Quick and easy cities

[Ecrath]

I'm looking for a quick way to map out large fantasy cities without skipping out on details, I am currently using photoshop cs2. What can I do to make an easier quicker experience of map making?

[Larb]

Unfortunately short of some sort of random city generator, "quick" and "city map with details" do not go hand in hand. There are a few city map tutorials on the forum but you're going to need to invest some time into it for anything other than a map that shows a few main roads, district blocks and the location of a few important buildings.

[- Max -]

Unfortunately short of some sort of random city generator, "quick" and "city map with details" do not go hand in hand. There are a few city map tutorials on the forum but you're going to need to invest some time into it for anything other than a map that shows a few main roads, district blocks and the location of a few important buildings.

My thoughts exactly.

[Azélor]

Larb already got to the point

But, you could use a city generator and then improve the result with photoshop. Using multiple software really multiply the possibilities.

[Ecrath]

Thanks, what do you guys think of making five or six houses then using a copy paste method to fill space. The important buildings and other structures being made separate?

[Fransie]

Thanks, what do you guys think of making five or six houses then using a copy paste method to fill space. The important buildings and other structures being made separate?

May help a little, but one still has to position hundreds if not thousands of buildings by hand. And you'd need more than 5 or 6 to keep it from looking repetetive. A few users here (myself included) have tried to use randomized brushes made up from several building shapes to get a better and/or quicker result. See this thread for examples. Nonetheless, city maps are *always* a heck of a lot of work.

[feanaaro]

Starting from a city generator and then retouching the result in photoshop is the only shortcut I think could work. "Quick and easy", however, remain relative terms even in that case when speaking about cities.
There are various options, like:

Roleplaying City Map Generator » Inkwell Ideas

Roleplaying City Map Generator - Software Informer. Create unlimited maps of any kind of villages, towns, big cities for roleplaying.

There was one (or more?) tutorial somewhere in this guild on the topic city generator + photoshop (or Gimp)

[Korash]

Here is one such tut. Written for PS, but usable in Gimp. There is a PDF on the last page as well.