Thanks for kind words and great advice about the shading/rotation issue. The whole issue with shading became really obvious as I started doing test buildings. But I wanted to get a sense for what the final ones might look like so I kept on fiddling around with them anyway. The process is a lot of fun, but not particularly quick or speedy.
Muddle, the whole process and execution of this is just fantastic...I'm glad you're finding it fun to do, because I'm finding it wonderful to watch. It's such a clean style and this map is just going to look gorgeous when you're done.
I await agog at more loveliness!
Looks amazing so far! I love the style and the layout. A quick question, how did you go about designing your castle?
started by looking at a bunch of architectural resources, books and online to get a feel for things i liked architecturally... looked at aerial views of architectural buildings like Saint Basil's cathedral in the Red Square ( it looks very different from above then from the ground ). I stated sketching on a piece of graph paper. ( I tend to like to work with 45 degree angles ) . Scanned the pencil sketch using a scanner, and traced the scanned image in adobe illustrator. ... hope this helps to explain the process better.
Very cool!
RE: Shaded buildings.
I have been working on something similar for a city of my own, and shading in PS or Illustrator simply takes too much time to shade all of them by hand (IMHO). As mentioned earlier, if you rotate your nicely shaded objects, the shading is wasted...
Something to consider since you are using Illustrator (or any vector based application) is to drop the outlines into Sketchup (free) and extrude them. Then you can make copies and rotate/edit/combine as much as you want. Making simple shapes with sloped roofing is really easy.
Once you have made enough of the right buildings, export them and place them in your 2d maps with shading and all. Hope you don't mind but I used your graphic as a reference to show what can be done. Took me ~20 minutes and most of that was thinking about the best way to build the shapes.
Now that is very cool, Cannon Magnet, I didn't know that sketch up allowed you to import outlines! Does the free version of sketchup allow you to export the objects as .obj files?
The only 3D formats available for export in the free version are: Collada (.dae) and Google Earth (.kmz) So no dice. Obj is reserved for the pro version...
3ds Max (if you have access to it) can import native .skp files.
You can import vectors from Illustrator, using the DWG or DXF formats:
Sorry for not responding sooner, been busy of late. I gotta say I was not expecting that those buildings would be used as examples for 3d renderings. Even adobe illustrator itself has simple 3d extrude features. ( something similar might be possible without even exporting out of illustrator. ) Given the general direction I am heading with this project I am inclined to keep everything in 2d. With a little planning the shading issues can be managed without much extra effort. ( pencil sketches really help planing the placement of building prior to converting to digital stuff. ) So I think i will keep things old school for a while. But I do appreciate the discussions about all the different ways buildings can be added to maps.
I actually really like the line drawn buildings better. I think the detail makes it easier to imagine.
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