Illustration showing Calidar’s solar system, the Soltan Ephemeris
I’ve had this image in my head ever since I created the planetary models for Calidar, but it has taken a long time for me to bring it all together. At a loss for a better explanation, all I can say is that I lacked the inspiration. I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t know how I should go about doing it.
Thankfully, I have an amazing group of supporters, both in social media as well as over on my Patreon campaign. And today, thanks to you, inspiration finally hit and I was able to bring my mental picture into the larger world.
I’d like to extend my gratitude especially to my patrons for March 2017:
Jesper Andersen, Azure Admiral, Trentin Bergeron, David Chart, Francesco Defferrari, Christopher Desmond, Joshua DiCicco, Paul Dupuis, Marty Godsey, Bruce Heard, Brian Isikoff, Eric Jackson, Grégory Le Louette, Wendy Lord, Christopher Maikisch, Harri Mäki, Nate Mangion, Carl Matthews, Gordon McCormick, Anna B Meyer, Sverre Midthjell, Hervé Musseau, Wolfgang Neckel, Cameron Paine, Thomas Pizard, Dave Poppel, Friedrich Röhrer-Ertl, Jeff Scifert, Robert Slaughter, Erin D Smale, Joshua Starnes, Kurt Stoffer, Sandra Tait, Douglas Zielsdorf.
We are rapidly approaching the conclusion of this project. This may even turn out to be the last post, if community feedback is mostly positive. So let’s get into it.
The Atlas of Mystara World Model
Mystara 2016 Diagram 1
Diagram 1 shows the world model, as determined by the world dimensions we came to previously. All of the diagrams and images in this post are derived from Placement 5, which seemed to be the most popular of the placements I proposed. (There was also support for placement 4, with its tunnel-shaped polar openings, but if we can preserve the polar openings in their original shape, that would be preferable.)
I have split the world into four parts, as illustrated on the right of this diagram: the Hollow World, the Outer World and the two Polar Lips. The north-south measurements of each of these are also given; these are essential for fitting the world maps to the 3D model correctly.
The next three diagrams show the model itself, which is very simply a 3D extrusion of the shape in diagram 1.
I made the rendered diagrams blue to differentiate from the 2012 versions of these same diagrams.
Finally, here’s the sunlight diagram:
Mystara 2016 Diagram 5
The areas of black marked in the northern polar opening show the extent of the Darklands — where neither sun shines. An area the same size exists in the southern polar opening. There’s also an area which experiences both day and night in summer, marked in grey, but most of the land at the poles gets constant day in midsummer and constant day in midwinter.
With that out of the way, it’s time to explore the model.
Atlas of Mystara 3D Model
This is it: hopefully the final model and placement. I put some clouds on this one for fun, but the rest of the mock-ups are cloud free for better clarity.
From straight on, Mystara looks like a ball with its top and bottom cut off:
The latitudes seem to be working rather well, don’t you think?
Here’s a better view of the Arm of the Immortals and the Savage Coast area:
Skothar:
And Davania:
When it’s on the model, Davania is far more visibly South America and Africa with Antarctica and Australia added on. It’s very clear to see in this image.
Next, let’s take a look at the polar openings. The north pole:
Frosthaven sits just south of absolute north. The composition of the polar opening seems close to the official maps. Note that Nentsun is actually quite small — it’s only marginally larger than Frosthaven in size.
Next, the south pole:
Just the very southern tip of the continent falls into the opening, but it goes about halfway in. As expected, southern Davania is far smaller than it looks on the world maps, due to the pinching effect of the poles, which is lessened on Mystara thanks to the polar openings, but it still significant.
Now let’s delve into the Hollow World. In these shots, you can see the polar openings as well as the Hollow World itself.
The extent of the expanded Grey Sea and Sea of Keleb is apparent in this last one.
Let’s take a closer look.
The fuzziness is because I haven’t rendered these shots, as it takes close to two hours to do so. That can wait for the finished Atlas versions of these maps, hopefully in a few years’ time.
It’s perhaps a little hard to make out how the curvature works here, so let’s try some perspective shots.
The placement of the Hollow World’s landmasses seems pretty good.
Conclusion
I’m quite happy with this model. What do you think?
If you have any feedback, please don’t hold back. Now is the time to iron out any issues.
If nothing major comes up, I will declare the project closed, and all my maps from that point on will use this as the model. Of course there’s a huge amount of work needed to turn these collages back into usable maps, but that is for the next project.
I couldn’t resist playing with the 3D model a bit more.
Specifically, I noticed that the way I had applied the maps to the model yesterday was not right. Count the latitude lines on this image from yesterday and see for yourself:
Yesterday’s post’s globe
Notice how nine small squares fit into the space between the equator and the extreme northern point of the world? This is why I had to stretch the continents to make them fit more into the polar openings. Do you also notice how the squares are not in fact square, even near the equator? They should be almost square at the equator, getting squeezed more and more as you near the pole. But they’re squashed into rectangles at the equator.
In other words, the map is not correctly applied to the globe. The Outer World should go further into the polar openings, and the Hollow World shouldn’t be poking out the top quite as far as it is.
Unfortunately there is no super precise way of doing this, but that’s okay — unlike with the real world, this globe is just a visualisation of the maps, so it doesn’t have to be pixel perfect, as long as I can get it to look roughly the same each time I make it.
So I reverse-engineered the graticule (the grid lines) so that 66º sits roughly at the start of the polar opening, then squashed the Hollow World graticule to compensate. Here’s what the texture map has to look like for this model (prepare for weirdness!):
Revised texture map for Mystara’s globe
Each part of the map has to be squashed into the texture in order to display on the model correctly. And for some reason it all has to be vertical like this!
Apply it to the globe, and…
The Revised Globe
The revised texture map applied to the 2012 globe model
Much better!
Note that the graticule squares are indeed almost square near the equator.
Let’s take a look inside, too (complete with an improvised Red Sun):
Cross-section showing the Hollow World beneath the Far End OceanCross-section showing the Hollow World beneath the Known World continentsMystara’s north pole from the outsideMystara’s south pole from the outsideThe southern hemisphere of the Hollow WorldThe northern hemisphere of the Hollow World
Does anyone have any objections to these placements of the two worlds? There’s lots of room for tweaking, but in general I’m pretty happy with this configuration.
We should probably get the exact dimensions of the world locked in before playing with this stuff any more. Changes to the size of the Outer World will doubtless cause changes to the model anyway.
