Huge (30x30) cave intersection

[TheMarcus7]

I made this following the tutorial by torstan over on newbiedm.com. I'm pretty pleased with how it came out. The original is at 100ppi so that the 10px by 10px sqares would print out on the inch.


What I was going for was a ruined neighborhood at a tunnel intersection for the labyrinth under Saarun Khel (Thunderspire Labyrinth). Next I might try an underground lake to use for the Cisterns area.

.TM7

All work I post to the Cartographer's Guild is distributable under this Creative Commons license.

[Steel General]

Looks good so far.

[jfrazierjr]

Very nice. One big issue(for me anyway) is that the crumbling walls don't match the rest of the style, particularly with the drop shadow. The drop shadow makes them appear to float above the floor. One way to get around this is to use an outer glow type effect to have the shadow on all sides, and then perhaps a bit more on the side with no light on a separate layer. Also, I would ditch the existing texture (the GIMP moon footprint) and use the same colors as your outer walls(using a layer mask where you want it to show through. As it is, it breaks the consistency of style with the watercolor hand brushed outer walls and floor for me.

[TheMarcus7]

4jfrazierjr:
Well, Torstan's tutorial agree's with you, but I kinda like the drop shadow on the crumbly walls. I was looking at the poster map for Sceptre Tower of Spell Guard for inspiration, and I liked how their ruined walls looked with the drop shadow. You don't notice it quite so much when its printed. I will however check our your suggestion. I originally used the GIMP walnut texture, but everything was brown, brown, brown and I wanted to add some contrast.

.TM7

[jfrazierjr]

4jfrazierjr:
Well, Torstan's tutorial agree's with you, but I kinda like the drop shadow on the crumbly walls. I was looking at the poster map for Sceptre Tower of Spell Guard for inspiration, and I liked how their ruined walls looked with the drop shadow. You don't notice it quite so much when its printed. I will however check our your suggestion. I originally used the GIMP walnut texture, but everything was brown, brown, brown and I wanted to add some contrast.

.M

If your looking for some good textures, check out Genetica Viewer. It has hundreds of free(non commercial) use textures built in which you can provide some randomization to (including changing the color, brightness, scale, etc) before exporting a final jpg for use in a map. I use it all the time.

[TheMarcus7]

... One way to get around this is to use an outer glow type effect to have the shadow on all sides, and then perhaps a bit more on the side with no light on a separate layer. ...

Anyone got a set of steps for how I'd do this in GIMP? Or is that the Gausian Blur brush work that torstan described in his tutorial on newbiedm.com.

2/4 Well I worked on this again last night, and wasn't that happy with much of what I did. I did check out the Genetica Viewer, however and thats some sweet software. I might install it on a second machine so I can render while I do other things for bit texture panels.




.TM7

[torstan]

You can do it that way, but you can also do it with the drop shadow filter. Make sure you have a selection that includes all the walls and internal walls. Then go to Filter->Shadows (I think)->drop shadow. Play around with the setting and the displacement and that should give you the overall glow.

[TheMarcus7]

I messed around with this all day:

• I cleaned up my masks.
• Stripped out the dropshadow.
• Added a triplet of texture layers for the interior walls, but eventually just would up stripping them all out again.
• Layered on the "torstan watercolor shadow" effect.
• Created a siggy thing. (definately needs work)

and for comparison, the original

I think my next project will be a little smaller.

.TM7

All work I post to the Cartographer's Guild is distributable under this Creative Commons license.

[Jaxilon]

I can see a nice big battle taking place in there. Good map

[ProjectThanatos]

Looks like a great place for an ambush! Nice work.