Procedural vector map elements -- some experiments

[gilgamec]

If you look back at the tutorial I'm cribbing from, you'll notice that the shading on the trees is an integral part of the overall effect. In this post, I'm talking about getting a similar effect.

First, I tried a sort of drop-shadow effect. (Actually, the outline is stroked with a rotated elliptical nib, but the result is pretty much the same.) I don't really like it -- it looks too uniform. In the second test, I tried a different tack.

I went back to the circles that create the outline. I want to locate the circles on the bottom left of the tree, so I shift the general tree shape (red) up and to the right; the circles whose centers are in the shifted shape (black) form the "lit" section, while the other circles (blue) are the "shaded" section.

We can shade the trees in the forest scene and see that it's much improved.


Another nice factor in the original tutorial is the "ground", which is hatch-shaded. I can create a similar effect with straight lines deformed a little bit by random control point rotations.


Of course, one of the nice things about procedural generation is that I can generate this pattern at any scale and size.