I love climate zones too, but how on Earth/ConWorld could Edgar improve upon the already stellar series of vids he did on mapping climate zones? I'm sure those climate zone vids were what prompted me to become a patron, too. I have an idea of how they could be improved, based on things I've seen worldbuilding pasta write about, but the level of granular detail involved quickly meets the law of diminishing returns compared to the method in existing vids for the majority of applications.
so many ppl complaining about gplates as a software makes me a lil sad. its a free open source software thats /able/ to be used for something it was definitely not intended to be used for like cmon give it some slack 😭 i love this series and its given me so many ideas for my own worldbuilding who cares if its not /actually/ simulating anything for me it looks neat and is great for visualizing/checking for realistic plate movements... also its not That complicated, just a lot of fiddling. which is very forgivable to me considering that it was never meant to be used for world building in the first place, lol. anyway absolutely love this series, and im glad to see some niche freeware getting some love too aha
When I see a notification I'm like : Oh cool a new video from Edgar Then I realise I haven't fully finished my space data and I'm 5 episodes late. So I get sad Then I remember I can watch a Video From Edgar !
I actually like being several episodes late. It means I get to move at my own pace instead of the pace that Edgar can make the videos. Still trying to catch up though.
Always happy to see more Artifexia! I'll admit that you've kind of lost me on the Gplates stuff, but that's the worldbuilder's curse! It's always about how thurough you need/want to be, versus time spent. Personally it would take me far too long to build a world this thuroughly to my satisfaction, since I'd be stuck on the details forever! Anyway, even if I don't plan to follow the whole tutorial, it's still a lot of fun to watch your process!
I had issues with flowlines. They were awfully ugly with my micro continent. So I just set the microcontinent in the rotation file as any other craton, with the line "201 1000.0 90.0 0.0 0.0 200 !" at the beginning, just like we did for the splitting in last video. Worked perfectly so far. I'm now officially halfway through the GPlates tutorial. My brain must be at boiling point currently, so I will do the collisions on another day. Thanks for the tutorial !
The drifting caused by changing the plate ID is likely because there is no rotation data assigned to that plate ID. If you duplicate the rotation for the Plate ID first then change features to that plate ID, I would imagine that you won’t have that issue with things jumping when changing plate ID.
That is exactly what is happening. GPlates stores features as their points and then calculates their position on the globe over time. As there is no initial rotation for the new feature, if you copy the object and change the Plate ID it will move to (90, 0, 0). I've got some other really useful hints for dealing with GPlates idiosyncrasies but they're too long to put in a comment. Can I send you an email or longer message with the details? I started out building my tectonic history by following Worldbuilding Pasta, and then went down the rabbit hole into academic papers on the subject. (For example, there are ways to generate oceanic crust age grids that don't require you draw each segment of crust at 50 MA intervals.)
@@zoqaeski Ah, beaten to the punch. Just came to the same conclusion and tested it out. Would love to hear some of the insight you have from experience. If it doesn't make it's way to Artifexian would you consider sharing it somewhere on your channel zoqaeski?
@@fl-v8843 I don't have a video channel per se, and I haven't used GPlates for a while because it wasn't compiling on my system until last night when I got the latest beta off the program maintainer (as the stable versions don't work on rolling release Linux distributions). I'll post a comment on the Artifexian subreddit instead, as Reddit allows formatting which will make some details much clearer. It'll probably take me a few days to do a write-up because I haven't done any worldbuilding for months.
@@zoqaeski One of the things that I like to do is make a rot file with an absolute shitload of plate IDs, like 200-300 (Pretty easy to do in excel and then import to the .rot file), and then when you first want to make an object, make a dummy first and move it literally anywhere and save the .rot file. It helps if you start the dummy object with the conjugate ID of the plate you want it to follow. Then, delete the dummy object and just make the one you wanted to do in the place you want it. The start date in the .rot file is irrelevant because nothing is on the globe until the actual element appears, and then you have an entry with a reconstruction baked into the same time for the object and no need to go do the dance with total reconstruction poles or .rot file tweaks. Obviously you'll still be going into and tweaking it, but having a bunch of plates "ready to bake" makes it a lot faster.
@@battyboio Because its supposed to be a 3-5 year long series, yall demanded Edgar to end the gplates series early when there could have been 3-4 more great videos which would have helped a lot of people. We barely ended year 1 of this 3-5 year long series.
If you're wondering! the reason things jump when you change the plate ID is that the program recalculates the motions based on the new plate ID. If the start time and reconstruction tree are not identical, the new reconstructed position will be different and so it seems to "jump". I believe there is a workflow that prevents the jump, but it's more trouble than you lay out Great series! I was already mucking around with a project when you started and this has been so helpful!
It's so nice to come to the comments under these videos and see all the other dorks getting hyped by the same nerdy ass niche that I love. I love you all, my fellow kindred geeks.
