the great animations, visualizations, and explanations. Keep up the good work :)
And I can help you out with the basics for how to make randomized topo maps kzclip.org/video/qU_u_7CPA40/бейне.html He kinda misses the mark when it comes down to detailing the contour lines, but it's easily adaptable. I'd also suggest not doing the Cloud method at the start and doing it by hand instead, since a fully random topomap just misses the mark for realism. It's fast and dirty, but will feel unnatural.
God, I wished I'd heard of Gplates a few years ago, modeling plate tectonics of a spherical world using the 2D maps I'd made on Photoshop was incredibly frustrating, especially when in came to the poles (thinking about the relative velocity of a tectonic plate stretched over the top of the map is hard!) One thing to note when it comes to the placement of continents is the impact it has on global climate - from what I gather, having landmasses over the poles generally leads to colder average temperatures globally. Assuming you have a European-esque society at a Europe-ish latitude, you probably ought to have a landmass at a pole. Also, knowing where the oldest portions of continental plates are can also be helpful. One of the main reasons Canada, South Africa and Australia are all so mineral rich is that they have very old portions of continental crust (cratons). If most of the diamonds in a world come from X place, making the crust there ancient makes sense.
You could have just said "Gplates is a free program that lets you draw on a sphere," and this would still be a worthwhile video. (Not saying that the rest of the video isn't good, but that's really useful for anyone who cares about making spherical worlds.)
Gplates is super complicated... It's simpler to draw a flat map in photoshop and then project it on the online tool "map to globe". I use their new beta. You can't edit the maps in the beta, though, so you need to edit the map in photoshop and then re-apply it to map to globe and see how much better it looks.
Harrison Haynes uhh, kinda, the lore I've made is kinda confusing, atleast to those who aren't me lol, but I have the foundations of the ancient civilization, but my stories take place is what is basically the 1880s technology wise
I'd love to watch the tutorial! On a side note, as a geophysicist I found the explanation/descriptions of plate boundaries to be very concise and well explained. Good job!
I think software can work but only if it's accurate or assists you in some way. Things like fractal continent generators and stuff are only surface level. As Artifexian mentioned, programs like Gplates and Photoshop can help you get your ideas acriss without dying from trying ti mao it manually. Point is, software can be really good when used for assistance.
@Ik leer Nederlands If you're basing your stories on formulaic bullshit, you're not writing a story worth writing. You don't have to make everything from scratch, but there should be a reason consistent with the narrative for every detail of the world. The last thing we need is more hack authors producing shitty stories set in generic paint by numbers worlds.
@seigeengine >> m8, some of us just want to finish this part of worldbuilding to start writing shit. I don't want to spent months creating everything from scratch, i want to write the story as soon as i can
I love how you make this stuff so simple. I've been struggling with this for probably about a year to be honest, and making very slow progress mostly by fudging things. This is going to be very helpful, I'm sure.
Awesome! I will say boiling down an entire area of research into one >10 min video inevitably will involve over simplifications and omission so I implore you to use this and a starting point for you learning.
This was extremely helpful. Realistic geography generation is something I've struggled with for years, since much of the literature is dry and difficult to apply. I would definitely like to see more detail on this.
I guess we all just want more content in general. Anything you do is innately interesting. However this one was particularly relevant to me and probably a whole lot of other people, because it is more applicable to creating worlds in roleplaying games, where we usually don‘t need to create entire languages. I also really enjoyed the practical side (showing us a new and interesting program), which you usually don‘t have.
I've been working on making the world I'm building as realistic as possible, and I think this one single video has just provided a bigger boost to the realism than every other map-building video I've seen combined. This is _insanely_ useful information, and you explained it so simply and so well, with really relevant graphics and examples. Wonderful work, dude. You are _awesome._
Another vote here for a more in-depth look at GPlates (and GProjector). At first glance it looks like there's a lot more to it than just "drawing lines on a sphere", but it looks pretty intimidating for a casual user.
There is. You can use the program to simulate plate motion but it get's pretty darn complicated. Just use it as tool to draw on a sphere and then export that drawing.
This is a great resource! You should also follow up the video with a discussion on how to iterate the tectonics. Filling in a tectonic history gives interesting geology and gives rise to some really cool societal influences, like the connection between location of batholiths and mining, and have older smaller mountains and merged continental plates, like the Appalachians.
You are an absolute beast at explaining things. Like, ignoring the worldbuilding aspects of the vid, which are the reason i came in the first place, you still explained like 4 or 5 aspects of plate tectonics that I never managed to understand. You're so good at dissecting the way something works and making it clear for everyone else. And don't even get me started on the conlang series. It's basically why I'm into linguistics. Seriously, though. This is gold.
I went to High School in Idaho, and I think I remember something interesting that I heard in an Earth Science class: the hot spot under Yellowstone was possibly also responsible for the rock features at Craters of the Moon National Park in Idaho as well as Crater Lake in Oregon. Whether either is really true, I don't know, but still may be useful for someone else's world building.
A note on islands: some amateur map-makers often throw in way too many islands as opposed to too few. Make sure that you keep the number of your islands believable, and make them believable by their position on a map. Hotspots will have fewer islands in the same area than plate boundaries!
So cool! This video hit the sweet spot of being just technical enough to promote more realistic fantasy worlds without being so complex as to be confusing. For sure going to use this next time I build a world.
Edgar, your videos never cease to amaze me! I love mapmaking, I've been looking forward to see your video on maps and tectonics; in short this video is perfect! You do great work, keep it up!
