August Entry: Multiple textured paths

[Redrobes]

I am getting close to a finish now. I have all the tiles with a grid uploaded. I may upload the non grid ones and *replace* the current set so if you want your tiles with a grid then grab them in the next few weeks. I will have gridded ones here for a while - at least until challenge & voting end.

Actually saying that the hatching set did not have a grid on them. All the rest do.

There are eight sets Cobbles, Dungeon, Hatching, Marsh, MtnPath, Snow, WoodPath, WoodStream. They are all zipped set of 18 tiles. All are JPG so there is some loss in them from the pure version but all are 2048 which is nearly 300dpi. They range from 13 to 26Mb except hatching which is 7Mb.

Cobbles
Dungeon
Hatching
Marsh
MtnPath
Snow
WoodPath
WoodStream

I will add just one or two extra token type additions but thats mostly it.

Just to note I would like to declare these "Creative Commons - Non Commercial - Share alike - attribution". So spread them about a bit. And lets see any photos of them printed and used !!!

[Redrobes]

A hole in the ground. (Looks like a purple worm or Xorn type...)

I have attached both the color and alpha parts. You will need to put them together to make up the token. Should be easy in PS or Gimp.

Example after that is done on the mountain path tile.

[Redrobes]

Just whooped up some trees for ya. Had to model one in 3D. A bit tedious but its alright I think.

[Redrobes]

And finally, archetypal pit to match the dungeon floor texture.

[Mrugnak]

There are eight sets Cobbles, Dungeon, Hatching, Marsh, MtnPath, Snow, WoodPath, WoodStream. They are all zipped set of 18 tiles. All are JPG so there is some loss in them from the pure version but all are 2048 which is nearly 300dpi. They range from 13 to 26Mb except hatching which is 7Mb.

These are really great. I want to say thanks again for doing them.

Quick question on scaling, they're not exactly 300 dpi - so for purposes of scaling one inch to X pixels... what is the resolution you were working at? I'm getting 292.57142(lots of numbers) which is an awkward number.

[Redrobes]

These are really great. I want to say thanks again for doing them.

Quick question on scaling, they're not exactly 300 dpi - so for purposes of scaling one inch to X pixels... what is the resolution you were working at? I'm getting 292.57142(lots of numbers) which is an awkward number.

Thanks, yeah the dpi is a little awkward but you can normally set up your printer so that the print its exactly 7 inches. If thats a little difficult then set up a custom page size of 7 inches and print to fit page. Or I guess at extreme end, print a few off and scale it so that the grid is 1 inch by using a ruler which is the most accurate way of calibrating it. At the end of the day the current value is only 2.5% off of 300dpi so assuming the printer is perfect then 1 inch is going to be about 0.6mm or so out which is not a lot really. You ought to be able to ask the printer for 292dpi in any case and it should scale it right. The printer will scale the image no matter what you do to it because very few printers are natively exactly 300dpi so its all just numbers - 300 exactly is no better or worse than 292. As long as you have enough to show good res then you should be fine.

If you have any printer trouble then post and explain and we can sort it out.

[Gamerprinter]

These are really great. I want to say thanks again for doing them.

Quick question on scaling, they're not exactly 300 dpi - so for purposes of scaling one inch to X pixels... what is the resolution you were working at? I'm getting 292.57142(lots of numbers) which is an awkward number.

Take it from an expert - I run two companies in graphics and digital printing (two if you include Gamer Printshop.)

Most photographic quality printing can be achieved at 200 dpi. Only the most detailed maps with small text labels present a problem. The important issue for color is color gamut or the range of color. A 48 bit color image is a far higher quality photo, but still only requires 200 dpi to accurate print.

Small text requires high resolution, like 600 dpi.

I've printed huge Campaign Cartographer files with teeny, tiny text - they were the only blurry issue on the map. Everything else was perfect.

So photo images or terrain maps created at higher resolutions are generally unnecessary.

GP

[Mrugnak]

*shifty look*

I was considering them for a virtual table top, actually, which means that my printer's automatic scaling isn't any help under the circumstances.

MapTools draws a grid (Square or hexagonal) based on the pixel dimensions you give it - and it only accepts integers, not floating points. 292 will be close "enough" probably, they're small tiles - I'm always a bit leery of being off, however, because on a larger map, all those decimal places end up with your grid being off at the edges.

[torstan]

For maptool you really don't want to be using 300px squares as it will eat all your memory and choke. I'd suggest that you scale them to 50 px squares. The best way to do this is to decide how many squares you want to a side on these images, say 7 as that's the number if squares on the blank tile. Now that means you want 350px by 350px tiles. Go into Image->Scale Image in Gimp and resize the image to exactly those dimensions. Now set up a 50px grid in maptool and drop these in as stamps with snap to grid turned on. They should line up perfectly. If you want them to be more detailed go up to 100px per square and make them 700px by 700px. You don't need to worry about dpi, but you do need to resize them for maptool.

Hope that helps.

Good work by the way Redrobes. These are great! Definitely swiping them for my image library.

[Redrobes]

Ahh, Ok, well I am using them on my ViewingDale VTT too and they work out just fine too. The bit map sample was from that. I didn't know about the integer DPI bit on maptool - I thought there was a grid align mode thingy (not being super experienced with it).

In that case, best thing is just to resample them to 2100 pix in X&Y. You could use GIMP, ImageMagic, PS, PSP, IrfanView or whatever to do it. Almost any type of resample will do including pixel or nearest neighbor in this case.

If you start running out of RAM with them then you could go down to 1400 but I have tried that and it didn't look so good when you look at the images close up.