Will you be using the coastline feature? Given that coastlines in reality rarely line up exactly with the margins of a mass of continental crust, sometimes forming massive seaways over continents, it might be a good idea to create them as a separate feature so that you can track how they change over time.
Nice video as always,, would really like to see one where you start from a complete map and work backward to figure out how the planet looked 1000my before the map
This can be done but I'd advise against it. The point of this process is to evolve realistic modern features. If you've already got a complete map, there's not much point in reverse engineering things - you already know what your world likes looks so knowing its history doesn't provide any extra value.
@@Artifexian I disagree that there is no merit. I often find I have a partially developed setting made casually when I'm inspired by a worlbbuilding content (such as the climate zone videos) to apply realistic methods to what's already been done with the setting, and attempt to reconcile them. It's an interesting challenge to justify what you've already done and a useful guide to filling in the rest of a world you've had no reason to touch so far. For example, taking a europe sized map with some specified topology, and using tectonics to justify and expand the map to the full globe. Suddenly major world powers are clear and legends have locations/geology to have formed from. Or taking a ludicrous specified year length of 2383 days and reconciling it with orbital mechanics. In the latter case learning even 2 habitable stars wouldn't adequately heat it and worldbuilding fudging was requited. Larger poles, lower albedo, higher greenhouse effect, geothermal heating? After Artifexia's gplates arc is over I'll be running that Europe sized map backwards to see what pops up. (Loving the series by the way) Constraints add unique flair to art and even with a completed setting, seeing how it evolved is interesting. After all, back-tracking Earth's tectonic history is why we have gplates and this style of worldbuilding in the first place.
Especially the beginning of this plate series has been really slow, it's great that the pace is picking up a bit, but I would still much much prefer longer/more content heavy videos. Awesome stuff nonetheless!
I have to ask what exactly GPLATES actually does for simulating. So far the program really seems to be nothing more than a 3d animated display for your continents, that requires such laborious finagling that even the simplest events are painstaking, and seemingly adds no actual content but a basic between-position tween. I assume the program actually does things, or it wouldnt have much academic use, but I just can't understand at this point.
Gplates really wasn't made for worldbuilding or starting from the beginning and moving forward in time, so it's kind of using the tool the wrong way, which is why everything is so complicated
I definitely appreciate being able to see my continents on a globe, and have them be consistent between movements as opposed to doing maps by hand, but...goodness, this is cumbersome.
I suspect all of this would be easier if we set a billion years ago as time 0 and worked our way forward to the present being time 1000(billion years). I think the reconstruction would be reversible(?)…
The thing I like about being able to incorporate a tectonic history into my planet is that it allows for spec-paleontology on the various landmasses. Maybe it's because I've also thought of the past as a separate place we can never go back to, only see fragments of.
Are you ever going to make a WorldSmith sheet for P-type and S-type star systems? I'm trying to develop a system centered around G-type and K-type main sequence stars. But I keep running into problems on the WorldSmith because none of the sheets account for things like the combined mass and luminosity of the stars.
This is really fun and I'm following this along in my own GPlates (got like 8 cratons to keep track of). I'm also waiting patiently for the video on convergent boundaries because that's the point I've reached (as well as a few other people I've seen mention it here in the comments) and I can't move on. But I've been wondering about tectonic plates, as far as my knowledge reaches, they're supposed to go all the way around, no? Like in this simulation if I understand things correctly, you started off with a world that had no tectonic plates - and then you started breaking up the supercontinent and it seems we're basically assuming that the supercontinent became its own tectonic plate, that is slowly breaking up into pieces, but the entire rest of your planet was just staying one single tectonic plate that the continents bulldoze through, causing the oceanic crust around them to subduct underneath them and trailing new oceanic crust behind them. I was under the impression that once you get tectonics going, the entire crust kinda breaks up into pieces, so for example the continent of the pink craton would be pushing some oceanic crust ahead of it and then you'd get a subduction zone somewhere in the middle of the ocean and such... Is that just... unrealistic? Does GPlates have the possibility of breaking the whole planet up into tectonic plates instead of starting with two tectonic plates - the supercontinent you start with and the 'rest of the planet' which is just one giant plate of oceanic crust? Is that theorized to be the way it works in real life?
Guessing that that is actually how you'd ideally do it, but he didn't for two reasons: Simplicity for a Tutorial series, and that what is in the rest of the world prior to this basically gets erased over time with the motions of the supercontinent breaking up. But that's purely a guess on my part, from when I wondered the same thing.
"Overall this supercontinent occupies about 1/4 of the planet’s surface area in order to about match Earth’s land area around a billion years ago, but there’s no particular reason that should be the case for all worlds. We don’t need to worry about the plates in the oceans or any features of the continents aside from the placement of the cratons, because all of these will be near-completely erased and overwritten with new plates and features over the course of this exercise." - Worldbuilding Pasta
Wasn't the continental drift modelling and mapping done by Worldbuilding Pasta on commission? So you'd be applying climate zones to a "here's one WP baked earlier, with more cratons" map.