THANK YOU! So many world-scale fictional maps just throw oceans, landmasses, volcanos, mountain ranges, and so on around practically at random, with no thought at all as to how things would actually work. The Sword Coast in the Forgotten Realms is a big example, but even maps made by otherwise very good, thoughtful individuals working everything out on their own fall into this trap. This video should be mandatory viewing for anyone looking to create a new world, no matter what the setting.
I cannot stress how useful this video was. I didn't use Gplates at the time because I was working off a really old computer but even just taking a plastic ball and drawing shapes and arrows on it was a HUGE help in creating a geographically realistic fantasy world. I find that this form of world building can lead to even more interesting stories mainly because you are forced to imagine how the world is shaped from the very beginning. How people's interact with their environment and eventually each other from across land and oceans is an amazing exercise in world building.
Holy crap this is awesome. Seemless integration of the real world science behind it. Science communicators could take a few tips from this. Bloody brilliant mate, keep it coming!
For the last decade or so, I've been using an icosahedron as an approximate sphere for world building. Gross features are worked out with it unwrapped, refined in 5 facet pentagonal maps, and further refined in the triangular facets. Lets me use 1 program.
I've needed a software like Gplates for so freaking long! Thank you! And thanks for the refresher on tectonics. I got only so much out of my geography course last semester.
This was everything I hoped it would be ;-; and YES please do in depth photoshop / g-plates tutorials, I know there are other tutorials on the internet but Photoshop especially is so complicated for a new user that I really think videos from you specifically aimed at world builders would be really useful!
All the videos you've done until now have been awesome. Longer videos? Just make them this interesting and I'll watch and learn from them. Keep up the good work!
I love what you have done here! I have ideas about how youd go about turning this into a 3d model using height maps or worldmachine, and even as far as setting up the climates and such and applying apropriate ground textures
The Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain is pretty cool. You can see how far along the Pacific ocean floor it goes and then turns sharply north. Probably the best example of a tectonic plate changing directions.
I used this for my worldmaps. It was made for a game named CK2, too bad the creator doesn't have much time to make updates now. I think it works for version 2.6.2 and 2.6.3. Link: www.reddit.com/r/Ck2Generator/
If only I had discovered this channel three months ago when I started down the worldbuilding route. I did happen to create plate tectonics, but it likely would have been easier, and better created had I traveled to the future and seen this video first. I'm going to have to check out the rest of your videos now. (Also, World Anvil is awesome. I support that shout out.)
Would definitely love some more info on your mapping process! Conlang stuff is interesting, but my least favorite set of videos, just based on personal interests. Maps and eventually filling them with cultures and civilizations, I'm all for!
OMG, I'm so excited! I've been waiting for this video for a long time and now it's finally here! You even covered hotspots, which was a great detail. The only thing that I'm still wondering is how/if a fictional planet could different from Earth in composition and how/if this may effect the geology of the planet.
Thank you so much for this video, I needed this so very much. Please, please do more map making videos. Sure there are quite a few on KZclip but none nearly as good as this one. Would you consider a map making video on the subject of towns, city’s, forests, lake’s, etc? Thank you so much for this video, I enjoy everything you do.
I don't write stories or make maps or anything creative of that sort, but I have a background in seismology and really loved your video. A++. You know your geophysics.
Great video. I’m keen to see how to start with a Pangea and then migrate the plates into an Earth-like map, using that process to generate mountain ranges and other features.
That's a great tutorial. Every fantasy world creator needs to watch it. However I have two big complains. First one: It's not Earth crust fragment is broken into fragment but more preciesly our planet lithosphere which consist uppermost mantle (made of ultramafic peridotite) and the crustal part (made of continental/intermediate/oceanic rocks). That's why instead of *"plate"* term you should have used *"lithosphere"* one . For example Eurasian tectonic plate despite of it's name is not enteirly made of continantal (felsic+intermediate) rock material. It also contain oceanic (Atlantic Ocean +Western Mediterreanen Sea+Arctic Ocean) crustal rocks. Of course there are a few plates made of continental rocks but they are small ones and some geologist don't even recognise them as a separate tectonic units. And one small thing: mantle convection currents are not moving tectonic plates but rather gravitional slides.
I would like to see a video or two on logically explaining and then mapping of more bizarrely shaped world's like a taurus, flatworlds(I've heard discworld is one), cuboid worlds, other polyhedra, etc. You've done a really good job with spheres, and the taurus video, I'd like to see what else is possible even if a little magic is needed occasionally.
I could never be this particular but I've made several fantasy maps and I always make sure they look like they used to fit together even if there are obviously pieces missing. I kind of love bringing that reality into my fantasy maps. One in particular is actually still in it's pangea stage but humanoids developed very quickly.
Great video Artifexian , Keep it up. I think you could also start by mapping the bands of magma flow in the upper mantle, and deducing how those would affect plate formations and movements.
I absolutely needed this video, thanks Edgar! I've been looking for software to draw on spheres for a while (even as soon as yesterday), my prayers have been answered!
Artifexian is gplates limited to perfect spheres or can one work with varyingly warped oblong spheres (due to centripetal force)? I'll likely never use it as it sounds to complicated but I was just curious.
Be prepared for a bit of a steep learning curve. Gplates is a legit science tool and as such it not really design to do worldbuilding. You gotta fight it a bit. Stick with it.
I needed this, since my fantasy world has a race of amphibious octopus people who live on and around an island chain along a mid-ocean ridge. It helps make the region, as well as the rest of the world, more believable.
That tutorial on gplates would be very appreciated. I’m working on a map and didn’t even know gplates existed. Now I have to go and see if what I have so far looks good in 3d. Thank you for this!
