It's not the realism, it's the scale...
My grass texture is done on about half scale to yours but I then scale it down another 50 or 25% depending on the map.
I love the believability of this.
What is the size of your working image?
I tried overlaying your fields with a tiny wood grain to simulate furrows. I know that they'd be impossible to see from this height but the mind looks for something. I also added a mostly random shadow layer to dirty it up a bit and make it seem less flat.
I didn't play enough with the angles. I think that too much being horizontal or vertical hurts the presentation.
Its a very pretty map.
That looks better, Sigurd. At least to me eye.
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Gandwarf has fallen into shadow...
Looks good.
And about scale, I'm an old wargamer with lots of experience painting minis. When you do patterns on small scales it often looks better if you scale up the pattern quite alot. I use the same technique in my maps. Textures are way bigger than map scale.
I like the woodgrain. It helps a lot. Now I will have to try to figure out how to change the angle of the grain a bit.
The image size is 3300 x 2400 pixels.
Great idea using the woodgrain, have to give that a whirl in PS sometime.
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Sigurd, I need a bit of a PS lesson. How do I add the texture to my layer?
I currently have each layer set with the pattern overlay in the effects, and I have a different layer for each color/pattern scheme.
Your map looks very clear and well organized - its working well for you.Originally Posted by landorl
What I did was the lazy mans approach
1. Copy a chunk of field as a new layer.
2. Add the woodgrain to it as a pattern overlay and then combine again.
#2 has the problem in that it is really bound by the direction of your stored photoshop pattern. (You can make more of these by opening up any pic and choosing Edit>Define Pattern)
Its probably more efficient in terms of memory to do the work manually. Load the pattern source, shrink it, rotate, cut it up, and paste it into a new layer that you then overlay.
This is the pattern I made for it. Anyone is welcome to it. It tiles sort of. (No edge weirdness but there is a recurring element in the base tile that is too noticable) Its soil coloured and fairly regular.
Sigurd
To tell your the truth though, I think this is sort of a kludgy way to do it. I'm using a tile to add detail when there should be a more elegant way to do it with a custom brush. The tile is a memory hog but it doesn't require much dexterity or thought. I'm going to try this in painter and see if there is a better way to do it.
Last edited by Sigurd; 02-03-2009 at 02:38 PM.
I took a really grainy brush and painted some strokes across the top of the fields on a different layer (1). Then I embossed and overlayed them (2).
Its rough but I think its got more potential
Definitely has some possibilities...looks pretty good, actually.
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