Earth 18,000 BCE - A Work In Progress! - Nah it is finished!

[Don. Edwards]

Well this is the second time I am posting this. For some reason my first attempt failed. Well I remember someone in the forum asked about the possibility of making a texture of Earth at the time of the last ice age. I at first thought it would be to difficult to do. Then all the Earth bathymetry textures being made gave me an idea. So using the bathymetry texture as a base and then working on top of it with data I got from another web site I have started to make a texture of the Earth at around 18,000 years ago at the height of the last ice age. Now the picture I have posted has the clouds on for a reason. The texture is only about 30% done and there are a few things that need adjusting yet. So I though I would give everybody a teaser shot. So here it is.

It’s not very clear but you can see that Florida is almost twice its present size. Also the Bermuda islands get allot bigger as well. There are other very interesting things. Like a dry San Francisco bay, no great lakes, and allot more islands world wide. I have yet to finish the ice pack over Europe and to fill in the rest of uncovered landmass in the Far East and Australia. As things progress I will add more shots. This is a work in progress and I work on it when I need a break from the other projects I am working on. As always all comments and suggestions are welcome.

Don.

[Don. Edwards]

Well I am revising this some. As I, like most texture creators like to keep a wrap on there textures until they are to a stage were they feel they are comfortable to share a few screenies. Well I thought about this for a minute and then I decided to do something I never do. I am going to show you the actual progress as this texture evolves. That means I am going to post screen caps that show the good as well as the bad. I am going to show what has been done and what still needs work. I feel this just might let others see how a texture comes to life. Now I am by no means saying this texture is or will be perfect when its done. I actually feel its going to be very rough even in its completed state. But I feel that it might be fun for everyone to watch as things progress. Heck it might even give someone a better idea of how to do it. So sit back and let the pictures load and have a look at were things stand as of now. As I said as I update the texture you will be able to come here and see the changes as they come. This will be like a community texture. As always give me feed back and if you think something doesn't look right please feel free to post here and tell what you think needs to be done. Enjoy the pics.
The first picture is the same as the one above but without clouds.

Here is Central and South America.

Well the Atlantic is nearly done.

This shot shows how I am going for authenticity. Look at the Sahara, its much smaller and Africa is much greener. Of course the Mediterranean needs filling. Notice that there is no Black Sea and parts of the northern Mediterranean are empty.

Here is Australia connected to New Guinea and look how big New Zealand is.

Lastly Asia and India.

Well that’s it for now. More in a couple a days.

Don.

[Darkmiss]

Wow looks great.
Somtimes it amazes me as to how many projects some of you guys have going at once.

Hey England was fozen over....

Looking forward to Earth 18,000 BCE Central

[ElPelado]

It looks very good!!!
in which formats are you planning to do it? dds jpg png? 4k 8k?



question: does anybody know when the next ice age will be?

[Don. Edwards]

The texture will only be in 4k. I do not have an 8k version of the original texture. I will probbly release it in .dds for speed and as a high grade png or jpg. I wil have to make a specmap to go with it of course.

Don.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Stunning work, as usual . I'll be interested to see how this turns out, but it's looking rather good so far

[MrBatman]

Nice. I'm the guy that requested the iced Earth btw. Two questions though: Shouldn't the Antarctic cap also be larger, and shouldn't there be much more snow and glaciation on the mountain ranges?

The rest looks good though. I think during the last ice age, Egypt and most of the Sahara desert was a very tropical region, and most of the Mediterranean was dry, so you're on the right track. (I also remember reading somewhere that there was a land bridge from Gibraltar to Africa, and when the seas began to rise, there was a huge waterfall where the straits of Gibraltar are now.)

[Don. Edwards]

As I said this texture is only 30% finished. I only have ice and glaciers on the northern mountains at this time. Indeed the south polar cap will be much bigger and of course I will be filling in all the oceans.

[MrBatman]

I'm wondering ... would the West Indies (Cuba, et. al.) have been one large island, since the sea level would be about 300 feet lower than today?

Atlantis, perhaps?

[Don. Edwards]

Actually no, if you look at the bathymetric textures you can see that there are deep trenches between many of these islands. Only a few would in fact be connected but most would become larger in surface area. Another example is the Hawaiian Islands. They have very deep sides so most of them don't really get any bigger when the water level goes down. But there are many sea-mounts that are just a few hundred feet under the present surface. So if the water goes down these hidden islands come to the surface and you get many more islands as a whole. Something I noticed when adding some of these islands are that in the Atlantic off the south western coast of Africa there are several island groups that would surface and they form in rows. They are remainders from small hot spots along the mid-oceanic trench.
They are kind of like the Hawaiian islands in that way. Here is a screen cap of the area.

Of course in reality these islands may not have broken the surface but I am going by the coloring in the bathymetric texture were very light gray to white put the elevation right under the present surface. Following that premise I put these islands above water. And so far the map I use as a comparison has kept me right on track for the most part.

Don.