Hey Artifexian, just dropped by to say that your tutorial on Photoshop would be very helpful and useful. I think it has been established that you're an awesone teacher and your lesson would be a gem. Thank you very much
THANK YOU! I was in the making of a Pangea world, with a limited amount of kingdoms ruling, but I just wasn't sure how to exactly control the map, to put the minerals, and metals to the right places (yes putting mountains, and volcanoes in the right places help, but it is a steampunk world, so knowing about the how and why they would be there is possible... so I am thankful for you, and for YT for suggesting this video for me (I was about to search but hey, it knew what i needed)
Lovely, I'll have to give Gplates a try. Been trying to design some Earth-like alien worlds lately. My workflow so far has included Gimp and Blender, and some island randomization scripts (I rando a bunch and choose the best shapes). I'll probably still use Blender for the final hi-res design, but sounds like Gplates will get me to that point faster.
Super awesome. I've been working on a project to try and automate this process with procedural generation and simulation. It's been a lot of fun learning how it all works, even if I haven't made a whole lot of progress. Gplates is super awesome though, thanks for bringing that to my attention.
THANK YOU. I’ve been wanting to make a realistic world that didn’t look like stretched play doh. I wanted to make a world with history, and many countries that rise and fall, with realistic features and towns, just like real life.
Awesome! Loved the video. Always wanted a way of making maps spherical haha By the way, why do you put your 'pangea' in the north hemisphere? Any apparent reason, like personal, is it just because where the most land mass is, it's going to be the place humans or the creatures there consider north?
North and south are kinda arbitrary anyway. I mean, take a planet rotating counter-clockwise, with an axial tilt above 90 degrees. This can be interpreted as north being 'down', that north and south are swapped logically, or that the entire solar system is treated as being inverted. (after all, a counter-clockwise rotation with a tilt above 90 degrees is functionally equivalent to a clockwise rotation with less than 90 degree tilt) It could be interpreted based on the balance of land and water, or just about any number of other factors. If the magnetic poles are vastly out of line with the geographic ones, even more options present themselves. But in the end, while having a 'north' and 'south' equivalent broadly makes sense (except perhaps where the magnetic and geographic versions are way out of line, in which case you may end up with these being separate concepts), there's no real reason for either of the two possible interpretations. You could have a culture declare 'north' equivalent to east, but that's just a swapping of terminology, and the way planets are it doesn't make sense to define outside of either the magnetic poles, or the poles defined by the axis of rotation. If a culture DID do that it would imply having an arbitrary set of direction concepts. Perhaps you could have a culture that doesn't think in rectilinear terms, leading perhaps to directions spaced around a hexagon, but that's not really that different in practice, even if the terminology that would result would be different. (you'd find that either the north-south or east-west equivalents would likely be an 'inbetween' direction comparable to 'south-east' logically.) Why cultures would do that I wouldn't know, but the north/south thing being arbitrary wouldn't really change.
I tried to make a realistic map with proper plate tectonics about a month ago, but i couldn't get the pools to line up properly and noticed i tried to create something really earth with out intention. this has really has helped and i know about G-plates at that time
Well done. You can also play with varying the ages of mountain ranges and plates, having some plates or plate boundaries being eliminated in the past and old mountain ranges still present but heavily eroded. See, the Appalachians. These mountains aren't large enough to produce rain shadows, but they can be interesting topography. From the continental map you produced, I assume you will have 4 major oceanic currents. Two will be located in your massive ocean, one south and one north of the equator. A third will be located in the smaller ocean basin south of your continent. The final current will be the polar vortex, which in a world with an appropriate climate would have a central oceanic ice cap. Assuming your air current masses are similar to Earth, from here we can start mapping biomes. One of the cool things about your map is that the largest mountain range is trans-equatorial, which means that you're probably going to have a bunch of tropical alpine areas, which have really cool plantlife. Something you won't have very much of, given the shape of the world, is temperate deciduous forests, as these would have to be on the east side of your supercontinent, and potentially in the massive bay on the west side. A good portion of the world will be deserts and grasslands, given the continental effects. The North polar area could be either tundra or a massive greenland like icecap, depending on your preference. And of course the boreal forest will abut that northern mountain chain. The whole lack of land in the Southern hemisphere is interesting. So, yeah. I hope you spend your next video on this topic talking about ocean and air currents, since they're so important for driving biome location.
Next tutorial, how to determine climate patterns that would indicate where your deserts, jungles, tundras, etc, will be. From the map you made, it looks like there will be a mega desert in the middle with all those huge mountain ranges preventing ocean moisture from blowing in.
I really think you should continue with your orbital elements video and add time into the mix. Show how to calculate future positions of your future planets. Now that would be a challenge of a video!
as someone who makes custom planet textures for videos, this was very helpful, I now know to add much water, have islands all over the edges of ocean plates, and have canyons not just formed by water
that was very informative, though i don't think most fantasy maps are designed to cover a globe. In fact it adds to mystery that parts of the world are yet undiscovered.
Absolutely! But you as the author shouldnt be discovering your world at the same time as the reader. Worldbuild on the globe scale and only show a fraction of your work.
please! i've never heard of Gplates before and I would love it if you made a tutorial on it. Tectonics are exactly how I've informed worlds and their continents, this would take it to a new level.
I'm a History-Geography teacher-in-training, and today my mentor told me today that I have to teach plate tectonics to the children in a useful and fun way the next month, in order to be evaluated as teacher. And just when I came home... this video was uploaded! It's super handy and super easy to understand! Can I borrow some ideas for teaching the children plate tectonics? Thanks in advance :D
How did your evaluation go?
