Arvaandor

[mathuwm]

Looking good!

it is obviously not a Wood Ellves city.
The layout is too formal for that maybe High Elves

I think it could use more formal garden elements

• Hedge row mazes incorporating elvish designs
• Reflecting pools
• Topiaries
• Trees glorious trees(can never have too many trees when comes to elves)

[Steel General]

Thanks guys...I'm pretty happy with it so far, just having a hard time with the buildings. The city doesn't have a huge population, its mostly just royalty, nobility, high-ranking priests, mages and government flunkies (err officials).

@mathuwm - You are correct sir! Not a Wood Elves city, think more like Tolkein elves at the height of their power. Big time sailors and navigators.

I haven't been able to make (yet) or find any flower gardens, topiaries, etc. But this is a long way from being complete, so I'm still looking.

@Redstar - The tower is about 250 at its base (assuming my 1pxl/foot scale) and I'm not sure how tall I intended it to be - probably 300', so the shadow may be a bit over stated...Any shadow geometry geniuses out there?

[Ascension]

If you want your tower to be 300 feet tall, make a new document (clear background) that is 300 pixels in height. Use a black pencil and draw a side view of what the tower looks like...you don't necessarily have to draw every hanging turret or flying buttress but if it's pointy at the top then make sure to draw the roof pretty correctly. Also make sure to get any bulges in there at the right places. When done, copy it over into the main map and use edit > transform > scale or distort or skew or whatever to lengthen the shadow to however long you want it to account for the sun's position in the sky and lastly (optionally) give it a lil blur and drop the opacity.

[Steel General]

Thanks, I'll have to give that a try and see how it goes.

[RobA]

One more comment I made the "mistake" of a blurred shadow, as it seems to be the convention used in maps like this. In reality, shadows of earth connected objects are quite sharp.

Here is a photo of the shadow cast by the observation deck of the CN tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (thanks google maps):


Note that this is the shadow of the observation deck at 1,122ft. The shadow fringe is barely the width of a car (6 ft or so).

-Rob A>

[Steel General]

@Ascension - As always thanks for the tip

@RobA - Thanks for the reference image...I need to redo the shadow, I messed it up a bit to day.

OK, so on to today's update;

1) Added hedge mazes (with statues) and reflecting pools (with some trees)
2) Added Temple of Elvaara (w/Unicorn Statue)
3) Added guard houses and some other buildings
4) Added 4 crystal towers (not sure I'm entirely happy with these)
5) Added more fountains to 'park' ring
6) Screwed up shadow on palace tower (shouldn't be hard to correct though)

SEE LATER POSTS FOR UPDATED IMAGES

[landorl]

This map is looking great! One thing that kind of grabbed my attention was the city walls and towers. Since you are using highly detailed buildings, it kind of makes the fortifications look like they are just bland, white representations. You might want to see if you can do the towers separate from the walls, and add drop shadows to both to give them a sense of depth.

[ravells]

This is looking fantastic! How did you do the shrubbery? It's really effective.

[Ascension]

The 4 crystal towers (look like beveled squares at each of the 4 compass points around the central tower) could be turned into obelisks with a long shadow and that might be kinda cool. The only thing tugging my brain is the scale...either it's truly gargantuan or this is more of a central park with the main city's buildings lying outside the river, but otherwise well done. Doh, NM, the towers are the big round thingies, my bad.

[Steel General]

Thank you all...

@landorl - After looking at I again, I agree with you the walls need some work. Those are not really towers - not sure of the actual term here - but they are a sort of emplacement that bulges out from the wall near the top.

@ravells - The hedge mazes... Ifound a simple maze image and brought it into PS, traced the 'walls' with a bright color (yellow) solid brush of 5 pxls (adjust depending on your scale) then selected the yellow, inversed and deleted everything else. Dragged it onto a layer in my image and applied a pattern overlay, some noise and a gaussian blur (again subject to your scale), Voila - Shrubberies!!!!

@Ascension - The scale is 1pxl = 1 foot @ 100 pixels/inch (map size is 3000x3000 pxls)