Mountaintop Battlemap

[Gamerprinter]

How's this one, RP? Frozen creek along a small cliffside, surrounded by winter trees in snow.

WIP...

[RPMiller]

Not bad, three items to consider:

• The tree in the top right corner seems to be missing the layer effect of the snow.
• The beveling on the snow is a bit to hard especially for the trees where the wind effect would shake the snow down and smooth it out more.
• Your elevation layers aren't as connected to each other like I've seen in your previous maps.

That said, this really has a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to seeing it get massaged a bit.

For the snow, I think a feathered edge is a must and I would use a softer bevel followed by a blur or two to soften it a bit more and attach it to what it is laying on.

[Gamerprinter]

OK, some tweaks. I took out that bare deciduous tree, it was proving to be problematic, better off just gone. Replaced it with a nicely textured boulder to balance the object placement. I removed some of the bevels, softened others, increased the feathering to almost 50 pixels on most shapes. I took out the top layer of stone in the cliff, it was distracting and unnecessary.

The cliff is barely that, more a steep stoney bank, just a few feet above the creek bed.

This is slightly improved. This version is 200 ppi at 4000 pixels square, 757 kb

WIP so far...

[RPMiller]

Much nicer. Just one question this time. Is that boulder in the bottom center floating over the edge of the cliff, or is it sitting on the very edge? Based on following the edge of the right cliff face and the shadow on the boulder.

I really like the snow texture. Even on the full size image it looks dead on like snow. Is that a tileable texture or a creative use of layer effects?

[Gamerprinter]

Much nicer. Just one question this time. Is that boulder in the bottom center floating over the edge of the cliff, or is it sitting on the very edge? Based on following the edge of the right cliff face and the shadow on the boulder.

I really like the snow texture. Even on the full size image it looks dead on like snow. Is that a tileable texture or a creative use of layer effects?

The right side of the creek is intended to be barely higher in elevation to the creek itself - so at the trees to the right the ground in only 12 inches higher than the creek. Whereas the left side is significantly higher than the creek. So this means the boulder is probably sitting on the creek bed, with upper portion above the waterline and above the ground level to the left.

Notice the snow is blended and feathered to the edge of the creek itself.

The snow is a tileable texture (a photo from cgtextures.com), this is not use of layer effects.

[RPMiller]

The right side of the creek is intended to be barely higher in elevation to the creek itself - so at the trees to the right the ground in only 12 inches higher than the creek. Whereas the left side is significantly higher than the creek. So this means the boulder is probably sitting on the creek bed, with upper portion above the waterline and above the ground level to the left.

Notice the snow is blended and feathered to the edge of the creek itself.

The snow is a tileable texture (a photo from cgtextures.com), this is not use of layer effects.

Ok, now I see it. That is a tough one to sell with an overhead view. Maybe if the shadow was long enough to shade the other side... Hm... how about that tree that is on the cliff, maybe if its shadow extended to the snowy bank opposite that would lock in the illusion better.

[Gamerprinter]

I extended the shadow a bit more, I don't really want the shadow too big. If you notice the shadows coming off the spruce trees, you can get an idea of the sun's angle. I didn't want to create to large of a shadow of the cliffside, as its not that high, just higher than the right side of the bank.

You should notice the tree shadow from the cliffside - its there on the previous versions as well, just not as large...

I think this is my final version of this map...

I am practically past my "snow and ice" phase, maybe one more map in me!