I guess that you have already realized this but, when you change the plate id of an object to a number that it is not in the rotation file yet, by default that ID has a angle of 90.0 0.0... and so on. If you create the id in the rotation file first (like you do later in the video), that jumping doens't happen.
I think the reason for the island jump is because the info coordinates and movement history need to be copied to new plate ids for GPlates to know where to put them.
Edgar, is it possible to do the flow lines stuff all at ime? By this I mean, move all the continents, micro-continents, and whatever else up until near the end of the simulation, and then go back and create the 50myr flow line parts all after each other? Or is it better to do everything in the 50myr sections as we go?
@@Artifexian Thanks, mate. I was thinking it might be easier the other way more for not having to keep checking all the short-cuts and steps for each stage (conts, micros, islands, etc). But now that I'm thinking it over, I can see how any problem could end up scuppering a lot of work.
8:40 I imagine what's happening is that plate ID 200 has been moved whilst pID201 has not (in the .rot file). When you change the pID from 200 to 201 the feature moves from the .rot location of pID200 to the .rot location of pID 201 (which is empty so it's the default) My guess is if when you added pID201 to the .rot file you used the same numbers as pID200 @850.0MYA the feature would ping back to where it's "meant" to be. Edit: Have just tried this and it seems to work 12:39 specifically copy the coordinates from this line of pID200: 200 _850.0_ 70.1652 26.3856 30.4047 000 ! replacing this line of pID201: 201 850.0 _90.0 0.0 0.0_ 000 ! with this: 201 850.0 _70.1652 26.3856 30.4047_ 000 ! That said, this may break anything made using the method you demonstrated, and for simplicity of following along with the series it might be wise to stick with your method Disclaimer: I've learned everything I know about Gplates from this channel. This idea only comes from a hobbyist knowledge of how computers/code ticks. Loving the series as ever!
How do you determine the direction of movement? Is it just perpendicular to the rift in opposite directions? And if an already moving plate splits, does the same logic apply with the difference that we have a component of movement from before that needs to be also considered? Finally, how can I motivate rotation? Has it to do with the shape of the rift and where there is friction or anything?
1. Plates move towards subduction zones. Rifts are the result of plate movement, they don't cause plate movement. 2. Don't worry about which way the plate was moving in the past, just move it towards subduction zones in the present. 3. Plates may rotate if that allows them to move towards their subduction zones more evenly.
It seems to me like it doesn’t make sense to make the flow lines until you’re finished with everything else- is there a good reason why to keep making and redoing them?
Probably just to sanity check everything along the way. Because of the nature of what this tool is actually intended to do vs. what it’s being used for, everything is being done backwards. The backing unrotated map of Artifexians world is of the world 1 billion years ago with the final rotated version being the present. An RW usage would start from the present state of the world and rotations would work their way back to the great long ago.
Well, we use the flow lines to define the ocean crust, so if you care about ocean crust, you'll need 'em. Or I guess you could dispense with the flow lines altogether and just eyeball the ocean crust. Also, what you can do-and I might demonstrate this in the next video-is not put in the drift correction as often as I'm doing here. That way the flow lines won't break so often and you won't need to re-make them. But you'll have to live with a little bit of drift.
I'm going to make a wild guess as a programmer who doesn't use GPlates, but I think the issue with changing the plate ID would probably be resolved without having to clone everything if you then adjusted the rotation file so that the new plate id follows the old one until the split?
Rewtching this playlist, it's a shame that so many of your viewers pushed to have the gplates section sped up. It's obvious from going through this video that you start having to cut corners in just showing quick and dirty examples, rather than the actual "fluid" creation of a planet's land mass structures in order to retain interest in the series. I really wish you would have had the chance and support to continue the steady progression instead.
This is all really cool, but I can't be bothered, not really. I want my geography to be realistic, but this is so much unrewarded work, when all I need is the end-product. How can I get a realistic end-product without doing the entirety of this process
Still disappointed this is not a simulator. It is nothing but a clunky animator. I should be able to define a force field myself, define the plates, their densities, their composition, weak areas of the crust, etc and just hit "simulate".
Geology student here. Simulating plate tectonics in the fashion you described would be pretty impossible for several reasons. The biggest of these would be that all the possible factors that can affect tectonic activity are so numerous and complicated that packing them all into one, all-encompassing software would be extremely unrealistic. There's also the fact that the mechanisms behind plate tectonics are still controversial and poorly understood. The designers would have to fill in a lot of gaps in our understanding without any data to work with, and, as such, there would be no way to know how accurately it could model anything, rendering it useless in a research setting. This software is actually very useful in the setting it was intended to be used in. Having a program that keeps track of features and takes care of all the complex geometry when producing a tectonic reconstruction is a pretty incredible time-saver. It can also be used to manipulate pre-existing reconstructions, test hypothesis, easily produce figures for presentation, etc... GPlates is a great tool. The fact that it can be used for world building at all is just a bonus, and it is a pretty easy way to ensure that the tectonic history of your world stands up to basic scrutiny.
