New map in process

[alizarine]

I like how this is progressing! I particularly like the overall shape of the city, and the level of detail and amount of work going into this are paying off. Personally, the buildings, cobbled roads and walls seem a bit sharp in contrast with the softer background, but you did mention you'll be working on the background at the very end. I do like the shapes of the buildings and just studying this map is teaching me a whole lot about placement, but the colors are feeling a bit too varied - unless the people living there really like a wide variety of roof colors or those colors are just for the map to differentiate between types of buildings, I don't really think there would be that many different colors. Not for roofs anyway. Definitely like how this is coming along, though!

- Alizarine

[Katto]

That looks great. I can't understand why you switch your city from PS to CC3, but you will have your reasons. Be careful with CC3, there the city is very large. I had problems with my last city, which had about 1050 buildings plus walls etc. CC3 crashed very often.

[landorl]

I have noticed that. I have about 500 buildings in it right now, and I have to make sure that I save it often because it has crashed a couple of times. I may end up giving up on CC3 and just doing the whole thing in Photoshop. It is a lot easier to add the buildings in CC3 though, and they look pretty good.

[landorl]

A little bit of an update. I have a lot of the Northeastern portion of the city done in CC3.

[Gandwarf]

This is turning into a fine city. I really like those big cities
One comment: I think the docks in the War Harbor might need an additional effect, to give the impression they have some height?

[landorl]

Another updated. I have the southern part of the city in. I need to redo the streets because the effect isn't working as well as I would like, but I will do that later.

As far as the wharfs are concerned, I have been planning to do something with them, but I just haven't figured out what I want to do yet, but they do need a little "something".

I am also starting to run into some file size issues. I tried to save the whole map as a jpg, but if I have the resolution very high, then it is freezing up and crashing. I will probably end up saving it in sections and pasting it together, or using some sort of image print driver.

[Katto]

I enjoy every update you post landorl! I think granaries is spelled with one 'n'.
CC3 is an enigma: it often says "no response" in the title bar, but is still working (and sometimes not). What resolution do you call very high?

[landorl]

I have been trying 3200x2400 which isn't huge. I've done that with other maps, but I think it is a combination of the map itself being quite large with all of the buildings that are in the map, and then with the fairly big conversion, I just think that the whole thing ends up being too much. I have gotten it to work, but not with the effects turned on.

[Katto]

I had the same problem with my last city map. Each time I turned on the effects and tried to export it, CC3 crashed mostly in the last rendering pass. By accident I figured out that I don't have to switch to other tasks (even the explorer). Better to not even move the mouse . With this method I managed to export a 6000²px map, even when CC3 send the no response message. (btw, always make backups with large maps before the file gets corrupt).
Edit: What are the dimensions of the imported background pic?

[landorl]

The file is pretty big. As far as I can tell, you can only use a BMP for the background. The file is 5,100 x 3300 pixels, and is 48MB in size.

Here is the most recent update. I figured out that if I print it using a PDF printer (PDF995), I can then convert it to a JPG and it works fine that way. I was hoping to have this done by now, but I have been pretty busy with work. I think it will be done in another couple of days.