Aaron Speedy I wish I could tell you, just for posterity - Alas, I barely remember, and my reconstruction is almost entirely based on reverse engineering my response.
The general claim was some crackpot theory that plate tectonics were bogus, the logic being that no one's ever seen them move. Something tiring and silly like that. The exact details are lost to time, and the irony there is quite a chuckle.
ryathoma This is entirely missing the point. Yes, plate tectonics can't be *directly* observed based on the time scales during which it takes place, but we've observed the consequences of plate tectonics *enough* to form strong hypotheses that explain many of the phenomena we see around our world - And in fact, these predictions seem to hold rather well when observing other planets.
There's still so, so much we don't know, of course. You always have to remember that we've seen only a sliver of everything in the universe that can be learned from. I wouldn't discourage actual criticism of plate tectonics, but dismissing it on the basis that you only want to know about things that occur on your timescale throws out most science along with it. You may as well stick to microbiology and bemoan how we can't do any real science on things larger than a thumb. Which is a ridiculous notion.
Plate tectonics is a tentative, but workable and solid model. The idea that the world is static leaves more questions unanswered, and plate tectonics is *already used economically*. Oil companies will find oil these days by noting previously discovered oil reserves, and then look at where they originated and how they moved away from locations that used to neighbor them - Then, they often find oil in those regions, which are now distant and seemingly unrelated, but share their origins with the reserve that was found by humans first.
You look lile a nice guy :D
Of course! There's never enough material, thanks
Artifexian: "I don't want to make an earth clone."
Also Artifexian: Immediately creates Hawaii.
@x17 Now that you mention it, it's very similar
ok but have you considered: Hawaii is cool
having a few land similarities = earth clone!!!!!!
He meant like, americas over on the left, afro-eurasia on the right, antarctica on the south, and australia somewhere else.
@FracturedPrincess me too
As a geology major, a fantasy fan, and a nerd for world building, this is an oddly specific itch being scratched.
Seems like there is a lot of us with the same specific itch 😭
"the more islands the merrier!"
I think I subconsciously remembered that line and followed it way too much in my last map because it ended up with so many coastal islands that it looked as if every continent was surrounded by a swarm of lumpy bees
AND REMEMBER, these islands were visible from a whole planetary map view so I'd say that each of them were about the size of a small central-European country!
I've been chilling out on the coastal islands in my new redesign
Lol you could make Earthsea 2: Electric Boogaloo!
I love when Artifexian makes explains half a semester of geology in 8 minutes and more interesting.
He covered like 3 or 4 out of 20 chapters in my text book
Protip for making up large island/ continent shapes: get a small bag of rice and pasta shells, shake, pour onto piece of paper and draw round the outline of the mess you just made. Works surprisingly well
To add on to the list of things you can use to make random shapes, I recently used the peel of an orange to make my fantasy map, which also helps since oranges are already spherical, so the map will (theoretically) look better in a spherical projection!
this works very well for random cool land shapes for real it's kind of amazing, you can also use beans if you dont have rice or pasta, works exactly the same
What about using perlin noise to guide outlines?
@We are already dead Fam I have a prediction of my own... that I'll be stealing this idea too! ;)
waltrz My conworld has a new form of divination now.
You're currently my favorite small KZclipr. High-quality and informative videos are something this site desperately needs.
Plate tectonics is a mistaken theory which was created to explain the observation of continental drift. However, more detailed studies have shown that ALL the continents fit together perfectly on ALL sides once you put the oceanic crust back into the rift zones. .... on a much smaller planet.
The original 'supercontinent' was not an island stuck to one side of the earth, it was an earth completely covered by continental plates, all joined up. No part of the oceanic floor is older than 200 million years.
200 millions years ago the continental crust (covering the entire planet) started to crack and rift as the earth began to expand. The rift valleys widened and became the oceans, as the shallow seas on land drained into them.
There is no subduction and continents do not swim about and crash into each other. Subduction is an imaginary process which was invented to explain how the oceans can ALL be spreading at the same time. There are two possibilities (1) subduction eats up oceanic crust as fast as it is created (2) the earth is expanding.
All of the continents as they are today fit together perfectly on a much smaller earth with the oceanic crust removed. What are the chances of this happening as a result of the continents sliding about willy nilly for millions of years? Zero.
See for yourself. It is self evident.
kzclip.org/video/vqF-vvi5uUA/бейне.html
+ThreeNPlusOne
Oh, I see... My bad.
It is not the case here in my country, so I made an assumption.
KZclip and Google both want the populace to be dumb it seems.
Dumb population is easier to control after all.
Anonymous71475 I didn't mean MY recommended is filled with the Paul Brothers. Default recommendations if you use incognito or create a new account have content like that. Glad that youtube would only recommend one of those two if I watched 5 of him in a row.
+ThreeNPlusOne
Really? Try clean your KZclip history of Logan Paul and flood your history with a single meaningful topic.
Like Artifexian.
Anonymous71475 KZclip prefers Logan Paul. They blasted the Paul Brothers all over recommended and trending.
Love how nobody seems to be mentioning the fact that you offered to make a more in-depth tutorial on how to do this.
Frankly speaking, i would love to see that. You always think of things from the ground up in a way that I envy, so i'm sure that despite any length it would be both entertaining and informative.
Anyone else on board with Artifexian making a full in-depth tutorial on this alone?
I would love such video as well.
