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Thread: (Photoshop) Create a dungeon floorplan in minutes (dial-up killer)

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    Tutorial (Photoshop) Create a dungeon floorplan in minutes (dial-up killer)

    Creating a quick and easy dungeon floorplan ((View this thread for a work in progress with images that illustrate this method http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...=5763#post5763 ))

    This quick tutorial will show you how to create a quick and easy dungeon floorplan. I'll be using and referencing photoshop but, the technique should work just fine in Gimp.

    Step 1: Decide on your overall map and grid size and open your file. I'll be using a 45px grid on a 20x20 square map. ((900x900 px for image dimensions))

    see the Grid Tutorial for making a transparent grid layer

    Step 2: Create a new layer. fill it with your grid pattern, and reduce it's opacity to about 10-20%... just enough to see it while you draw your floorplan.

    Step 3: Create a layer 'under' the grid layer and name it 'floor'

    Step 4: On your 'floor' layer, you have a few options for drawing but... for beginner's, we're going to use the rectangular Marquee selection tool (see Appendix 1 for method to draw natural looking cave systems). Using this tool, start drawing your rooms and connect them with hallways and corridors. The gridlines will serve as an easy guide for judging measurements and placing doors.

    Step 5: Once you have your floors shape all filled in... use the magic wand tool and select the entire floor.

    Step 6: Set your brush size to 5px and a hard stroke.

    Step 7: Create a new layer, name this one 'walls'

    Step 8: On your walls layer, choose the marquee tool again, your previous selection of the floor layer should still be visible. Right click the image and select, Stroke (position: outside)

    You now have a nice wall surrounding your floor

    Step 8: Switch focus to the 'floors' layer and then use your magic wand again. This time, once you select the floor area, right click the image and choose, 'Select Inverse' This will select everything 'outside' of the floor.

    Step 9: Switch to the Grid layer and click the ol' Cntrl-X... this will erase all the grid lines that are outside the floor and allow you to add texture, title, map key, or whatever you wish on the external area of the map.

    Step 10: Switch back to the 'floor' layer and apply a nice texture to it... stone, marble, whatever you wish. If you want to add different textures to separate rooms... you'll need select each room area on that layer and 'Layer via Cut/Copy' to another layer.

    Step 11: Here's where it'll start to look nice... Give the wall a bit of drop shadow, bevel, and texture. Play with the settings a bit and find a style you like.

    Step 12: Create a new layer and name it 'doors'

    Step 13: Draw yerself a little door symbol that is one grid space wide and about a 1/5th grid space wide or so. Play with the bevel and emboss, texture, and color until you get the look of whatever sort of door you are placing in that area.

    Step 14: Copy the door you make and paste it where ever you need using new layers for each door, and eventually merging all doors to one layer.

    Step 15: Optional -- you can play with drop shadows and strokes on the grid layer to achieve some nice grout lines on tile that double as grid markers. Also try changing color of grid and transparency... some folk like saving maps with grids, some don't... If you just wan't groutlines for tiled floors to match up, you can always just cut out the room area from the grid layer and tweak it or hide it for each section.

    You should now have a passable looking map for use in your online or tabletop games. There are a lot of neat effects you can add to a map like this.

    Appendix 1: Alternate method for creating winding caverns... instead of using the Marquee tool to draw your lines, just freehand them with brush tool... ends up coming out very natural looking.

    Appendix 2: Adding flavor... building furniture and rugs and such is beyond scope of this tutorial. I will add a nice trick for lighting effects at a future date I hope.

    no time for images now... please post your experiments using this method if you try it out. I'd like to see how well i convey my thoughts

    on second thought, here are some finished images at least. I created these three maps using this method.

    please note that some of them aren't perfect and doors don't align with grids on one or two whilse the grids extend over walls a bit in another... these were my learning maps... fergive me




    Last edited by Duvik; 08-03-2007 at 11:47 PM. Reason: adding link to images for visual aid
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