I disagree strongly here. You yourself would not have created anything if you were able to define a bunch of parameters and then just hit simulate. It'd be like claiming that you created a world, when all you did was open Minecraft and input a seed plus a few parameters and hit "create world". The computer created the world, you didn't. You had no say is 95% of the creative process. Now, that might be your bag and more power to you but for me I would find that very unfulfilling. GPlates gives you control at each step and you get (within reason) tailor things to your needs and desires.
@@Artifexian I was thinking of Universe Sandbox, but for plate tectonics. There is nothing in a simulation that prevents you from modifying the simulation.
@@nathanmartin2998 I'd rather have a simulator built on dubious assumptions, but producing realistic results than no simulation at all. A simulation doesn't need to be scientifically "valid" in order to be useful for worldbuilding and entertainment. Software like Universe Sandbox and Space Engine are quite rudimentary and rely on assumptions we don't know anything about, but it is still so satisfying to visit a planet millions of light years away or smashing a moon into the Earth. I don't complain in games when they use a hack in order to make the physics "feel nice".
@@markusklyver6277 You're correct, but you need to keep in mind how niche this little slice of the worldbuilding community is. There isn't enough demand for this kind of software purely for the sake of worldbuilding, so academic utility is the only reason this kind of software exists at all.
Hi iam currently trying to do my own world and encountered a wierd issue. I try to make Craton700 Follow Craton 800 instead of 100 after a rifting event. However after hitting ctrl+P and reading the position of 800 during my time of rifting and inserting it into the rotation file, Craton700 just jumps to the left double the amount of the third digit. I have no clue what is happening since all other cratons i made to unfollow and follow another one worked fine. 700 0.0 90.0 0.0 0.0 100 ! end CratonG 700 1.0 73.0671 -156.767 -41.9577 800 ! Drift Correction 700 850.0 73.0671 -156.767 -41.9577 800 ! start following 800 700 850.0 90.0 0.0 0.0 100 ! end following100 700 1000.0 90.0 0.0 0.0 100 ! start CratonG This is the line in my rotation file, i double and triple checked the positions and they are correct, the ctrl+p menu is also set to the right time (850) and the other number is 0. When i reload the file with the lines above, and open the ctrl+p menu again, 700 is suddenly at 73.0671 -156.767 -83.9154 I really hope you can help me, otherwise i am really stuck
When you hit control+P to find the position, do you first go and change the anchored plate? If you don't do that, and leave the anchored plate as 000, you're getting the positions relative to 000 and not what it needs to follow.
Man and this is just a showcase. I can't wait to see how the real Artifexia will look like!
Stay tuned
I'm hyped about the climate zones man !
Coming down the line.
I love climate zones too, but how on Earth/ConWorld could Edgar improve upon the already stellar series of vids he did on mapping climate zones? I'm sure those climate zone vids were what prompted me to become a patron, too.
I have an idea of how they could be improved, based on things I've seen worldbuilding pasta write about, but the level of granular detail involved quickly meets the law of diminishing returns compared to the method in existing vids for the majority of applications.
I just hope that the videos where the ocean currents as well as the climate zones are made will be on Artifexia and not on a example world. :c ❤🩹
so many ppl complaining about gplates as a software makes me a lil sad. its a free open source software thats /able/ to be used for something it was definitely not intended to be used for like cmon give it some slack 😭 i love this series and its given me so many ideas for my own worldbuilding who cares if its not /actually/ simulating anything for me it looks neat and is great for visualizing/checking for realistic plate movements... also its not That complicated, just a lot of fiddling. which is very forgivable to me considering that it was never meant to be used for world building in the first place, lol.
anyway absolutely love this series, and im glad to see some niche freeware getting some love too aha
When I see a notification I'm like :
Oh cool a new video from Edgar
Then I realise I haven't fully finished my space data and I'm 5 episodes late. So I get sad
Then I remember I can watch a Video From Edgar !
I actually like being several episodes late. It means I get to move at my own pace instead of the pace that Edgar can make the videos.
Still trying to catch up though.
And my day becomes 1000% better again. Thanks for the amazing series
Always happy to see more Artifexia! I'll admit that you've kind of lost me on the Gplates stuff, but that's the worldbuilder's curse! It's always about how thurough you need/want to be, versus time spent. Personally it would take me far too long to build a world this thuroughly to my satisfaction, since I'd be stuck on the details forever! Anyway, even if I don't plan to follow the whole tutorial, it's still a lot of fun to watch your process!
I get that for sure. GPlates isn't for everyone but I think creating a video series on how to use Gplates is useful for those who need it.
@@Artifexian Oh, of course! it's a win-win really
I had issues with flowlines. They were awfully ugly with my micro continent. So I just set the microcontinent in the rotation file as any other craton, with the line "201 1000.0 90.0 0.0 0.0 200 !" at the beginning, just like we did for the splitting in last video. Worked perfectly so far.