Please please PLEASE continue with this! Most especially, I'm desperate for a lengthy, in-depth, intimidating video about how to turn a map like this into something with CLIMATES and WEATHER and WIND and CURRENTS. Pretty please? Love your content, so glad you've stuck around for so long, and super happy that Patreon is working for you~
I'd be down for a GPlates tutorial, and maybe something on how to create Photoshop elevation maps. Really like your channel, by the way, especially now with the great animations, visualizations, and explanations. Keep up the good work :)
And I can help you out with the basics for how to make randomized topo maps
kzclip.org/video/qU_u_7CPA40/бейне.html
He kinda misses the mark when it comes down to detailing the contour lines, but it's easily adaptable. I'd also suggest not doing the Cloud method at the start and doing it by hand instead, since a fully random topomap just misses the mark for realism. It's fast and dirty, but will feel unnatural.
he made one, by the way
Me too! Awesome vid and technique. Love to see more!
I'd be up for that. Despite being a young whippersnapper, I am so hopeless at nearly every kind of software!
God, I wished I'd heard of Gplates a few years ago, modeling plate tectonics of a spherical world using the 2D maps I'd made on Photoshop was incredibly frustrating, especially when in came to the poles (thinking about the relative velocity of a tectonic plate stretched over the top of the map is hard!)
One thing to note when it comes to the placement of continents is the impact it has on global climate - from what I gather, having landmasses over the poles generally leads to colder average temperatures globally. Assuming you have a European-esque society at a Europe-ish latitude, you probably ought to have a landmass at a pole.
Also, knowing where the oldest portions of continental plates are can also be helpful. One of the main reasons Canada, South Africa and Australia are all so mineral rich is that they have very old portions of continental crust (cratons). If most of the diamonds in a world come from X place, making the crust there ancient makes sense.
Great comment! Will be taking about climate soon.
You could have just said "Gplates is a free program that lets you draw on a sphere," and this would still be a worthwhile video.
(Not saying that the rest of the video isn't good, but that's really useful for anyone who cares about making spherical worlds.)
@Globin347 Neat.
@Timothy McLean Technically, there is a way to draw directly on a sphere in photoshop, but I found that to be a bit to frustrating to use.
@Globin347 Which requires photoshop and being willing to not edit and see the sphere at the same time. But yeah, I gave up on Gplates multiple times.
Gplates is super complicated... It's simpler to draw a flat map in photoshop and then project it on the online tool "map to globe". I use their new beta. You can't edit the maps in the beta, though, so you need to edit the map in photoshop and then re-apply it to map to globe and see how much better it looks.
those who want to make spherical worlds. thats who cares. now go to bed.
Sounds good to me, I can't wait till we start doing cultures and civilizations
Harrison Haynes pfft, I ain't got anything good to film it with or the money or skills to edit anything, I appreciate the enthusiasm tho
Harrison Haynes uhh, kinda, the lore I've made is kinda confusing, atleast to those who aren't me lol, but I have the foundations of the ancient civilization, but my stories take place is what is basically the 1880s technology wise
Harrison Haynes how did what go?
@Artifexian are you gonna do a culture building video
And how about a world with 2 or more races?
Congrats, everyone! You just got taught not one, but TWO chapters out of a 100-level college geology textbook!
I work at a small research lab, and your podcast introduced me to GPlates, which I’m now using for our models!
_3 years later_
still no reply to artifaxian
Haha! Awesome. What are you researching?
I'd love to watch the tutorial!
On a side note, as a geophysicist I found the explanation/descriptions of plate boundaries to be very concise and well explained. Good job!
As a beginning geology student, seeing this taken into consideration when it comes to fantasy worlds makes me incredibly happy
I'd like it if you did in-depth tutorials on the programs (but also more conlang stuff because that's my favourite part of your channel)
i love how conlanging and worldbuilding go hand in hand and the way you teach others how great stuff like this can be is why your channel is awesome
Cool! Don't worry I alternate conlanging and worldbuilding so there definitely will be more.
With this and the temperature vid, realistic worlds here I come!
@smart art Well dont use it if you dont care about scientific accuracy???
I think software can work but only if it's accurate or assists you in some way. Things like fractal continent generators and stuff are only surface level. As Artifexian mentioned, programs like Gplates and Photoshop can help you get your ideas acriss without dying from trying ti mao it manually.
Point is, software can be really good when used for assistance.
@seigeengine you're conflating bad writers to everyone wanting to make realistic worlds.
@Ik leer Nederlands If you're basing your stories on formulaic bullshit, you're not writing a story worth writing.
You don't have to make everything from scratch, but there should be a reason consistent with the narrative for every detail of the world.
The last thing we need is more hack authors producing shitty stories set in generic paint by numbers worlds.
@seigeengine >> m8, some of us just want to finish this part of worldbuilding to start writing shit. I don't want to spent months creating everything from scratch, i want to write the story as soon as i can
As both a geologist and a huge fan of world building and fantasy, you have no idea how happy this video makes me.
I love how you make this stuff so simple. I've been struggling with this for probably about a year to be honest, and making very slow progress mostly by fudging things. This is going to be very helpful, I'm sure.
Awesome! I will say boiling down an entire area of research into one >10 min video inevitably will involve over simplifications and omission so I implore you to use this and a starting point for you learning.
I never thought my education in GIS and fantasy map making would collide together. This brings me so much joy.
This was extremely helpful. Realistic geography generation is something I've struggled with for years, since much of the literature is dry and difficult to apply. I would definitely like to see more detail on this.
As a geologist, i'm kind of blown away by the accuracy of your video, way to go the extra mile, nice work!
Just found the video its great! I have a question is there a way to determine locations of crucial resources like metals and salts?
I guess we all just want more content in general. Anything you do is innately interesting. However this one was particularly relevant to me and probably a whole lot of other people, because it is more applicable to creating worlds in roleplaying games, where we usually don‘t need to create entire languages.
