The first thing I saw in your mosaic was a palate to pull building shapes from. Make a few mosaic sections and pull the bumps to where you'd like to make buildings.
Failing that you could at least select out unlikely bumps to make the mosaic sections more like the buildings of your imagination.
Sigurd
@Sigurd
Thanks, unfortunately I did draw every building by hand, using the pen tool in Flash CS3. As I mentioned, this took a lot of time, and is often not a necessary level of detail for most maps. One thing I learned, is that a lot city mapping is giving the illusion of detail, without the detail. Like clearly showing main ways, but hiding the details of alley way etc.
The shading and shadowing was done with filter styles in photoshop. Basically applying a harsh emboss and adding a drop shadow. Then I went through and individually colored building to mix up the shading.
RobA's link seems to be the direction I would take if I were to do it again. Make a pattern, twist it and rotate into appropriate angels, cut the streets, apply layer styles, and then go through and a the detail in areas you need it.
i think to get it to look most pleasing (at least to me) you need to have the many small errors doing by hand ends up with... without the varied versons of the mosaic, which seems to be to little squared... it really all ends up with how much work your willing to do.
Photoshop, CC3, ArcGIS, Bryce, Illustrator, Maptool
Hmm, still fiddling. I think I have a pretty good order of steps down now. I'll post up something tomorrow.
@ Sigurd
If it's for your own personal use and game, feel free to copy from it. If you end up posting it (but not selling it) a little shout-out is all I ask
Okay. Done a short tutorial. The thread is here:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=3392
The result of the fiddling looks like this:
I tried out doing houses with a brush in Photoshop (playing around with spreading etc) . I've made the brush so I just draw a line where I want the houses and they appear in a "line", varies a bit in colour, size and placement (see the image below).
Yeah, really ugly but it's just a test ok
This is the result so far:
Last edited by Carnifex; 02-10-2010 at 08:02 PM.
My sites: http://www.facebook.com --- http://www.stormring.com --- http://www.fantasymaps.net --- http://www.megatongames.com --- http://www.darktowershop.com
My finished maps: here
How do you get the shape variation on that? Now Gimp has an image pipe for the brush, but as far as I'm aware there's no such thing for PS. Is that just done through the size jitter controls?
That's exactly how I have my house brushes set up (in the Mapping Elements section). You set the size jitter to vary the size of the square but if you also add in a roundness jitter it turns them into rectangles. Plopping them down gives you some houses with ells on them.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
What version of photoshop are you guys running?
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
