WIP - Chesburgh Springs city mapping

[pasis]

Finally I got enough courage to start mapping a city. I started the project from the area I'm more familiar with - the landscape. I created a new way to do the water and I wanted to have a steep coastline and clear water to see through. I finally managed to get a decent result.
But then I realized that the scale didn’t fit with the building I had created and the buildings looked way to smal. So I have to downsize the image to half and do all the texturing again, sigh... That’s what you get when you don’t think before you do.
P.S this sample is before I have done any resizing.

[lostatsea]

Looks pretty sharp to me . I'll be keeping an eye on how this progresses.

[atpollard]

Should the deep water be a touch darker?

[pasis]

You are right, the sea should be darker. I have now fixed it and I think it's better now. I have downsized the map to half to match better with my houses and I also reduced all textures to 50% from the original except the sea texture as I didn't want the waves to be any smaller. Tomorrow I will get to start with setting up the houses...

[pasis]

I have started creating the actual city. I have not got too far yet, but something.

[laevex_esre]

Brilliant. Repped.

I love how it's shaping up. It's like a satellite image but with a real unique style to it as well. Eager to see it finished.

[Larb]

Do you have a tutorial or anything for the methods you use to make this style map? I really like how the buildings are looking.

[pasis]

Do you have a tutorial or anything for the methods you use to make this style map? I really like how the buildings are looking.

The method of creating the houses is relatively simple, but time consuming.
- I have several roof textures and set of objects (chimneys etc).
- I created several differently shaped roofs and added the various objects.
- Use Bevel to the roofs and dropshadow to the objects to make them look more 3D
- Put several houses together to create small blocks
- Group your block (or single house) to one object
- Then I reduce the size to hide the fact that the roofs and the objects doesn't blend too well together. When they are reduced like 1/10 of the original size, you don't see the problems anymore.
- Apply bevel and drop shadow again to make them pop out.

The problem is that it takes time to create enough variation and rotating the ready houses / blocks is an issue as I would get the shadow direction wrong. Also the shadowing is not perfect due to the way dropshadow works. That can be seen especially where the tower shadows are cast over the city wall.

[Katto]

Although the creation of the houses takes much time, the result is worth it. It looks fantastic so far.

[anstett]

Really like the style of the map and how this is evolving.

One question is the city gate to the north. It seems like if I did not want to pay the toll/sneak in etc I would just walk around to approach the town from the east or south.

Or am I misunderstanding the topography of that area?

BOB