Untitled Campaign Map

[Fluesopp]

It's really looking nice. The only thing perhaps, is that your horizontal lines is just horizontal, and don't follow the flow of the hill. Perhaps that would make them look more 'hill-ish'.

What are the document size you are working with? And how many layers do you have? I'm having major performance problems if I have more than 15 layers, all with layer effects, and when your mountains have five layers...

[Coyotemax]

I see what you mean about the lines following the shape of the hill, but I want to finish the map within my lifetime and without damaging my wrist I may add another layer and go over that with some contourish lines though, that may help. Or see if there's a way to warp or displace them and still have them look just so...

The doc size is 6600x4800pixels (16x22 at 300dpi), and I've lost track of the layers, I don't even bother counting anymore. I just keep everything grouped for easy reference and off to the races I go.

For the background (land) I have.. 3 parchment textures and 4 maybe 5 adjustment layers. I also have 4 more layers set up for the terrain colours. The ocean layer has 1 texture at the moment, though I'm likely to add some more, and I believe 4 adjustment layers. Mountains, as you noticed, have 5. Hills at the moment have 3. Forests have 3, plus I have 2 for setting up masks for the forest generator. I would say at least 8 out of ten layers also have masks on them, and quite a few of them are linked. This map isn't heavy on layer styles, to my recollection the forest masks and the ocean/river layers are the only ones with effects. Eventually there'll be a parchment texture to overlay the whole thing and bring the palette together (though the effects on that one will likely be subtle, I'm doing a decent job of keeping everything in the same range, I think)

Well, you did ask

Once I get some dunes into the desert area, there will be a visual comparison that should bring the hills back into being just hills

[fiskonius]

It looks awesome! I cant wait to see it finished

[Fluesopp]

Impressive......
And you don't notice much slowdown? What's your specs?

[Coyotemax]

There might be a bit of slowdown, but I'm not noticing it much.

As for specs.. Erm, P4 3ghz, 2gb ram, Radeon9250 graphics card (128mb), dual monitors. and a pair of 72gig drives. I set my photoshop memory usage to 75% instead of the default of 50%, and let it use both drives as scratch drives. I also keep my history to 10 undo states. I think those are the bits that are most relevant to the photoshop use. I also have a nifty app called Tuneup Utilities which lets me configure a "turbo mode" which shuts off anything that's not system critical or related to the application being used at the time, frees up extra memory. I usually end up with me giving photoshop about 1.7gigs worth of that 2gb physical ram to play with.

If i *really* need more memory (i've worked on things that have slowed me down due to the sheer dimensions, let alone layers - the world of Aeran map comes to mind!) I'll flatten everything that's already done, then save it to my wife's laptop and work on that one instead (it has 4gb ram, 256 vidmem and i think it may even have a better processor than the desktop - I splurged when i got it for her ). When that's done, I'll port the new work layers back into the original.

[Coyotemax]

I think I'm on to something here! Just need to fine tune the effect now.. maybe not blur it *quite* so much so it looks just as good at 100% as it does at 200%

[Ascension]

Might be a good idea. I do everything at 200% just to make sure that it looks good.

[Fluesopp]

The mountains and hills sure looks good. But the trees feel a little out of place. The style is much thinner and the shading is a bit different. Perhaps you should make your own trees for the map?

[Coyotemax]

Fluesopp: Bloody heck, stop reading my mind!!!



I'm redoing the brushes, yes. And I have an idea for the style that will cause them to match the hills and mountains a lot closer. Yay!

[Coyotemax]

New hills! New Trees!