Swamp Battlemap

[Aabra69]

Hey everybody. I created this swamp battlemap today for a D&D group I'm running. I'm still new at this mapping thing so I'm really happy with how this turned out. That being said I'm always looking to improve so any feedback would be appreciated.

[Meshon]

Hey this is looking pretty good! Keep it up. I did notice that you didn't put shadows on all your trees, so aim for consistency there. Also, the direction of the tree's shadow is opposite to the direction of shadow on the clumpy grass, so I would aim to match the shadows of objects to what the underlying texture has.

In regards to your other post of the road, it doesn't take a lot to suggest that the road has been traveled. This is an old old map I did, and I think the only thing I used was to put some brush strokes in a new layer, along the road in the direction of travel, and then play with the blending modes to make them look a bit like ruts. I hope that's a little useful!



cheers,
Meshon

Edit: I found the original file, here's the layers settings I used for the ruts on the road:

[wdmartin]

I don't understand why the centermost tree is fully lit up, and all the other trees are in shadow.

Don't swamps usually have water in them? Is it an actual swamp, or just a low, mucky spot with soft mud?

Some of the stumps could be better blended in. Specifically, the ones superimposed over the reddish soil of the areas with cracks. They don't blend in very well there. Perhaps blur the edges of the stumps a bit? Or paint bits of the underlying texture over the edges of the stump.

It's a pretty good map. Keep at it, you'll learn more tricks and techniques the longer you do it.

[Aabra69]

Thanks a lot for the great feedback. I really appreciate it! It's really more of a bog I suppose than a true swamp. Just extremely muddy more than anything else. The problem with the trees and stumps is that I obviously simply took the objects from transparent png's and slided them in there which makes them difficult to properly integrated into the map. I'm not sure what the best solution for that is... perhaps creating/loading up my own tree in blender and taking screenshots from the top down angle so the lighting is correct? I'm not sure. I need to work on the shadows though for sure.

[wdmartin]

Well, what program are you working in? There's a lot that can be done with layers, layer styles, and adjustments in Photoshop or Gimp.

EDIT: Here's a quick example.

Here's a stump very similar to the ones you're using -- probably from the same source on the Dundjinni forums. I've put it on top of some cracked red earth:



In this first example, I didn't make any changes to the stump image at all -- just plopped it down on the background. It doesn't sit very well here. The leaf-and-twig litter around the base would go fine in a cluttered forest floor, but doesn't match the bare dirt very well.

Now here's the same image with some adjustments to the stump.



In order to achieve this effect, I used three layers above the stump:

1) I made a copy of the dirt and put it over the stump. Then I masked it to hide it completely, and painted white on the mask to selectively reveal it around the edges of the stump. The blend mode was Normal. All this really accomplished was to hide most of the twigs and leaves around the edges.

2) I made another copy of the dirt on top of that. This one I set to Darker Color, and concealed the whole thing with a layer mask. Then I used a soft brush to brush in white on the layer mask directly on top of the very edges of the visible roots. This is to simulate the red earth climbing partly over the edges of the roots as they delve downwards into the soil.

3) I made a layer of solid black above, set its blend mode to Multiply, its opacity to 34%, and masked out the whole thing. Then I used a soft white brush on the mask to draw in shadows, assuming a light source somewhere near the top left corner of the image. In addition to the obvious shadow to the right of the stump, I darkened the curve behind the root on the bottom left, and teeny smidge between the two roots on the left. I went back and forth on that last bit -- since the light source is from that angle, it should logically be lit up. But I eventually decided that the extra visual definition the shadow gave the area was worth it.

Here's the PSD file so you can take a look for yourself.



If this were a desert-y type area, the moss growing on the stump would be a problem. I didn't bother worrying about that in the example, because your original map is obviously not a desert area despite the cracked reddish terrain in some spots -- it's just a wetter area that dried out temporarily, long enough for cracks to form, before things got wet again.

Hope that helps.

[Aabra69]

Thanks so much for the great tips. It's been a busy few days but I'm going to revisit this map and try them out. I'll post it here once I'm done.

[Aabra69]

Ok - so I finally had a bit of free time and took another stab at this. Here are two new versions one with grid and one without. I've tried the suggestions you mentioned above to integrate the stumps and trees. Tried to ensure all the shadows were properly done etc. Will try to improve upon my road next I think. Thanks again for the help and let me know if there is anything else I should work on.

[wdmartin]

Looks good!

[Bogie]

Very nice work, I've said it before, making a good swamp map is not easy, and you have done a very good job with this one.