Honestly I don't think you need to go to such great lengths as Gamer and recreating your image in 3D (as impressive as it is) as this starts to become impractical once you have multiple buildings because quite frankly you're not going to create them all, so really you're better off just training your eye anyway.
Shadows, as ever, are going to rely on a couple of things but most importantly is going to be the direction of your light source (probably your sun) and the height. The higher the sun, the shorter your shadows and if determining height is particularly important for you then you're always going to be better going for any time a few hours either side of high noon when the sun would be shinning directly down on top of your building.
Couple of examples on how to go about it:
shadows.png
First pic highlights where your light source is coming from and then the second shows a more accurate representation on how a shadow should be cast. Now this is a rough and dirty method so still isn't absolutely accurate (you'd only notice such a varied angled shadow if the light source was really close). So with the sun typically you can go with just one angle for your shadows, ie. the first image on the bottom line. Now this is a rough and ready shadow going off what I think the rough heights of the buildings might be (with a shadow the further away from the object the shadow is cast the lighter it will be, but we're getting into more advanced shadow casting here and it's probably unnecessary).
The second image on line 2 is a more fuzzy less accurate shadow (this is all a style thing) which is just to quickly demonstrate that you dont need absolute accuracy to make a shadow believable. The angles are different to pic 1 and the shadow is rougher.
The most important aspect, imo, to creating believable shadows are the shadow that they cast onto other objects. The middle of your temple will cast a shadow on top of the building next to it, the tower at the back only casts on the floor, but if there are trees on the garden or other buildings behind it then it needs to hit these as well for the whole thing to come together.
A high noon example is given in the last image, the sun being directly overhead, which as you can tell is pretty difficult to show height. The only real way to do it is by representing the highest buildings being brighter than the lowest buildings, which is more easily done in a crowded city area where some of the smaller buildings are blocked out almost, whilst your spires and towers rise up out of the city. A lone building makes it hard to represent as really you're only going to get subtle differences with the shadows.
As with anything when it comes to a new skill, in this case cartography, it's all practice. Very soon you'll just be able to rely on your eye. Right now you'll know when something doesn't look right, but you might not always be able to tell what it is that makes it look that way
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Originally Posted by Cunning Cartographer
