Page 4 of 6 FirstFirst 123456 LastLast
Results 31 to 40 of 52

Thread: [Award Winner] Step by Step workflow: Saventh-Yhi, City of the Seven Spears

  1. #31
    Community Leader mearrin69's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Portland, OR
    Posts
    2,318

    Default

    I'm requesting that you be banned from the forum. Sorry, man, you're just too good and will soon pass my rep total. Just to make sure the ban sticks, here's some more rep from me!
    M

  2. #32
    Community Leader jfrazierjr's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    Apex, NC USA
    Posts
    3,057

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Hugo Solis View Post
    I'm not sure I understand the Nixing thing, is not OK to do it with copyrighted material?
    Not my call... just saying it's better to be safe than sorry... I doubt anything will come of it at all, but the potential is there since either you don't own the work in question(copyright) or the license terms under which you made it may or may not clearly define what you can do with the work. If your not worried about it, then just ignore my comment.
    My Finished Maps
    Works in Progress(or abandoned tests)
    My Tutorials:
    Explanation of Layer Masks in GIMP
    How to create ISO Mountains in GIMP/PS using the Smudge tool
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

  3. #33

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by jfrazierjr View Post
    Not my call... just saying it's better to be safe than sorry... I doubt anything will come of it at all, but the potential is there since either you don't own the work in question(copyright) or the license terms under which you made it may or may not clearly define what you can do with the work. If your not worried about it, then just ignore my comment.
    Oh, that would be no problem, as long as I list Paizo's Copyright, that gave me green light to post it

  4. #34

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by mearrin69 View Post
    I'm requesting that you be banned from the forum. Sorry, man, you're just too good and will soon pass my rep total. Just to make sure the ban sticks, here's some more rep from me!
    M
    I don't see that happening anytime soon so I hope I don't have to worry for that Ban Hammer

    Thanks for the Rep!

  5. #35

    Default

    Now on to the buildings!

    I'm taking the outlines out to make the process is easier to follow.

    First, I define/separate the man-made floor from the natural ground. In this case its cobbledstone roads so I put a bit of a texture on the area and the use a basic texturizer photoshop filter (mosaic) to make a bit of a large patter on it and give a little feeling of cobblestone. This pattern could have been a lot smaller (and thus more "realistic") but I think this level of detailñ would had made the picture harder to read, so I left it simple. I added a circular gradient to focus the brighter part in the center and draw the viewer's attention towards it. Last, I exposed some parts of the roads (its layer turned off right now) to show "worn" and highlight the most important parts of the cobblestoned roads. The sunken bits on the west and south are more visible now with the cobblestone separating dirt from structure.
    SYSt 1 Floor B1.jpg

    Next, I add main roads, bridges and other non-building structures, like road walls, plazas and such. This is done in a different layer with a different (but similar) color to the cobblestones. The diferent layers serves a big function: to add the dreaded bevel and emboss effect. In this case I think this effect is really good since its very discrete and adds the perfect sence of depth/height to the roads/walls/bridges and is super simple to do.
    SYSt 1 Floor B2.jpg

    Next, I outline such non-building structures. This is a small but kinda troublesome step, since this outlines had to be done separated from the other building outlines because these got in the way of selecting and definig building areas. Its not much trouble but it does require a separated layer.
    SYSt 1 Floor B3.jpg

    Next, the buildings. I magic wand-select the outside building outlines and then inverse the selection to fill the inside of the building areas. You'll notice the are some huge structures in there, these are huge pyramid-plaza structures I did on a bit unrealistic (maybe not!) size to enhance the main temples sense of "greatness" and to add a bit of multi-hieght leves to the city. This step also creates all monuments and big buildings like the dams and bridges. I gave the whole thing a single color to unify the color palette in the next step when I add indiviual colors for the buildings and also to make this color the base one (to be further explained in the next step). I shaded (burned) some of the buildings in here, specially those that would have an extra level abode to give the a enhanced sense of depth. You can see in this step how the sunken structures are covered and now become two-level buildings.
    SYSt 1 Floor B4.jpg

    Once the color base is laid, I proceed to color individual buildings, doing a layer for each color, for this allows me to change specific colors easier if I want to. This was a looooooooong process that could have been faster if I planned the separated coloring on the creation of the outlines, simply doing separated layers for each set of buildings which will be of different color. This would complicate a bit the selecting process for interior filling but speed up the coloring process a lot, thou you need to have a very clear picture in your head of the final city to plan this far ahead.
    SYSt 1 Floor B5.jpg

    Now we just turn the outlines layer on and voila! It all makes much more sense
    SYSt 1 Floor B6.jpg

    A final Step was to add a few blocks of sinking buildings on the south. tese are not totally submerged and I tried to do a gradual sinking but I failed miserably and the buildings look all fake. I tuned down their hideous appearance on a later stage. These are an entire separated layer in order to give all transparency effects individually without affecting any other building.
    SYSt 1 Floor B7.jpg

    And that's all for buildings. If you have any question please do ask!