I'm now officially halfway through the GPlates tutorial. My brain must be at boiling point currently, so I will do the collisions on another day.
Thanks for the tutorial !
The drifting caused by changing the plate ID is likely because there is no rotation data assigned to that plate ID. If you duplicate the rotation for the Plate ID first then change features to that plate ID, I would imagine that you won’t have that issue with things jumping when changing plate ID.
Haven't tried this but that makes intuitive sense to me.
That is exactly what is happening. GPlates stores features as their points and then calculates their position on the globe over time. As there is no initial rotation for the new feature, if you copy the object and change the Plate ID it will move to (90, 0, 0).
I've got some other really useful hints for dealing with GPlates idiosyncrasies but they're too long to put in a comment. Can I send you an email or longer message with the details? I started out building my tectonic history by following Worldbuilding Pasta, and then went down the rabbit hole into academic papers on the subject. (For example, there are ways to generate oceanic crust age grids that don't require you draw each segment of crust at 50 MA intervals.)
@@zoqaeski Ah, beaten to the punch. Just came to the same conclusion and tested it out.
Would love to hear some of the insight you have from experience. If it doesn't make it's way to Artifexian would you consider sharing it somewhere on your channel zoqaeski?
@@fl-v8843 I don't have a video channel per se, and I haven't used GPlates for a while because it wasn't compiling on my system until last night when I got the latest beta off the program maintainer (as the stable versions don't work on rolling release Linux distributions). I'll post a comment on the Artifexian subreddit instead, as Reddit allows formatting which will make some details much clearer. It'll probably take me a few days to do a write-up because I haven't done any worldbuilding for months.
@@zoqaeski One of the things that I like to do is make a rot file with an absolute shitload of plate IDs, like 200-300 (Pretty easy to do in excel and then import to the .rot file), and then when you first want to make an object, make a dummy first and move it literally anywhere and save the .rot file. It helps if you start the dummy object with the conjugate ID of the plate you want it to follow. Then, delete the dummy object and just make the one you wanted to do in the place you want it. The start date in the .rot file is irrelevant because nothing is on the globe until the actual element appears, and then you have an entry with a reconstruction baked into the same time for the object and no need to go do the dance with total reconstruction poles or .rot file tweaks.
Obviously you'll still be going into and tweaking it, but having a bunch of plates "ready to bake" makes it a lot faster.
Every video my comment about bacterial life in episode 75 is becoming more and more true
Wait could you explain further?
@@pointyorb it's taking forever to get to the spec evo part cuz we get another video on something else piece by piece
@@battyboio Ah ok
@@battyboio Because its supposed to be a 3-5 year long series, yall demanded Edgar to end the gplates series early when there could have been 3-4 more great videos which would have helped a lot of people. We barely ended year 1 of this 3-5 year long series.
Convenient that this is just what I needed to watch before I go to school
Another Brilliant episode Edgar, Keenly awaiting the next one.
This series is doing a lot to inspire me, as are all the resources you provide. Please keep it up! I plan to make good use of this tutorial.
If you're wondering! the reason things jump when you change the plate ID is that the program recalculates the motions based on the new plate ID. If the start time and reconstruction tree are not identical, the new reconstructed position will be different and so it seems to "jump". I believe there is a workflow that prevents the jump, but it's more trouble than you lay out
Great series! I was already mucking around with a project when you started and this has been so helpful!
It's so nice to come to the comments under these videos and see all the other dorks getting hyped by the same nerdy ass niche that I love. I love you all, my fellow kindred geeks.
Always super happy to see a new video !
Will you be using the coastline feature? Given that coastlines in reality rarely line up exactly with the margins of a mass of continental crust, sometimes forming massive seaways over continents, it might be a good idea to create them as a separate feature so that you can track how they change over time.
Huh! That is not something I have ever done. Will look into it.
Would it be possible to have a detailed example at the end again like in the first episodes ? Otherwise good video
Yes, will do in the next one.
I'd love some longer videos. Your voice is really calming and I like listening to it as background noise
Nice video as always,, would really like to see one where you start from a complete map and work backward to figure out how the planet looked 1000my before the map
This can be done but I'd advise against it. The point of this process is to evolve realistic modern features. If you've already got a complete map, there's not much point in reverse engineering things - you already know what your world likes looks so knowing its history doesn't provide any extra value.
@@Artifexian I disagree that there is no merit.
I often find I have a partially developed setting made casually when I'm inspired by a worlbbuilding content (such as the climate zone videos) to apply realistic methods to what's already been done with the setting, and attempt to reconcile them. It's an interesting challenge to justify what you've already done and a useful guide to filling in the rest of a world you've had no reason to touch so far.
For example, taking a europe sized map with some specified topology, and using tectonics to justify and expand the map to the full globe. Suddenly major world powers are clear and legends have locations/geology to have formed from.
