Main: [[Following worldbuilding tutorials]]
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**Second attempt:** [[Artifexian 10 - (attempt 2)]]
~~Oh boy this will be good~~
I'm going to re-watch through all of these GPlates episodes and make revised notes as I go before following this because iirc there were some useful tips/revisions in future episodes.
## Notes
- draw initial supercontinent (low polygon)
- 8-12 cratons surrounded by a continental crust - lots is encouraged
- 25% surface area of the planet needs to be covered by continental crust (no more than 50%)
- =CratonArea/(4\*3.14\*PlanetRadius^2)
- cratons should be 1,000 - 4,000 km in
- cmd/ctrl + k to remove the measurement line
- plate ID must not be 0, needs to be unique, never change the ID
- use plate ID 1 for stuff that you don't want to move
- don't touch your cratons when making rifts, rifts should not pass through cratons
> One issue you might run into is that if your supercontinent’s longest axis extends more than halfway around the planet, GPlates won’t be able to tell which part of the world is inside the polygon and which part is outside, which will create issues with filtering rasters and so on. Fortunately, this should be fixed when we break this supercontinent apart later on.
> - [Worldbuilding Pasta](https://worldbuildingpasta.blogspot.com/2020/06/an-apple-pie-from-scratch-part-v.html#makingarift)
## My process
>[!warning] Heads up!
Don't follow this exactly because there are steps missing, these are just my notes for personal reference!
1. Open GPlates and use measure tool (S), set the earth radius to my own planet's radius (7434.00km).
2. Set timeline at 1000 Ma
3. Create first craton, measure before saving
4. Save project
5. Make the rest of the cratons (I decided to stop at a total of 10), writing down a note of ID, name, colour, and shape description as I go so I can keep track of what is what easier
6. Set projection from 3D orthographic to Mollweide so that I could compare what I have to the example in Artifexian's video
7. Drew a continental crust around the cratons, set it's ID to 100 (same as Craton A), and named it Continent ABCDEFGHIJ
| ID | Name | Colour | Shape Description |
|---|---|---|---|
|100|Craton A|cyan|bean|
|200|Craton B|forest green|pencil|
|300|Craton C|magenta|hexagon|
|400|Craton D|blue grey|spoon|
|500|Craton E|lime green|ocarina|
|600|Craton F|indigo|shield|
|700|Craton G|red|mitten|
|800|Craton H|orange|gem|
|900|Craton I|peach|handle|
|1000|Craton J|dark blue|potato|
8. Selected the continent (F) and measured it (S), it has an area of: 238754509.9280 km
9. Calculated % of planet covered by this continent using the formula from the tutorial
`=238754509.928/(4*3.14*7434^2)` which gave me a result of 0.3439670415, meaning 34% of the surface of my planet is covered by this. I feel like that's a bit far from the goal of around 25%, so I'm going to reduce it a bit
10. It now has an area of 194734668.2818 km which is 28% surface coverage of my planet - that'll do!
| Before (34% planetary coverage) | After (28% planetary coverage) |
| ------ | ----- |
| ![[Pasted image 20240218125550.png]] | ![[Pasted image 20240218130246.png]] |
11. Set the fill colours of continents and cratons
12. Drew a continental rift (I decided to put it vertically rather than through the visually obvious shortest width on the continent), set ID to 1, name as rift 1000, set colour to red
13. Drew a failed rift above the spoon craton, set ID to 400, name: failed rift 1000, set colour to silver
14. One above the handle craton (ID 900), one above the ocarina (ID 500), one next to the mitten (ID 700), one above the potato (ID 1000). Having all of my cratons be identifiable and on a list
Here's my progress for following this video:
![[Pasted image 20240218134636.png]]