Sept 2012 Entry: The Toganda Caverns

[Bogie]

Another late entry for me. I am going to attempt a side view of a cavern system.

Starting with a real picture of a hillside cliff from cgTextures
Cavern-Side1st.jpg

Then I darkened all but the top of the ridge.
Cavern-Side 2nd.jpg

Next I will use this cloud picture to create the outline of the cavern,
clouds-afternoon.jpg

So lets see how far I can get in the next week.

[lostatsea]

Ata boy Bogie. That's a huge step out of the battle map box. Good luck ! Can't wait to see where you go with this !!

[Bogie]

Thanks Lostatsea, it is not totally original, Octopod used a similar technique to win an earlier challenge. While the rest of us were making top down islands he made this side view cave that was very unique. Everything I normally do is top down so this is a challenge for me just to do this.

So I made a mask from the clouds and put it over the picture. Now I need to clean it up and replace the red with a good interior background.


### LATEST WIP ###
Caverns-Side-View.jpg

[Bogie]

A lot more work to clean it up than I expected, but I think I may be most of the way there. Critiques welcome. Be nice, this is new territory for me. I even used a Bamboo Tablet for the first time.

### LATEST WIP ###
Cavern-Toganda_bg.jpg

[Chashio]

giant.ant.farm.

That's a very brilliant use of a hillside photo, but I wish the interior textures were more grainy/noisy/smaller/something so that they'd match the exterior image better. Why not just unmask the original cliff rocks and paint some shadows over them on a multiply layer? Out of curiosity, how are you going about cleaning it up? And how do you like the Bamboo so far? Sorry, I ask a lot of questions when I'm exhausted. =}

[Bogie]

Thanks Chashio. This was all done on one layer. Part of the problem is I have learned how to use PS on my own by trial and error and I don't seem to grasp the use of layers. I understand the concept, but I seem to have a mental block on how to implement layers. The basic cavern shapes used the clouds to mask and erase, but then I had to go over all the edges by hand with the pen tablet to get rid of edge artifacts and add in the stalactites and stalagmites and water.

[Chashio]

Well, I can see how that would make it difficult. Layers and masks are very worth learning how to use, and it's pretty easy once you get the general concept of implementation. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I kept masks at a 10ft distance, myself. =) Ask me sometime, if you want to, and I'll illustrate the general concept of implementation. However, if you'd rather just work on a single layer (which I do 40% of the time) then I suggest the history brush tool as incredibly awesome.

[Bogie]

Thanks I'll keep trying, I'll get it eventually. And the pen tablet worked pretty good considering I don't really know how to use it, or have any freehand skill.

[Larb]

In your mind, just think of layers as several sheets of transparencies/cellophane OHP paper stacked on top of each other. If you draw particular things on separate sheets, it makes it easier to edit because and you can change things on that sheet without affecting the others, or even just remove that sheet and put a new blank one in if you don't like it.

I was considering a cave (with mine) type map similar to this, so I look forward to seeing the end result!

[Bogie]

Thanks, that's the part I understand. It is how you actually do it and work with it that I get hung up on. I think I need someone sitting at my computer to actually run through doing that using small words and baby steps.

Hope you can get the map done and entered so we can see the different styles.