Hello

[Aabra]

I'm not sure what the rules are here regarding double posting. If it's frowned upon then please let me know and I'll edit my posts in the future. These tips you guys are giving are really making this map start to look pretty good. Almost as if I knew what I was doing!

I first tried Midgardsormr's (or Torstan's?) way of modifying the terrain and found it pretty neat. It definitely gave me lots of control. Unfortunately for me control is something I shouldn't have as I just ended up making it worse! So I just rendered some clouds and used it as an overlay (first time ever using an overlay) as RobA suggested and it turned out nicely.

Then I modified the shadows. Do they look right to you guys? I'm very weak in this regard. I remember getting terrible grades back in Art class when I was a kid because I couldn't shade at all. I did notice though that I had accidently given the path leading to the cottage a drop shadow so I had to get rid of that while updating the rest.

I had to do a bit of searching to find grunge brushes that worked in photoshop 6.0 but I got lucky and found a brush search engine so I managed to get some in the end. I then had to figure out how to install them! (Or just load them as it turns out.) hehe

Anyways, I just used the colour black and clicked with different brushes here and there. It turned out alright I guess but I could be doing this incorrectly? I also didn't grunge over my buildings... just because.... I dunno if it would look good but again I could be doing this incorrectly.

Let me know what you guys think. It's starting to really come together IMO. Thanks so much for the help.

[ravells]

I think it's looking terrific! You might want to put some gardens or objects outside the houses to suggest some form of human involvement - maybe piles of logs - that sort of thing.

[torstan]

It is indeed looking good.

Here's a few extra suggestions. Your drop shadows are the same shape as your buildings but displaced. This means that the corners of the shadows come back in, whereas they should connect directly to the outer corner of your building.

i.e like this:

----------------------------
|################ \
|## ----------------------------
|## |...................................|
,\# |....................................|
,,,\ |....................................|
,,,,,----------------------------

rather than this:
----------------------------
|################|
|## ----------------------------
|## |....................................|
---- |....................................|
,,,, |....................................|
,,,, ----------------------------

I hate not having image software at work.

I'm not sure the long sharp line grunge brushes quite work. I'd use something a little more scrubby and natural to break it up. Also, probably best not to use straight black. Have a shot at using the grunge brushes on a layer of their own and then setting the layer mode to overlay. They grunge will then settle into the image more.

Another way to do it is to use a very pale pastel colour for the grunge brush and then set the layer mode to burn. pastel red gives great blood spatters and pastel brown will do a good job of dirt or rust.

It's looking really good. Keep up the good work.

[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.