Or taking a ludicrous specified year length of 2383 days and reconciling it with orbital mechanics. In the latter case learning even 2 habitable stars wouldn't adequately heat it and worldbuilding fudging was requited. Larger poles, lower albedo, higher greenhouse effect, geothermal heating?
After Artifexia's gplates arc is over I'll be running that Europe sized map backwards to see what pops up. (Loving the series by the way)
Constraints add unique flair to art and even with a completed setting, seeing how it evolved is interesting. After all, back-tracking Earth's tectonic history is why we have gplates and this style of worldbuilding in the first place.
it would be great to see how Artifexia is looking
As always, Artifexian, thank you so much for sharing your worldbuilding knowledge! :)
Great video. Great content. Great Teacher. I love this channel. Hopefully, someday this will be used for the ULTIMATE WORLDBUILDING APP.
Especially the beginning of this plate series has been really slow, it's great that the pace is picking up a bit, but I would still much much prefer longer/more content heavy videos. Awesome stuff nonetheless!
I would love to see the progress of the case study full blown simulation as well in the next video, if that is something that you have recorded.
I'm finding this series super helpful, please keep it up!
I have to ask what exactly GPLATES actually does for simulating. So far the program really seems to be nothing more than a 3d animated display for your continents, that requires such laborious finagling that even the simplest events are painstaking, and seemingly adds no actual content but a basic between-position tween.
I assume the program actually does things, or it wouldnt have much academic use, but I just can't understand at this point.
Gplates really wasn't made for worldbuilding or starting from the beginning and moving forward in time, so it's kind of using the tool the wrong way, which is why everything is so complicated
I definitely appreciate being able to see my continents on a globe, and have them be consistent between movements as opposed to doing maps by hand, but...goodness, this is cumbersome.
I suspect all of this would be easier if we set a billion years ago as time 0 and worked our way forward to the present being time 1000(billion years). I think the reconstruction would be reversible(?)…
@@lordofleviathans8432 It's still not a *simulator*. Simulations make predictions from a model. This is just an animator.
@@markusklyver6277 I mean, I guess you could say it simulates geometry on a spherical surface but that’s about it.
Awesome videos, man! I'm actually following these along every step of the way.
Im loving this series
The thing I like about being able to incorporate a tectonic history into my planet is that it allows for spec-paleontology on the various landmasses. Maybe it's because I've also thought of the past as a separate place we can never go back to, only see fragments of.
Artefexia is so cool
Babe wake up, new Artifexia dropped
🤣
What an awesome series
Are you ever going to make a WorldSmith sheet for P-type and S-type star systems? I'm trying to develop a system centered around G-type and K-type main sequence stars. But I keep running into problems on the WorldSmith because none of the sheets account for things like the combined mass and luminosity of the stars.
I'm currently working on this but it will take a long time to complete.
@@Artifexian Thank you for replying.
This is really fun and I'm following this along in my own GPlates (got like 8 cratons to keep track of). I'm also waiting patiently for the video on convergent boundaries because that's the point I've reached (as well as a few other people I've seen mention it here in the comments) and I can't move on.
But I've been wondering about tectonic plates, as far as my knowledge reaches, they're supposed to go all the way around, no? Like in this simulation if I understand things correctly, you started off with a world that had no tectonic plates - and then you started breaking up the supercontinent and it seems we're basically assuming that the supercontinent became its own tectonic plate, that is slowly breaking up into pieces, but the entire rest of your planet was just staying one single tectonic plate that the continents bulldoze through, causing the oceanic crust around them to subduct underneath them and trailing new oceanic crust behind them.
I was under the impression that once you get tectonics going, the entire crust kinda breaks up into pieces, so for example the continent of the pink craton would be pushing some oceanic crust ahead of it and then you'd get a subduction zone somewhere in the middle of the ocean and such... Is that just... unrealistic? Does GPlates have the possibility of breaking the whole planet up into tectonic plates instead of starting with two tectonic plates - the supercontinent you start with and the 'rest of the planet' which is just one giant plate of oceanic crust? Is that theorized to be the way it works in real life?
Guessing that that is actually how you'd ideally do it, but he didn't for two reasons: Simplicity for a Tutorial series, and that what is in the rest of the world prior to this basically gets erased over time with the motions of the supercontinent breaking up. But that's purely a guess on my part, from when I wondered the same thing.
"Overall this supercontinent occupies about 1/4 of the planet’s surface area in order to about match Earth’s land area around a billion years ago, but there’s no particular reason that should be the case for all worlds. We don’t need to worry about the plates in the oceans or any features of the continents aside from the placement of the cratons, because all of these will be near-completely erased and overwritten with new plates and features over the course of this exercise."
- Worldbuilding Pasta
I've noticed that you can fix the flowline movement caused by the drift correction in the rotation file by just moving the points until they match up
When you’re finished with the tutorials will you make a long form video where you make all of artifexia
Yup! After Gplates comes climate zones, ocean currents etc and long form videos.
