Terra Firma

Just started out on this cartography filter. I'm planning to add meridians and maybe a border and compass rose as well...

"jane, you ignorant slut..." ok, so i'm jane in this case. how is this a cartography filter? i'm missing something here.

ok, i can see a bit of it in the rippling effect, but the rest so far is a bit of a stretch. then again, i'm known to be a bit slow at times.

lol, JEAN

Cool Effect!!! I think that it would look really neat on all kinds of things....

rrrrrr (Pirate Sound)

Here is my reference so you guys know what I'm after... kind of.

ok, now i see where you're going. i tend to agree with you on too many additives, but not on everything. a 'cartography' filter would have all the things that you would expect to see on the sample you provided. so, in this case, it's not really an additive so much as an expected and inherent to what cartography is. it's kind of an all or nothing on such a specifically targeted filter. on generic filters, it doesnt matter so much, but this one is specific.

and the same arguement applies to being able to do something in another filter or editor. sure, you could do it all in photoshop, just not as easily. i find that the filters i actually use are the ones that do a complete job of the effect i want for a given image. if i have to do other work in other editors, i'm not as inclined to do it.

[extended rant. read with caution ]
i know vlad tried to instill certain guidelines for us and certainly did for his programmers. things like not being redundant to other editors, keep it small, simple and easy to use and so on. and these were very good and still are very good guidelines. the whole idea behind FF was to make a program that could make good, seamless textures and be very easy to use. well, he's done that and continues to do that.

but, we've also shown vlad that we can extend FF to include MUCH more functionality, keep the relative ease of use and generally blow the socks off the industry. heck, we've blown the socks off vlad a time or two and certainly my socks are missing, both from FF itself and from the filter makers

frankly, i hope that vlad takes this (or another similar program) into a full blown graphic editor based on the same component, plug n play type programming. i would LOVE to have a psp or photoshop that was based like FF. i wouldnt need to beg corel or adobe to add this feature or that... i'd just make them myself out of components! i look at psp in its current state and go, 'boy, if only i could alter this or that and look at the limited functionality of that filter... if it only had a rotate slider or i could plug such and such a component into it.' i fairly drool at the notion and would pre-pay right now, i think

and after that, i hope he goes with a full 3d program or an animation program, all procedurally based. it just blows the mind what could be done here. how many creative folks are there out in the graphics industry that cant or dont want to code but want to create and if someone would just give them the tools... the field is frankly wide open. photoshop is good. max 3d is good, there are animation tools that are good, but you almost have to have a degree in college before you can use them.

and that's still only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. music, cad, mathematics, learning tools, engineering, ... the mind reels and boggles! and then there's the real cash cow... gaming! imagine being able to write your own games, map designs and AI from procedural programs! it's really quite possible. i've used gtkradiant and quake design programs and they are very clumsy, hard to learn and often lacking the proper documentation. do you have any idea how many potential game designers there are out there that got too frustrated with C or C++ or some other language? heh... start with me.

lol. ok. [end of extended rant ]

so, getting back to your filter (finally), i'd say go for it. the text part we know is a bit difficult so we wont burn you at the stake if you leave that part out, but i'd say include the rest. to do less, in this case, would be like not finishing it.

cool

I finally got around to finishing up version 101 of this. There's still many things I'd like to do with this filter, but it's already got way more controls than I usually like. It's nowhere near perfect, but I thought I'd just set it free.

Hitting the library today...