[granthutchison]

Don:
Rather than estimating the land area that's going to be above water, it's easy enough to extract realistic detail of the new coastline from the ETOPO5 database. If you like I can send you a mask based on, say, a 100m fall in sea-level. Problems, of course, with the realism of that coastline near the ice-sheets themselves, since the level of the land surface will have been depressed, but still better than guesswork based on the bathymetry tint, I think.

Grant

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Grant,
Sorry for the delay but with the recent conectivity issues I have been having I haven't been able to give you a reply. Thanks for the offer of the mask. I would like to see what you could come up with. But from everything I have read it was closer to a 300 meter sea level drop than a 100 meter. I am baseing my work on this map.

Her is where I am as of today.

As you can see I am not far off from this projection. The estimating I did is pretty close. The only issues I realy can see is the island data. And before anyone asks I just shut off the northern ice cap to make this image of the texture. Of course there will be a great deal of color ajusting. I am just working with it in the present color ranges to ease the job. I will hopefully b posting more screen caps tonight but no promises. I am nealy finshed filling in most of the oceans. I just need to work on the southern glaciers and finsh the northern ice cap and ajust the size of the southern cap. Still at least 2 weeks to go as far as I can see.

[granthutchison]

But from everything I have read it was closer to a 300 meter sea level drop than a 100 meter.

Interesting. Where are you getting that from? The textbook on Quaternary glaciation that I own shows a number of graphs of sea-level change at this time, from different parts of the world, with lows at about 90-120m.
A quick Google search for "ice age" and "sea level" turns up numerous sites that quote 100-120m. See, as a single example we might hope was reputable http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/intro/gornitz_01/.

Grant

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Grant,
Well you just came across one of those backwards US measurements things.
When I wrote that I meant feet not meters. So in actuality you are right. Being there is a little over 3Ft in a meter it works out just fine. So yes it is 100-120 meters or in our backward US terminology, 300-350 Feet. I think that explains the mix up and it was on my part. The map is from the PaleoMap project but I have seen others that are similar. Here is the site.
http://www.scotese.com/earth.htm
They show several real interesting maps of the Earth at different times. I was considering using them as a reference for other texture projects.

Don.

[granthutchison no logon]

Well you just came across one of those backwards US measurements things.

OK. I'll try to cook up a sea-level mask for a 100m drop and e-mail it to you in the next few days.

http://www.scotese.com/earth.htm

Yes, interesting - I own a copy of Scotese's paleomap atlas, which features the large-format maps the web images were prepared from. Lovely things.

Grant

[Don. Edwards]

Well it is time for more pictures. At this time I consider the texture 60% to 65% finished. As you will see there are a few things still needing to be done. The snow layer kind of makes things pale in areas it shouldn't. That’s an easy fix. I also plan on changing the color of the water layer to be more like my 8k Earth texture. I haven't decided whether or not to add a shallow water layer. I experimented with one and it was ok, but it could be better. I have to give a big thanks to Grant for the sea-level mask he created for me. It filled in the blanks in a few places and it covered a few things I had above water. But I was 90% right just by guessing. Not bad really. I was able to use his mask to finish filling in the oceans without having to paint it all in by hand. That was getting boring and my hand started to hurt from all the little movements and clicking. So here we go. New pictures of the texture at work. This time with a working specmap!

The first pic is over Indonesia and Australia. Looks allot different than it does today.


This is right over Turkey.


South America and the southern polar cap.


The North Pacific.


China, Japan, and the rest of the Orient.


Here is a closer look at Indonesia and Australia.


North Africa and Europe.


Look what a vacation spot the Bahamas used to be. They put Hawaii to shame in size.


Ah the old immigration point to North America, the Baring land bridge.


And lastly I made a little avi of the Earth spinning with and without clouds.
You will need the latest Divx plug-in to view it. http://63.224.48.65/~impulse/Misc/001.avi

Well that does it for now. I will post more as things go forward. I am closing in on the finishing line on this one. Its been one of the most complex textures I have made so far. In its working .psd version it contains 10 layers at this point. It will probably have 15 in the next few days. As always comments are welcome and expected.

Don.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

The only comment I have is "WOW"

Actually, I am wondering... what are those two big "polynya" lakes to the east of the UK on the northern european image? Are they fictional, or do we know they were there (I can't think how we'd know about them...)? Or did you just forget to fill those in?

[Don. Edwards]

If you look at the reference map I used to base my texture on they are there. I don't have any idea if they were really there but I put them in just to add some interest.

Don.

[granthutchison]

Don:
The "polynyas" in the North Sea look to be an artefact of the jpging process which produced the image you're working from. In Scotese's original map they're green areas with a rim of blue along the ice-edge - river water dammed against the encroaching ice-cap. One represents the ice-free area over SW England, and one is an ice-free land area I seem to remember is called Doggerland, extending far into what is now a shallow part of the North Sea, from the present coast of the Netherlands. (We know it was ice-free because ancient tree trunks and at least one flint arrowhead have come up in trawler nets from the area!)
I can scan Scotese's original map and send you an image of the area if you're interested.

Grant

[Don. Edwards]

Grant,
Sure that would be great. It might give me a little more to go on.

Don.