I also really enjoyed the practical side (showing us a new and interesting program), which you usually don‘t have.
This was soo interesting! I'd love more videos about the regions on this world you've created!
You're one of my favorite worldbuilding channels! I would definitely watch an in-depth video on GPlates.
Cool! Vote. Cast
I've been working on making the world I'm building as realistic as possible, and I think this one single video has just provided a bigger boost to the realism than every other map-building video I've seen combined. This is _insanely_ useful information, and you explained it so simply and so well, with really relevant graphics and examples. Wonderful work, dude. You are _awesome._
I’m planning to both design and publish a semi-realistic fantasy realm for the Pathfinder roleplaying system! This was a lot of help!
Another vote here for a more in-depth look at GPlates (and GProjector). At first glance it looks like there's a lot more to it than just "drawing lines on a sphere", but it looks pretty intimidating for a casual user.
There is. You can use the program to simulate plate motion but it get's pretty darn complicated. Just use it as tool to draw on a sphere and then export that drawing.
This is a great resource! You should also follow up the video with a discussion on how to iterate the tectonics. Filling in a tectonic history gives interesting geology and gives rise to some really cool societal influences, like the connection between location of batholiths and mining, and have older smaller mountains and merged continental plates, like the Appalachians.
You are an absolute beast at explaining things.
Like, ignoring the worldbuilding aspects of the vid, which are the reason i came in the first place, you still explained like 4 or 5 aspects of plate tectonics that I never managed to understand. You're so good at dissecting the way something works and making it clear for everyone else. And don't even get me started on the conlang series. It's basically why I'm into linguistics.
Seriously, though. This is gold.
I went to High School in Idaho, and I think I remember something interesting that I heard in an Earth Science class: the hot spot under Yellowstone was possibly also responsible for the rock features at Craters of the Moon National Park in Idaho as well as Crater Lake in Oregon. Whether either is really true, I don't know, but still may be useful for someone else's world building.
A note on islands: some amateur map-makers often throw in way too many islands as opposed to too few. Make sure that you keep the number of your islands believable, and make them believable by their position on a map. Hotspots will have fewer islands in the same area than plate boundaries!
So cool! This video hit the sweet spot of being just technical enough to promote more realistic fantasy worlds without being so complex as to be confusing. For sure going to use this next time I build a world.
Edgar, your videos never cease to amaze me!
I love mapmaking, I've been looking forward to see your video on maps and tectonics; in short this video is perfect!
You do great work, keep it up!
Will do. Thanks for watching, pal.
as that one person who stressed about the plate tectonics of my fantasy world being unrealistic when i was 9, this man is a blessing to me
Wow, I haven't been in your channel for a while. I enjoyed your older hand-drawn videos, but this is completely new quality. Really awesome channel.
THANK YOU! So many world-scale fictional maps just throw oceans, landmasses, volcanos, mountain ranges, and so on around practically at random, with no thought at all as to how things would actually work. The Sword Coast in the Forgotten Realms is a big example, but even maps made by otherwise very good, thoughtful individuals working everything out on their own fall into this trap. This video should be mandatory viewing for anyone looking to create a new world, no matter what the setting.
I cannot stress how useful this video was. I didn't use Gplates at the time because I was working off a really old computer but even just taking a plastic ball and drawing shapes and arrows on it was a HUGE help in creating a geographically realistic fantasy world. I find that this form of world building can lead to even more interesting stories mainly because you are forced to imagine how the world is shaped from the very beginning. How people's interact with their environment and eventually each other from across land and oceans is an amazing exercise in world building.
Holy crap this is awesome. Seemless integration of the real world science behind it. Science communicators could take a few tips from this. Bloody brilliant mate, keep it coming!
For the last decade or so, I've been using an icosahedron as an approximate sphere for world building. Gross features are worked out with it unwrapped, refined in 5 facet pentagonal maps, and further refined in the triangular facets. Lets me use 1 program.
It looks like your whole channel specializes in stuff I've frantically been searching for! Great video and I'll be digging in for more.
I've needed a software like Gplates for so freaking long! Thank you! And thanks for the refresher on tectonics. I got only so much out of my geography course last semester.
This was everything I hoped it would be ;-; and YES please do in depth photoshop / g-plates tutorials, I know there are other tutorials on the internet but Photoshop especially is so complicated for a new user that I really think videos from you specifically aimed at world builders would be really useful!
All the videos you've done until now have been awesome. Longer videos? Just make them this interesting and I'll watch and learn from them. Keep up the good work!
I love what you have done here! I have ideas about how youd go about turning this into a 3d model using height maps or worldmachine, and even as far as setting up the climates and such and applying apropriate ground textures
I would love a program tutorial, even if it's long
Artifexian Awesome!
Consider your vote cast.
The Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain is pretty cool. You can see how far along the Pacific ocean floor it goes and then turns sharply north. Probably the best example of a tectonic plate changing directions.
I love making maps and fantasy nations.. I'd love to see a tutorial on how to do it
You vote has been cast buddy.
I used this for my worldmaps. It was made for a game named CK2, too bad the creator doesn't have much time to make updates now. I think it works for version 2.6.2 and 2.6.3. Link: www.reddit.com/r/Ck2Generator/
If only I had discovered this channel three months ago when I started down the worldbuilding route. I did happen to create plate tectonics, but it likely would have been easier, and better created had I traveled to the future and seen this video first. I'm going to have to check out the rest of your videos now. (Also, World Anvil is awesome. I support that shout out.)
