Good start. I'm assuming the top "loop" is an artificial waterway? If not, the river police may have something to say about it. Looking forward to seeing it develop.
M
Well... posting right after EastHeaven Port is quite daring! LOL
Anyway... This is my first, humble, attempt at a town map... I've layed down the terrain. It is a small town built on a mountain river.
Any criticism is welcomed!
Bordovilla_terrain.jpg
Good start. I'm assuming the top "loop" is an artificial waterway? If not, the river police may have something to say about it. Looking forward to seeing it develop.
M
This looks quite pretty..
Yes mearrin69, the upper one is an artificial trench and there will be fortifications too...
I'm doing some try at pseudo-3D with the fortifications, but it's too time consuming and sincerely while the walls and towers are not too bad (towers are still without shadows) I cannot find a way to make houses etc without actually draw them one by one, shadows and all.
The temple is made in a way more simpler style... Any suggestion is welcomed!
Bordovilla_try.jpg
Added Main roads... and started some texturing on the terrain...
Bordovilla_try_first_roads.jpg
This is coming along quite nicely...
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Some Houses and the manor added... not quite satisfied by the houses though... but I'm done for today.
Bordovilla2.jpg
It is coming along nicely.
Last edited by eViLe_eAgLe; 08-09-2011 at 01:43 AM.
Yep. That's looking pretty good.
Your problem with the houses may be that they're not squares and are looking a little 'carved' with a bevel on them. I suggest making yourself a palette of hard-edged building shapes that you can grab, copy, and rotate into place. Then, your bevel should give your crisper roof shapes. If you create the shapes in one layer you can marquee select them and then hold down the alt key while dragging to just grab a copy which can then be transformed at will until you deselect it. You can even stack them to get more complex shapes. If you don't want them to be all the same color you can wait until you're done and create a layer above, load the shape layer as a selection and then paint in colors or textures in just the areas where you have houses.
Hope that helps!
M
Edit: also noticed that you seem to have some holes in some buildings which is making your bevel look choppy in places. That can come from painting in <100% opacity or from missing a spot in the middle of the building. The good thing about the technique above is that it will completely get rid of that sort of stuff. Even in you don't do that, however, you can just grab a brush and dab around in your building layer until the 'hole' goes away.
This is my housing without effects. Basically I've already followed your avices except for regular shapes. I'll redo them with more regular and straight shapes. What isn't satisfying, mostly, is the effects. I'd like to have straw roofs, but I cannot find a way to achieve that look.
Hmm... Your "Village of Hania" map is almost exactly the look I'm searchong for...
http://www.cartographersguild.com/al...chmentid=30203
but I don't know where to start: those tiny indents, the texture who follow the orientation of the roof... some advice on that will be greatly, greatly appreciated (you're an awesome cartographer btw! )
Bordovilla_houses.jpg