Hello

[Aabra]

Ok, I removed the grunge for now. (I'll try to find a better brush/use overlay mode etc later.) I did manage to find a nice texture for the road that I like better than what I had currently so.... in it went. I modified the shadows like you suggested. They definitely do look better now. I was trying to find some gardens/logs to put around but I couldn't find any. I'll have to look harder I guess.

[Midgardsormr]

If you haven't browsed through the Dundjinni forums, you really should. There are hundreds of good user-created map objects available for download there. http://www.dundjinni.com

The presence of the well would probably cause the road to widen there--it will attract lots of traffic, and carts will have to divert around it. Also, if you add any additional buildings, especially houses, they'll tend to cluster around that well. The people will be going there at least once each day, so they'll want to build their homes as close to it as they can to reduce the distance they must walk. Businesses, especially the ones that cater to travellers, will still favor the main road(s) through town, though.

It's looking a lot better already.

Oh, and don't worry about double-posting. I do it all the time and nobody's chastised me yet! It is possible to edit your own posts, though, if you just have a small correction or addendum.

And finally, that was Torstan's advice, regurgitated by me.

[torstan]

Good work. That does look better. You've missed a couple of the shadow corners on the northern most building, and you probably don't need any on the tree (the one with the circular canopy about half-way down on the right) as the sun would shine underneath the canopy and produce a circular shadow.

Now if you are feeling particularly keen, you can add shadows to the building roofs. Add a new layer, set the layer mode to overlay and fill it with mid-grey. Now take a brush with a colour of dark grey and go over the sides of the roofs you want to shadow. Best to use a brush for this rather than the dodge/burn tools as you want a uniform shadow over the 'downwind' sides of the roofs. This will give you something like this:


This is just the effect of having this layer as an overlay layer:


Obviously you can be neater than I was in doing the overlay layer, but as you can see from the image - you don't see the rough edges in the final.

[Aabra]

That seems easy enough to do but I'm not sure how I should shade the uppermost building since it has a flat roof. Just leave it alone? I'm learning a lot here. I'm busy for most of the day today but I might have some time in the late evening depending on how things go to work more on this. These comments are great and I'll try to do as many as I can and post the results.

[torstan]

Yep, the flat roof can be left alone.

Happy to help.

[Aabra]

Ok, adding those shadows took me.... quite a while but I think it was worth it. I had to play with the various shades of grey a bit, and I wasn't sure how I should do it for a couple because of the angle towards the light source. (The Tavern in particular.) I checked out the dundjinni forums and needless to say it's a wealth of high quality objects.

I'll use it as a resource for cool stuff, but I don't think I'm going to use the Dundjinni program. Not when I already have Photoshop.... and besides - any skills I acquire while playing with Photoshop here will serve me well in any number of other projects. You're limited to map making in Dundjinni.

Anyways, I found a pile of logs over there and added them in - I also increased the road size around the well. I don't plan on adding any more buildings - even though the town does have them this is for an adventure and these will be all the adventurers deal with.

Is this getting close to finished? What do you guys think?

[torstan]

First a note about including images. After you've used the attachments manager to upload an image you can insert it into your post in a specific place. To do this, click the paper clip icon above the post and instead of being taken to the attachment manager, you will have a list of your attachments and a box saying Manage Attachments. Click the name of the attachment you want to include and it will place it at the current cursor position in the post. That will allow you to put multiple images through a post if you like. Just thought I'd mention it for future reference.

I like the new version, and I think that the results of your dodge/burn work look great. I hope it wasn't too arduous - it definitely gets quicker with practice.

I think this looks pretty done to me. If you felt particularly eager then you could bash in some shadowing on the trees to make them a bit more 3D, but I don't think that's particularly necessary. I'd be very happy with this as a town map. Great first map I'd say.

[Mowgli]

I've been following this post and I have to say, I am very impressed. I had no idea this kind of map was possible for a novice (first time) mapper - gives me hope for my own cartographic future!