Would definitely love some more info on your mapping process! Conlang stuff is interesting, but my least favorite set of videos, just based on personal interests. Maps and eventually filling them with cultures and civilizations, I'm all for!
Finally! I love your mapping videos, and I have learned so much about these topics thanks to you! Much love
Much love coming right back at ya. Glad you enjoyed.
OMG, I'm so excited! I've been waiting for this video for a long time and now it's finally here! You even covered hotspots, which was a great detail. The only thing that I'm still wondering is how/if a fictional planet could different from Earth in composition and how/if this may effect the geology of the planet.
Thank you so much for this video, I needed this so very much. Please, please do more map making videos. Sure there are quite a few on KZclip but none nearly as good as this one. Would you consider a map making video on the subject of towns, city’s, forests, lake’s, etc? Thank you so much for this video, I enjoy everything you do.
As always a great video! i would love to see an indepth video on the tools you use to do your world building magic.
I don't write stories or make maps or anything creative of that sort, but I have a background in seismology and really loved your video. A++. You know your geophysics.
Great video. I’m keen to see how to start with a Pangea and then migrate the plates into an Earth-like map, using that process to generate mountain ranges and other features.
Yes please, an in depth tutorial would be great!
Cool. Vote cast.
The tutorial was very helpful, but honestly my favorite part of the video was your map. It looked fun and inspires me to learn more about map-making.
Definitely up for a more in-depth version of this kind of video. It's been on my mind recently, so this'd be a great place to get that information!
I would love to see a video critiquing famous fantasy world maps. Narnia, Tolkien, Game of Thrones, Avatar: the last Airbender, etc.
Thank you for uploading this video, I really enjoy how well you explain these concepts and how well-produced your videos are.
I think it would be a good idea to do a GPlates Tutorial.
I can't wait for the biomes and climate placement as well.
That's a great tutorial. Every fantasy world creator needs to watch it. However I have two big complains. First one: It's not Earth crust fragment is broken into fragment but more preciesly our planet lithosphere which consist uppermost mantle (made of ultramafic peridotite) and the crustal part (made of continental/intermediate/oceanic rocks). That's why instead of *"plate"* term you should have used *"lithosphere"* one . For example Eurasian tectonic plate despite of it's name is not enteirly made of continantal (felsic+intermediate) rock material. It also contain oceanic (Atlantic Ocean +Western Mediterreanen Sea+Arctic Ocean) crustal rocks. Of course there are a few plates made of continental rocks but they are small ones and some geologist don't even recognise them as a separate tectonic units. And one small thing: mantle convection currents are not moving tectonic plates but rather gravitional slides.
I would like to see a video or two on logically explaining and then mapping of more bizarrely shaped world's like a taurus, flatworlds(I've heard discworld is one), cuboid worlds, other polyhedra, etc. You've done a really good job with spheres, and the taurus video, I'd like to see what else is possible even if a little magic is needed occasionally.
I could never be this particular but I've made several fantasy maps and I always make sure they look like they used to fit together even if there are obviously pieces missing. I kind of love bringing that reality into my fantasy maps.
One in particular is actually still in it's pangea stage but humanoids developed very quickly.
Awesome. I've been struggling to get my head around this. Are you gonna do a video on ocean currents and weather patterns? That'd be great.
Great video Artifexian , Keep it up. I think you could also start by mapping the bands of magma flow in the upper mantle, and deducing how those would affect plate formations and movements.
Will do.
I love your work, Edgar, and I've been so unreasonably excited about this video for the longest time. Thanks a bunch, and keep it up!
I absolutely needed this video, thanks Edgar!
I've been looking for software to draw on spheres for a while (even as soon as yesterday), my prayers have been answered!
Artifexian how do you get a picture overlayed onto the sphere
Artifexian
Mmmh.. Guess I'll have to deal with it, good worldbuilding requires lots of work after all!
Artifexian is gplates limited to perfect spheres or can one work with varyingly warped oblong spheres (due to centripetal force)?
I'll likely never use it as it sounds to complicated but I was just curious.
Be prepared for a bit of a steep learning curve. Gplates is a legit science tool and as such it not really design to do worldbuilding. You gotta fight it a bit. Stick with it.
I needed this, since my fantasy world has a race of amphibious octopus people who live on and around an island chain along a mid-ocean ridge. It helps make the region, as well as the rest of the world, more believable.
That tutorial on gplates would be very appreciated. I’m working on a map and didn’t even know gplates existed. Now I have to go and see if what I have so far looks good in 3d. Thank you for this!
Wow, you are an amazing person- real science and fantasy imagination rolled up in one! Great video.
Yes, I would love to watch more in-depth photoshop videos on map making!
Hey Artifexian, just dropped by to say that your tutorial on Photoshop would be very helpful and useful. I think it has been established that you're an awesone teacher and your lesson would be a gem. Thank you very much
I would be very much interested in this same kind of video for a torus shaped planet!
Same deal except when you go to draw your plates make sure the left and right sides match up AND the top and bottom.
THANK YOU! I was in the making of a Pangea world, with a limited amount of kingdoms ruling, but I just wasn't sure how to exactly control the map, to put the minerals, and metals to the right places (yes putting mountains, and volcanoes in the right places help, but it is a steampunk world, so knowing about the how and why they would be there is possible... so I am thankful for you, and for YT for suggesting this video for me (I was about to search but hey, it knew what i needed)
I love the idea of a Pangea world where most of the landmass is concentrated at one of the poles. The result would likely be massive ice sheets.
wow i was watching old vids the jump in production value is amazing :) currently fighting world builders disease , but loving how in depth you get :D
Lovely, I'll have to give Gplates a try. Been trying to design some Earth-like alien worlds lately. My workflow so far has included Gimp and Blender, and some island randomization scripts (I rando a bunch and choose the best shapes). I'll probably still use Blender for the final hi-res design, but sounds like Gplates will get me to that point faster.
