Thread: Advice on improving

First off, let me say that your trees look absolutely perfect to me.

For the ground layer, have you considered doing actual ground textures? There are some very good ones out there that would help break up the smoothness. The colour is pretty uniform, I think that's what's standing out to me - right now everything looks like a well manicured lawn (who do you have maintainign that? do you have a card? the lawn outside my house could definitely use this treatment! lol). you could create another layer overtop, render clouds on that with 1 shade green, 1 shade brown then set that to overlay or something similar, that would add some randomness for you.

For the sawmp, you could create another layer, do the same thing only use a few blue tinted areas, and just paint over the areas you want to look swampy - and maybe adjust the trees a bit.

For fields and roofs and such, you might actually want to check out Ascension's city building tutorial, it has a few good pointers for that. In particular, for the fields..
It's a bit long for pasting, but you want steps 131/132. There's some good pointers in there overall for a map like this that you can warp to your own ends.

I'll look for the link. This might take awhile

[edit - or not!]
[Award Winner] Photoshop Town Tutorial

biggest thing for me is....The buildings are all perfectly aligned NSEW. They should be a little more scattered.

Guys great feedback!

Manicured lawn, that's a great way to describe it.

Will add some randomness to the building layout. Think I'm going to get rid of the green buildings, or adjust the colors a bit.

Oh, while you're at it with the houses, I think it looks rather odd that some houses have the shady side north and some have it south. That's not normally how lighting works

And some lighting on the trees (highlight the sunny side, darken the shadow side) might be good too.

It's a nice map...here are a couple of suggestions (do with them as you will).

1. Apply a pattern overlay to your buildings (as an additional option to CoyoteMax's suggestion)
2. Try putting a slight blur on the elevations of your hills, it will help to diminish the 'stepped' look the currently have (unless that's the look you want)

Originally Posted by Steel General

It's a nice map...here are a couple of suggestions (do with them as you will).

1. Try putting a slight blur on the elevations of your hills, it will help to diminish the 'stepped' look the currently have (unless that's the look you want)

I actually need the elevation lines. This is a training map, so my students need to see the elevation breaks.

I will try your first suggestion.

Originally Posted by Steel General

It's a nice map...here are a couple of suggestions (do with them as you will).

1. Apply a pattern overlay to your buildings (as an additional option to CoyoteMax's suggestion)
2. Try putting a slight blur on the elevations of your hills, it will help to diminish the 'stepped' look the currently have (unless that's the look you want)

Probably sounds stupid but I have no idea how to apply a pattern overlay.

Believe it or not a lot of what I learned has been by accident, and trial and error.

Not stupid at all - A pattern overlay is a layer style...

1) Double-click on the layer in the layer 'stack'
2) The 'Layer Style' window should appear
3) Click the Pattern Overlay style so that it is highlighted
4) Select the pattern you wish to use, make any changed to the blend modes (you'll need to experiment)
5) Click "OK"

That's all there is to it.

Thanks!

In the last hour I've learned a few simple techniques that have made my maps significantly better.