Wasn't the continental drift modelling and mapping done by Worldbuilding Pasta on commission? So you'd be applying climate zones to a "here's one WP baked earlier, with more cratons" map.
I guess that you have already realized this but, when you change the plate id of an object to a number that it is not in the rotation file yet, by default that ID has a angle of 90.0 0.0... and so on. If you create the id in the rotation file first (like you do later in the video), that jumping doens't happen.
Coould you maybe do a video on how to world build brown dwarfs, gas giants, ice giants, mini neptunes, etc. some day?
I think the reason for the island jump is because the info coordinates and movement history need to be copied to new plate ids for GPlates to know where to put them.
Edgar, is it possible to do the flow lines stuff all at ime? By this I mean, move all the continents, micro-continents, and whatever else up until near the end of the simulation, and then go back and create the 50myr flow line parts all after each other? Or is it better to do everything in the 50myr sections as we go?
The latter is how I work but you might find the former easier better so I'd say give it and shot and see if it suits you/if any problems arise.
@@Artifexian Thanks, mate. I was thinking it might be easier the other way more for not having to keep checking all the short-cuts and steps for each stage (conts, micros, islands, etc). But now that I'm thinking it over, I can see how any problem could end up scuppering a lot of work.
In this series are you going to be covering the appearance of resources and soil quality?
i hope
I LOVE THIS SHIT BRO please do some stuff on mineralisation/formation of mineral veins & stuff at some point🙏🔥🔥❤
like intrusion & orogenies as they relate to mineral deposits & worldbuilding
Another question, do you NEED any microcontinents? How many would be required to appear over the course of the breakup?
Good, useful video.
Could you give updates on how the project's continent is going? If not it's ok
Yes! Will do in the next video. :)
8:40 I imagine what's happening is that plate ID 200 has been moved whilst pID201 has not (in the .rot file). When you change the pID from 200 to 201 the feature moves from the .rot location of pID200 to the .rot location of pID 201 (which is empty so it's the default)
My guess is if when you added pID201 to the .rot file you used the same numbers as pID200 @850.0MYA the feature would ping back to where it's "meant" to be.
Edit: Have just tried this and it seems to work
12:39 specifically copy the coordinates from this line of pID200:
200 _850.0_ 70.1652 26.3856 30.4047 000 !
replacing this line of pID201:
201 850.0 _90.0 0.0 0.0_ 000 !
with this:
201 850.0 _70.1652 26.3856 30.4047_ 000 !
That said, this may break anything made using the method you demonstrated, and for simplicity of following along with the series it might be wise to stick with your method
Disclaimer: I've learned everything I know about Gplates from this channel. This idea only comes from a hobbyist knowledge of how computers/code ticks.
Loving the series as ever!
How do you determine the direction of movement? Is it just perpendicular to the rift in opposite directions?
And if an already moving plate splits, does the same logic apply with the difference that we have a component of movement from before that needs to be also considered?
Finally, how can I motivate rotation? Has it to do with the shape of the rift and where there is friction or anything?
1. Plates move towards subduction zones. Rifts are the result of plate movement, they don't cause plate movement.
2. Don't worry about which way the plate was moving in the past, just move it towards subduction zones in the present.
3. Plates may rotate if that allows them to move towards their subduction zones more evenly.
A microcontinent is also called a "continental fragment". So you should change the microcontinent's type to "ContinentalFragment".
Why don't you create new oceanic plates at oceanic triple junctures, like with the origins of the Pacific plate?
Hey, do you have any plans to continue with WRLST in the near future?
Unfortunately not. This series is my sole focus now.
@@Artifexian Fair enough. It's a good series, keep up the good work!
Will you be creating a biosphere also or just the planet only?
Yup, will be creating a biosphere
It seems to me like it doesn’t make sense to make the flow lines until you’re finished with everything else- is there a good reason why to keep making and redoing them?
Probably just to sanity check everything along the way. Because of the nature of what this tool is actually intended to do vs. what it’s being used for, everything is being done backwards.
The backing unrotated map of Artifexians world is of the world 1 billion years ago with the final rotated version being the present. An RW usage would start from the present state of the world and rotations would work their way back to the great long ago.
Well, we use the flow lines to define the ocean crust, so if you care about ocean crust, you'll need 'em. Or I guess you could dispense with the flow lines altogether and just eyeball the ocean crust.
Also, what you can do-and I might demonstrate this in the next video-is not put in the drift correction as often as I'm doing here. That way the flow lines won't break so often and you won't need to re-make them. But you'll have to live with a little bit of drift.
Is any program like Gplates that isn’t Gplates? Because I can’t download it?
I'm going to make a wild guess as a programmer who doesn't use GPlates, but I think the issue with changing the plate ID would probably be resolved without having to clone everything if you then adjusted the rotation file so that the new plate id follows the old one until the split?
