[Award Winner] Clustered houses for a city in Photoshop
This one is pretty easy to do and the results look fairly decent. It is by no means the greatest tut of all time and it is not hands-free but it does save a lot of time. Here's what the final image looks like.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
1. Ok so the first thing you have to do is get some terrain. I won't go into that part here as there are many other tuts for that.
2. The second thing is to have your rivers and lakes on a layer separate from the terrain.
Here's what I have so far...2 layers, terrain and river.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
3. Now lay out some streets. Use various size pencil tips; I have used a 5-pixel hard round pencil, 3-pixel and a 1-pixel.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
4. Next, draw out a shape that covers the area where you want your buildings to be. Here's why we have our rivers on their own layer: once we have our shape, ctrl-click on the river layer to load its selection. Hit the delete key then deselect. This cuts our shape to fit between the rivers. It might be necessary for you to do some erasing of stray bits on banks where you don't want any buildings.
Last edited by Ascension; 02-10-2009 at 08:53 PM.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
5. Copy this layer and hit ctrl-i to invert the color from white to black. Ctrl-click on the river layer again then Select > Modify > Expand =10. Hit the delete key then deselect. This pushes our buildings away from the river banks.
6. Ctrl-click on the streets layer and repeat step 5 except this time only expand by 5 or less. Add your favorite layer style to the streets to make them look however you like, I went with paved blocks in gray.
7. Use the eraser to make these building shapes look more angular. Don't worry if you have thin strips with no black on them...you can always add some market stalls or public squares or small parks.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
8. Use a 1-pixel eraser to cut some small lines into the shapes that roughly look like building shapes. These cuts are going to form the basis for our roofs.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
9. Add some layer styles, but leave off a drop shadow. The most important thing is to add an inner bevel set to chisel soft with a large enough size to bevel the whole shape all the way to the middle as well as a 1-pixel outer stroke to hide the erasing.
The pattern I used was the standard nebula pattern, scaled up to 1000% with an opacity of 33%. The color is a brown color code 403018 (rgb 64, 48, 24) set to multiply. This is still quite dark so I added an inner glow of a tan, color code 92813D (rgb 146, 129, 61) set to linear dodge, 10% opacity and size of 76 (so as to affect the whole shape)...this lightens everything up. I used a brown for the stroke and bevel highlight is overlay at 100% and the shadow is multiply at 100% The nebula pattern combined with the color overlay set to multiply serves to break up the solid color and give our houses some varying colors.
Last edited by Ascension; 02-10-2009 at 08:58 PM.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
10. Lastly, we'll add a shadow. Copy the buildings layer and clear the layer styles.
11. Move this layer underneath the buildings layer.
12. Click on the move tool. My sun is in the southeast at about 4 o'clock. Using the arrow keys on the keyboard, move your shadow 1 pixel up/down and 1 pixel left/right depending on where your sun is. Since my sun is at 4 o'clock I went up one time and left two times.
13. Copy this layer and repeat step 12. Make as many layers as you want...each layer makes the shadow longer.
15. When happy, link these layers together and merge them (ctrl-e). Give it a 1-pixel gaussian blur. Then reduce the opacity to whatever you like (I went with 75%) and change the blending mode if you like (I went with multiply).
Voila! Some clustered buildings that look more like a city than a village.
Last edited by Ascension; 02-10-2009 at 09:01 PM.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Cool stuff, my friend.
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Ghoraja Juun, my largely stagnated campaign setting.
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Thanks, bro.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
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