What's best...

For creating the movable placed objects in a VTT? Software wise that is. Doors, furniture, weapons, rocks.... trees... or how many different software platforms do you use to create objects? Do you use different ones specificallyf or certain elements.... Photoshop may be better at making trees where as AI is better for creating straight edged doors....

How do you approach the entire aspect of creating seperate elements for you VTT maps? :)


I myself find that I'm using a multitude of software for creating the various elements that go in a map. Xara has turned out to be one of the better programs for doing just that. But where it may limit some things, I turn to both PS and AI, for various things such as stairs and steps, tiled floors among the most common elements. Xara is quite good at creating doors, furniture, debris, and that sort of thing.

And one final question... for tokens this one is. What is considered HIRES for tokens? minimum DPI and size that is, and what tool do you find you use the most for creating TopDown mini's? ...
My photoshop has thus far been the instrumental tool in creating tokens... :)

Well the FHCO's and I use sketchup, as their artistic abilities are better than mine in the "drawing" arena.
They either find a reference pic of something they like, the 4E players manual has given them loads of fodder, or they find something on googles 3d warehouse, and have a go at it,,following the terms of service, of course.
From there they take the sketchup renders into gimp or photoshop, and run some filters to get a look they like.
They render everything big initially, and then rerender smaller versions once we figure out the scale, their plates started out as 1024 by 768 renders.

They have been giving maptools token tool a look, but I haven't tried it yet, or seen their results, but I do know they like it.
SeerBlue and the FHCO's

A token is just an image - usually PNG's as they often include the A in RGBA. That is the alpha channel and denotes the transparency. So you can have semi transparent or cut out shaped images which is just the ticket for characters.

Different VTTs have different requirements but at least for the July challenge you can put them on the image for the entry so that you dont need to worry about the apha channel for that one.

My ViewingDale has its own image format which you can import and export from via the program but the importer uses two images for a token creation. The color RGB normal image and a separate alpha image which is just a greyscale normal image and the app combines the two into an RGBA equivalent image.

In terms of resolution. Some have fixed requirements so that the size of the token so x pixels = y size. I dont know what that ratio is off hand for them. Mine does not have a fixed ratio so any image will do. Higher res means higher potential res on game table thats all.

So to sum up. Use whatever apps you have been using for the maps. Make the VTT token high res and then scale it down to use it in the particular VTT. If the VTT requires alpha PNG's then you have the option of either creating a single image and setting its transparency up or else using two images and combining them whether in the paint package or the VTT itself. I personally think the latter is the easier and better way.

It really depends on three things:

a. What kind of object you are trying to create - as you say Del, AI is good at somethings, Photoshop others.

b. What software you possess and/or which app you are most comfortable with. While I might use Xara for many types of objects, someone else might prefer GIMP to ever using Xara - it depends on what you like to work with.

c. Finally the map style - if you're going for a hand-drawn map, using 3D tokens clashes in style.

This is the problem I'm having with my July Challenge map. I created a Xara photorich map design, but I don't have ready 3D models to place as tokens, I may end up drawing them by hand, however doing this is a clash in style.

The tokens I create are either 3D models rendered as top downs, hand-drawn works or Xara created...

GP

GP what do you use to render 3d mini models? I personally like this Nevercenter Silo .... quite a powerful little program

I know a lot of the people over at the dundjinni forums use real-draw http://www.mediachance.com/realdraw/

I played with the demo and it is quite cool. It is a 2D vector drawing app that supports full non-destructive lighting and texturing effects.

Flip around the samples on the web site. If someone here uses it, please comment, cause for $55 it seems to have a lot of nifty features.

-Rob A>

I use Gimp (no surprises there then eh?) and save as pngs. I know that the dunjinni people produce all their objects at 200 pixels per 5'. This is good for character portraits but overkill for objects in my opinion. 100 pixels per grid is a pretty good middle ground, but you can even go down to 50 in many cases.

Any program that will allow you to save as a png will do the trick. It really depends how real you want the objects to look, or whether you want them to be representational.

Oh - I never answered :P

I use Gimp, and POVRay.

-Rob A>