Will you also cover realistic biological evolution in this series or is that too difficult?
We will get bacterial life in episode 75
"assuming you've done everything correctly"... that's a lot to assume mate
Unrelated Question, Where and how did you learn to worldbuild?
Bro, where are you! I need my FIX!
This program is Far too much to wrap my head around
Rewtching this playlist, it's a shame that so many of your viewers pushed to have the gplates section sped up. It's obvious from going through this video that you start having to cut corners in just showing quick and dirty examples, rather than the actual "fluid" creation of a planet's land mass structures in order to retain interest in the series. I really wish you would have had the chance and support to continue the steady progression instead.
Sheesh
This is all really cool, but I can't be bothered, not really. I want my geography to be realistic, but this is so much unrewarded work, when all I need is the end-product. How can I get a realistic end-product without doing the entirety of this process
Still disappointed this is not a simulator. It is nothing but a clunky animator. I should be able to define a force field myself, define the plates, their densities, their composition, weak areas of the crust, etc and just hit "simulate".
Geology student here.
Simulating plate tectonics in the fashion you described would be pretty impossible for several reasons. The biggest of these would be that all the possible factors that can affect tectonic activity are so numerous and complicated that packing them all into one, all-encompassing software would be extremely unrealistic. There's also the fact that the mechanisms behind plate tectonics are still controversial and poorly understood. The designers would have to fill in a lot of gaps in our understanding without any data to work with, and, as such, there would be no way to know how accurately it could model anything, rendering it useless in a research setting.
This software is actually very useful in the setting it was intended to be used in. Having a program that keeps track of features and takes care of all the complex geometry when producing a tectonic reconstruction is a pretty incredible time-saver. It can also be used to manipulate pre-existing reconstructions, test hypothesis, easily produce figures for presentation, etc... GPlates is a great tool. The fact that it can be used for world building at all is just a bonus, and it is a pretty easy way to ensure that the tectonic history of your world stands up to basic scrutiny.
I disagree strongly here. You yourself would not have created anything if you were able to define a bunch of parameters and then just hit simulate.
It'd be like claiming that you created a world, when all you did was open Minecraft and input a seed plus a few parameters and hit "create world". The computer created the world, you didn't. You had no say is 95% of the creative process. Now, that might be your bag and more power to you but for me I would find that very unfulfilling.
GPlates gives you control at each step and you get (within reason) tailor things to your needs and desires.
@@Artifexian I was thinking of Universe Sandbox, but for plate tectonics. There is nothing in a simulation that prevents you from modifying the simulation.
@@nathanmartin2998 I'd rather have a simulator built on dubious assumptions, but producing realistic results than no simulation at all. A simulation doesn't need to be scientifically "valid" in order to be useful for worldbuilding and entertainment. Software like Universe Sandbox and Space Engine are quite rudimentary and rely on assumptions we don't know anything about, but it is still so satisfying to visit a planet millions of light years away or smashing a moon into the Earth.
I don't complain in games when they use a hack in order to make the physics "feel nice".
@@markusklyver6277 You're correct, but you need to keep in mind how niche this little slice of the worldbuilding community is. There isn't enough demand for this kind of software purely for the sake of worldbuilding, so academic utility is the only reason this kind of software exists at all.
𝐩яⓞ𝓂𝓞Ş𝐦 😆
I don't think even fully sighted people could read this, never mind people who use screen readers
Artifexia is really not a great software.
Gplate is a bad niche software
z
too complicated. i stopped following along in the first gplates episode. ill just use paint to make my world or something
i cannot wait until the gplates chapter of this series is over
Hi iam currently trying to do my own world and encountered a wierd issue. I try to make Craton700 Follow Craton 800 instead of 100 after a rifting event. However after hitting ctrl+P and reading the position of 800 during my time of rifting and inserting it into the rotation file, Craton700 just jumps to the left double the amount of the third digit. I have no clue what is happening since all other cratons i made to unfollow and follow another one worked fine.
700 0.0 90.0 0.0 0.0 100 ! end CratonG
700 1.0 73.0671 -156.767 -41.9577 800 ! Drift Correction
700 850.0 73.0671 -156.767 -41.9577 800 ! start following 800
700 850.0 90.0 0.0 0.0 100 ! end following100
700 1000.0 90.0 0.0 0.0 100 ! start CratonG
This is the line in my rotation file, i double and triple checked the positions and they are correct, the ctrl+p menu is also set to the right time (850) and the other number is 0. When i reload the file with the lines above, and open the ctrl+p menu again, 700 is suddenly at 73.0671 -156.767 -83.9154
I really hope you can help me, otherwise i am really stuck
When you hit control+P to find the position, do you first go and change the anchored plate? If you don't do that, and leave the anchored plate as 000, you're getting the positions relative to 000 and not what it needs to follow.
@@dericnorth8863 I did do that, but for some reason it always applies double the ammount of the angle i give it in the rotation file