THIS IS SO HELPFUL, I would totally be down for something that's a little lengthy
“We’re going for function over form”
*makes beautiful map*
holy shit, you fucking killed me dude!
Excellent video! It's refreshing to see a different approach with fantasy map making. Have you studied geography/geology or is it just an interest?
Utterly brilliant!! I love your stuff! I'd love a more in-depth explanation of your Photoshop, G-Plates, and G-Projector process.
Great video! Yes, please do more tutorials about plate tectonics and mapping!
Super awesome. I've been working on a project to try and automate this process with procedural generation and simulation. It's been a lot of fun learning how it all works, even if I haven't made a whole lot of progress. Gplates is super awesome though, thanks for bringing that to my attention.
THANK YOU. I’ve been wanting to make a realistic world that didn’t look like stretched play doh. I wanted to make a world with history, and many countries that rise and fall, with realistic features and towns, just like real life.
Awesome! Loved the video. Always wanted a way of making maps spherical haha
By the way, why do you put your 'pangea' in the north hemisphere? Any apparent reason, like personal, is it just because where the most land mass is, it's going to be the place humans or the creatures there consider north?
North and south are kinda arbitrary anyway.
I mean, take a planet rotating counter-clockwise, with an axial tilt above 90 degrees.
This can be interpreted as north being 'down', that north and south are swapped logically, or that the entire solar system is treated as being inverted.
(after all, a counter-clockwise rotation with a tilt above 90 degrees is functionally equivalent to a clockwise rotation with less than 90 degree tilt)
It could be interpreted based on the balance of land and water, or just about any number of other factors.
If the magnetic poles are vastly out of line with the geographic ones, even more options present themselves.
But in the end, while having a 'north' and 'south' equivalent broadly makes sense (except perhaps where the magnetic and geographic versions are way out of line, in which case you may end up with these being separate concepts), there's no real reason for either of the two possible interpretations.
You could have a culture declare 'north' equivalent to east, but that's just a swapping of terminology, and the way planets are it doesn't make sense to define outside of either the magnetic poles, or the poles defined by the axis of rotation. If a culture DID do that it would imply having an arbitrary set of direction concepts.
Perhaps you could have a culture that doesn't think in rectilinear terms, leading perhaps to directions spaced around a hexagon, but that's not really that different in practice, even if the terminology that would result would be different. (you'd find that either the north-south or east-west equivalents would likely be an 'inbetween' direction comparable to 'south-east' logically.)
Why cultures would do that I wouldn't know, but the north/south thing being arbitrary wouldn't really change.
Artifexian ok, thanks Bro, love your work!
No reason at all. On another day I might have been in the south.
I tried to make a realistic map with proper plate tectonics about a month ago, but i couldn't get the pools to line up properly and noticed i tried to create something really earth with out intention. this has really has helped and i know about G-plates at that time
Well done. You can also play with varying the ages of mountain ranges and plates, having some plates or plate boundaries being eliminated in the past and old mountain ranges still present but heavily eroded. See, the Appalachians. These mountains aren't large enough to produce rain shadows, but they can be interesting topography.
From the continental map you produced, I assume you will have 4 major oceanic currents. Two will be located in your massive ocean, one south and one north of the equator. A third will be located in the smaller ocean basin south of your continent. The final current will be the polar vortex, which in a world with an appropriate climate would have a central oceanic ice cap. Assuming your air current masses are similar to Earth, from here we can start mapping biomes. One of the cool things about your map is that the largest mountain range is trans-equatorial, which means that you're probably going to have a bunch of tropical alpine areas, which have really cool plantlife. Something you won't have very much of, given the shape of the world, is temperate deciduous forests, as these would have to be on the east side of your supercontinent, and potentially in the massive bay on the west side. A good portion of the world will be deserts and grasslands, given the continental effects. The North polar area could be either tundra or a massive greenland like icecap, depending on your preference. And of course the boreal forest will abut that northern mountain chain. The whole lack of land in the Southern hemisphere is interesting.
So, yeah. I hope you spend your next video on this topic talking about ocean and air currents, since they're so important for driving biome location.
Next tutorial, how to determine climate patterns that would indicate where your deserts, jungles, tundras, etc, will be. From the map you made, it looks like there will be a mega desert in the middle with all those huge mountain ranges preventing ocean moisture from blowing in.
I really think you should continue with your orbital elements video and add time into the mix. Show how to calculate future positions of your future planets. Now that would be a challenge of a video!
as someone who makes custom planet textures for videos, this was very helpful, I now know to add much water, have islands all over the edges of ocean plates, and have canyons not just formed by water
that was very informative, though i don't think most fantasy maps are designed to cover a globe. In fact it adds to mystery that parts of the world are yet undiscovered.
You as the author should not be filling in details of your world blindly, nor should you shackle your narrative to the tyranny of trivial realities.
Absolutely! But you as the author shouldnt be discovering your world at the same time as the reader. Worldbuild on the globe scale and only show a fraction of your work.
please! i've never heard of Gplates before and I would love it if you made a tutorial on it. Tectonics are exactly how I've informed worlds and their continents, this would take it to a new level.
I've tried to do a map based on tectonic plates before and the 3D aspect caused me problems. I'd love to see a tutorial on these programs.
Great video! Love the depth you go! Would be great to see you continue this mapping with climate, biomes etc
This will definitely happen.