    Next: the BEVEL mountains!
    Last edited by Hugo Solis; 10-06-2011 at 11:33 AM.

  6. #36
    Administrator Redrobes's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    England
    Posts
    7,244
    Blog Entries
    8

    Default

    Wow - this is just pure gold !

    (I thought Id get that in just before the bevel mountains oh yeah and I will be trying to make than ban stick with my staff of repping in a mo... And a thread vote... )

  7. #37
    Guild Adept Facebook Connected Dain's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    Brest, France
    Posts
    250

    Default

    That's a great tutorial you've got here!
    Thanks for sharing, have some rep!

    We love it

  8. #38
    Guild Adept Facebook Connected Dain's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    Brest, France
    Posts
    250

    Default

    Hey Hugo, it's been a week since your last post.
    Come Back!


    Everybody agree, right?

  9. #39

  10. #40

    Default

    Now, the horrible BEVEL Mountains!

    I was really excited with these while I was doing them, but a few days after I delivered the map I started to see how fake they looked. This step is rather simple and depends most on smudging and erasing to give the height effects.

    First: I set the outlines for different height levels and to make the map easier to read. I added a light shadow to one of this outlines to enhance a little the sense of depth.
    SYSt 2 Rock B1.jpg

    Then I color the lower "city" rock level. Some buildings are abode this level. I pay no attention to the inside contour coloring because the next level will cover it up.
    SYSt 2 Rock B2a.jpg

    Then I added the bevel effect, which is plain and simple. Be careful to check the level of Hardness on the bevel effect so that it looks rock-like. You can always throw a little texture on the effect s that it does not look to plain. I did not added texture because the map is already too complicated and texture on this level would make it harder to read. I also added a shadow on this level for more depth.
    SYSt 2 Rock B2b.jpg

    Then, color the top level. Simple
    SYSt 2 Rock B3a.jpg

    EDIT: I found this images aroud and thought I'd add these to see a better difference between the regular bevel effect and the one I used here:
    SYSt 2 Rock B3a0.jpgSYSt 2 Rock B3a01.jpg
    The first image is the typical bevel filter all soft and plastic. To get a better rocky look you need to use the Sharp Bevel effect and also add a texture to the base color layer. Its also useful to play with the bevel depth to get the height you want on your mountains/hills/rocks. In the second image you can see a harder shadow and light, this is achieved with the depth and sharpen bevel effect.

    Now you can see the difference between a normal bevel effect and the one I ended up doing (see below). This was achieved smudging the edges and erasing some parts of the beveled layer. I'll get to do a step by step of this effect later on.

    Then, THE HORROR! The plastic bevel mountails. This step has a lot more work than it appears, its composed of three separated layers, sadly, I did not have these separated to show it individually. First, its the plain effect on the base color layer, which BTW has a simple noise texture so that the color did not looked so plain. The bevel effect is Sharp so thatit looks rocky and not too soft. Then the second -and most important layer- is erased and smudged to give all the different height effects. The bevel effect gives a plain straight "depth" level effect, but if you smudge the edge you'll see the level moves with the smudge, the same happens if you erase the inside color with different opacities, that's how I got the different edge levels and the "sink" areas on top. That's a lotta erasing and smudging. This second layer lies on top of the first one which has no smudge because of course the secon layer smudging and erasing leaves it all holed up and without a defined inner edge, so you'll need a "base" layer to fill the erased areas and the smudged ones filled from the second layer. I hope I make myself clear, this could be kinda confusing, I think I'll make another tutorial for this effect. The third layer is a merging of the first and second one and then multiplied to give a darker look to the first two layers. The bevel effect could achieve a nice contrast by itself. The first layer also has a dropped shadow.
    SYSt 2 Rock B3b.jpg

    This is all on the mountains. As I said, all of the work is smudging and erasing. The mountains have further work but that's a whole different step.

    BTW: Sorry I "dissappeared" for a while, dayjob has been terryfingly busy this week...
    Last edited by Hugo Solis; 10-25-2011 at 11:13 AM.

Page 4 of 6 FirstFirst 123456 LastLast

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •