Crypt of Guirren Villus

[NathanC]

A little bit of a back story here. I've never done a crypt as a stand alone map, I typically put them in things so pointers would help.

The idea -
This is a crypt that belonging to a hero who died thousands of years prior to the events taking place in my home campaign setting. Long story short in typically hero fashion, he did some great deed and his blade is being sought to destroy an evil artifact. Stealing from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I plan to have guardians, who are his party members guarding each level of the crypt, before they party needs to face him proving themselves worthy to claim the blade....real original stuff right lol.

Anyway the crypt is "lost" in the mountains and actually build directly into the mountains. The main floor has two guardians, along with a false treasure area. there will be two fountains on either side, one helping to trigger the the secret door to level 2.

I just started the layout, and would appreciate some feedback.

Also I'm going to try to be better about posting my WIP step by step (which I'm terrible at doing)

[wdmartin]

It looks like you were trying to use drop shadows as walls? The effect makes it look to me as though the interior of the rooms are "above" their surroundings. What program are you working in? If it's Gimp or Photoshop, try using a bevel effect rather than a drop shadow.

If you want some occlusion shadows at the base of the walls, try using an Outer Glow effect (color: black; mode: multiply; opacity: 35% or to taste).

Here's a super-quick example in PSD format:

[NathanC]

wdmartin, thanks for the tip.

I am actually am using the bevel (inner if I'm not mistaken) for the walls.

The effect your seeing might be the inner shadow that I stuck on there to try to give it depth from both sides.

I'll ease back on both a bit, then play with the glow settings and see what it looks like when I get back to it on Monday.

[wdmartin]

Ah, I see. I don't think Inner Shadow is going to do what you want, then, because it's applied equally all the way around the perimeter of the area. Normally the shadows would fall in different places depending on where the light source is -- thicker at one side, slowly thinning towards the middle, and attenuated or entirely absent on the opposite side. It may even be worth brushing in the shadows manually. Defining where your general light source is helps you figure out where the shadows should fall.

Here's another sample PSD:



Super-brief tutorial:

1) Make a new layer.
2) Fill it with a dark shadow color. I used a dark desaturated blue for this one, but black is fine.
3) Set the blend mode to Multiply.
4) Turn down the opacity a bunch. 30% or so, but adjust to taste.
5) Add a layer mask that hides the layer.
6) Using a soft white brush on the mask, brush in your shadows.
7) Select your walls and subtract them from the layer mask -- the shadows should be on the floor, not the top of the wall.

And there you go. If you want you could do the same thing with a bright yellow or white layer set to Overlay mode for highlights. I think JackTannery has a good tutorial on object source lighting somewhere, too, if you have something in the scene that is supposed to emit light.

[NathanC]

I'm not so much using the shadow for a "shadow" as much as tying to use it to simulate height.

what I was trying to do was something like this


I did that one a while back and used the inner shadow to create height on both sides of the wall in the center.
I'd have to take a look at the .psd to get a better sense of exactly what I have the settings at. I'm thinking the reason it works in the above situation is the size of the center wall vs what I have in the crypt.

Thanks for the tutorial that's much better then what i typically do for shadow, which is just throw a mask on a black and trace the outline of the wall. Never though to set Multiply or actually subtract the walls from the mask.

[NathanC]

OK so here's where we're at after reworking the wall effects to give it height.



wdmartin here are the settings I used to fix the walls. They are the same as the cave.




After i drop some assets into the map I'll try your suggestion for the shadow.

[wdmartin]

That's already significantly better. In the first version my eye kept reading the lowest parts as floating above everything else; in this revision it's much clearer.

In your Bevel, try changing the blending mode of the highlights from Screen to Overlay. The latter is a bit softer and less plastic-y.

In your outer glow, try changing the Technique setting from Softer to Precise. Either one works, honestly, but I find the latter gives slightly better control over how the glow falls.

And yes, conveying depth from a top-down perspective is difficult. I still struggle with it after several years working at this. The best advice I can give is to keep your light sources in mind -- depth is largely a product of shadow and highlight. In the absence of those, any scene will be flat.

[NathanC]

Today's progress



The sword in the back room there it the only light source in the building right not. I just rendered light in there to cause I wanted a nice omnidirectional glow.

still need to add main doors, stairs down, some treasure in the other two room and shadow, before I get to the meat of the location on the 2nd level.

was also thinking about "roughing up' the floor a bit with some cracks, looks to nice for being lost for years.

[wdmartin]

Try a grunge map for that. Steps:

1) Go to textures.com (and create an account if you haven't got one)
2) Go to their grungemap section.
3) Find a nice, big grungy image and download it.
4) Open the grunge map in photoshop.
5) Press CTRL+SHIFT+U to desaturate it (discards all color info, yields black and white).
6) CTRL+A to select all, CTRL+C to copy.
7) Go to your map and paste it as a new layer over the one you want to dirty up.
8) Press CTRL+T to resize the new layer -- make you grunge map fit. It doesn't matter if the aspect ratio gets skewed. Press ENTER to confirm.
9) Change the layer blending mode to Multiply.
10) Fiddle with the layer opacity until it looks good.
11) Optional: if you only want it to apply to the one layer beneath it, make it a clipping layer by holding down ALT and clicking the border between the two layers in the layer dialog panel.

This is a good way to add a bit of organic, non-repeating variation to seamless textures. I have a folder of grunge maps, and I often use several in any given map.

EDIT:

Here's a quick example PSD:



The left side shows clean, un-grunged tile. The right side has been mucked up with a grunge map.

The example isn't the best -- to my mind, grunge maps work best on a comparatively large area, which this isn't. The grunge image I used was 4320x3240 originally, and it got shrunk down to 400x400 in the sample. That's not a lot of space for the tonal variations to play out.

[NathanC]

I'm not sure if I'm getting it.



I feel like it's darkening the map more then adding the overall texture. Do you think it's because it's a small map?

Tried a second Version as well