Sand city: An experiment

[Alfar]

Alpha to selection on the buildings layer.
Set the foreground color to black.
Add a new layer, FG color background, name it "Houses bump".
Set the gradient tool to Normal mode, Gradient FG to BG, Reverse (so it's white to black), Shape Shaped (dimpled).
Use the gradient tool on the Houses bump layer.

Set the foreground color to 50% gray.
Add a layer, foreground color background, name it "House roofs".
Bump map the house roofs layer with the Houses bump layer. Azimut 135, elevation 45, depth 65.
Set the House roofs layer to overlay mode.
Make the Houses bump layer invisible.
Duplicate the buildings layer.
Add a layer mask to the buildings copy layer, Transfer the layer's alpha channel.
Fill the buildings copy layer with the Wood #1 pattern
Rename the buildings layer to "House shadows"
Offset the layer 1px in both x and y directions.
Gaussian blur the House shadows layer, size 2px
Set the house shadows layer to multiply mode, opacity 80

You now have houses with roofs and shadows. (Image 6)

The streets at the edges of the city are pretty crummy, I know. I'd probably cut some of it off at some point and introduce a city wall.

[ravells]

Oh my word! I thought that was done in some seperate programme thingy....It's.....huge!

[Alfar]

Nope, just gimp.

[Alfar]

Eh... does the fact that it's made with Gimp make it less interesting?

Is huge a problem? I'm pretty sure I can do smaller, 3000x3000 was pretty rough on my lappy.

Also, if the number of steps involved is scaring you, I'm pretty sure I can script more or less all of it.

[Gandwarf]

That last image looks quite hopeful... it's a bit random though. I am curious if we will ever find something that mimicks a realistic city.

[ravells]

No huge is definitely good!

[Alfar]

Had to play some more with this - here's whirl city, where I whirled the blocks before working them into a city... or something like one, at least.

I imagine one could fill in the empty spots with parks, special buildings, wells, and the houses that stand alone could have walled gardens and such.

[RobA]

Had to play some more with this - here's whirl city, where I whirled the blocks before working them into a city... or something like one, at least.

I imagine one could fill in the empty spots with parks, special buildings, wells, and the houses that stand alone could have walled gardens and such.

Interestingly enough, the whirled version seems to immediately add an element of "this is planned" when I look at it! You should try a radial displacement map on a repeating B&W conical gradient as an alternative to whirl... might give some primary road structure to the layout.

-Rob A>

[Alfar]

Thanks RobA! Exactly the kind of suggestion I was hoping for. Sounds like a fun thing to try out for sure. Will let you know how it works out