Thread: The Town of Koppollex

Originally Posted by Arcana

This community never ceases to amaze me. I'm SOO glad we can have discussions like this and toss around VERY serious constructive criticism and sometimes very heated debates, but in the end everyone takes it like they should and grows from it. It warms me on the inside...I love you guys!

Pshah, we're all here for a common cause and even the "least" talented among us (*proudly raises his hand as a "least"*) recognize the effort that goes into even the "fast and dirty" maps. That being the case, critiques are honest attempts to help and rebuttals doubly so.

S'MORES FOR EVERYONE!

Originally Posted by ravells

Absolutely, Arcana. Seconded. This is what makes this community so wonderful to be in.

Just a thought - people were mentioning cart tracks earlier. This is not so difficult to do if your roads are vectors (maybe more a challenge if they are raster but you may be able to use the select by colour and shrink selection tool - I think). Simply copy and overlay a double vector line over the road. Very quick example below (sorry about the horrid colours) of the final image and an exploded view - of course you'll want to scuff up and texture the road colour a bit and maybe put some jitter, drop shadow etc on the cart tracks.

ravs

Yeah, it definitely needs some brand of noise on the tracks themselves so they're not so clean but very good idea and example ravells.

i'm glad that my critiques of the map haven't been taken in a bad light. my whole process for designing maps is different that others. everyone has a style they use and that's the reason i like this site so much. some people here have a style i like and want to emulate. i would love to be able to do maps that look great like the town of Koppolex, but i don't have the software for it right now. i am envious of you photoshop users out there.

a lot of folks here do some great maps. i'm always amazed at the quality of work. i think some of my own maps have been enhanced by the cunstructive criticism of the users here, and that is why i think this site is great. thanks arcana, and everyone else that makes this a vibrant forum.

Okay, I'm finishing up the tutorial & the map, and I could use some help. Farm fields. These are throwing me into fits.

For this style of map I can't seem to get the right field feel; either they turn into a texturized, processed blob of crap that is totally unrealistic, or they become artsy-fartsy-sketchy pieces of crap. I even tried copy-pasting in photos of fields like I did in my Eneini tutorial, but its not working either because that looks like...well, photos I copy-pasted in!

Any ideas you PS gurus out there? Help!

Here is a very quick suggestion. I've used the fields fill I posted in the textures section to make a field in the top left corner. About 45% opacity with a stroke brush that suggests hedgerows. May need more fiddling with but I'm late for work. I think getting fields to work also involves making sure that they fit realistically into the landscape - maybe putting hedgerow strokes on either side of the roads might help too?

I'll try again tonight, I think that using a filter on the fields fill to make it less 'realistic' might help too.

Ravs

Originally Posted by ravells

I'll try again tonight, I think that using a filter on the fields fill to make it less 'realistic' might help too.

Hmmm... why not try this:

Take your base ground layer (with the shadows and heights) or merge your base ground layers together (making copies of course). Then turn this into a channel. If the difference between the darks & lights isn't enough, use Levels to increase the contrast.

Then take your farm field pattern layer and run Lighting Effects on it using the heightmap channel. That might make the fields look more like they're shaped to the land better. Also, turning the opacity down should help it blend better too.

I'd try it myself right now, but I too am late for work. Good luck!

Ravs and Joshua: thanks for your suggestions, fellas. I ended up going with a "faking" technique involving the texturizer filter and a layer mask. Not great, but I like it the most so far, and it does not stand out like a sore thumb. Thanks for your help--both your ideas gave me the idea to do what I eventually did!

You can see the results in the tutorial: [Award Winner] A medieval town map tutorial in Photoshop

Nice looking result, although I'd be tempted to lower the opacity a little so it picks up the tone of the underlying land a bit more.