City Of Riverhewn WIP First map in GIMP

**Ascension** · 09-18-2010, 05:52 PM

The easiest fix for your city houses is to cut some holes in the middle of each large house/block. This will make a courtyard. Then, if you like, go back and use a 1-pixel eraser and put some tiny tiny alleys in and that sort of separates the roofs. Then you add a bevel and voila.

**mearrin69** · 09-18-2010, 05:59 PM

That's basically what I was suggesting...in too many words. I just fired up my desktop and was going to do up an example from his posted map. Hopefully it won't take me too long.
M

edit: And, BTW, your "easter egg" is very flattering. LOL.

**jtougas** · 09-18-2010, 06:27 PM

Originally Posted by Ascension

The easiest fix for your city houses is to cut some holes in the middle of each large house/block. This will make a courtyard. Then, if you like, go back and use a 1-pixel eraser and put some tiny tiny alleys in and that sort of separates the roofs. Then you add a bevel and voila.

Oh boy..The Streetsweeps are going to have my head...

Originally Posted by mearrin69

That's basically what I was suggesting...in too many words. I just fired up my desktop and was going to do up an example from his posted map. Hopefully it won't take me too long.
M

edit: And, BTW, your "easter egg" is very flattering. LOL.

Yeah..sorry M I'm a little dense when it comes to some of this stuff I looked up what a bevel is supposed to look like and I aint got it...and your welcome I had to give you credit somewhere

**mearrin69** · 09-18-2010, 08:16 PM

NP. It's not like this stuff is easy!

Take a look at the capture file...sort of shows what I was talking about. In the hopes that it's useful to you I've attached a PSD file. I think they open in GIMP. Basically I took a snip of your map and blew it up a bit (I assume your working file is higher resolution that what you're posting) and then did some work on it. I lifted the buildings and made them a single-color base layer and then did some judicious erasing and painting to suggest building shapes and courtyards. Then I took that layer and duplicated it to apply a texture and a bevel (and a color adjustment for variety since I'm only using one texture). Got carried away prettying up the courtyards and such...might not show on your map depending upon scale. The PSD should, hopefully, answer any questions but, if not, let me know and we'll figure out how to translate this from PS to GIMP. Hope it helps.
M

Edit: That frame's on there because the bevel gets borked if it goes right up to an edge and I wanted to keep this a live file (not flattened) so you can see it. Sure hope the layer styles translate to GIMP. If not we may have some more figuring to do.
Edit2: Added a little zoomout of your map with my excerpt circled.

**jtougas** · 09-18-2010, 08:18 PM

Wow...That looks awesome I was just about to quit and In fact had posted my "uncle" post for this map and then I saw that...Ok you did all that work for me there's now way I can quit on you now. I will get this figured out even if I have to start all the buildings over again. M again thanks so much. Oh and because I thought it was slightly funny In my fit of frustration I did the map I should have started with...

In The Magical Land Of Algabreium Sits The Isle Of Right.....

isle of right.jpg

**mearrin69** · 09-18-2010, 08:23 PM

Hey. No worries. It's a great map...especially for a first time city map!

M

**jtougas** · 09-19-2010, 05:42 PM

In Breaking News: Disaster once again struck the city Of Riverhewn overnight as a bizarre white hue settled over the city. In a fit of insanity the city designer at great cost teleported himself to the Isle of Right in the parallel land of Algebraium......

So here's where we stand as of today. removed all of my building layers as the more I looked at it the more all the different roof textures became a distraction. I am in the process of redoing the city blocks. As always feedback is requested and sincerely appreciated...Thanks!!
Riverhewn Phase 5.jpg

**Ascension** · 09-19-2010, 07:15 PM

As I'm always telling my employees, "anything worth doing is worth doing right". Glad to see you sticking with this and taking the time and effort to make it right. It can get tedious at times but, in the end, it's worth it. So...with that bit of down-home philosophy out of the way I'd say take them houses from the farmlands and put a few scattered around the city to make sure that you keep the scale right.

**jtougas** · 09-19-2010, 07:56 PM

Scale...I'm going to have that word tattooed on the inside of my eyelids so I don't forget.......

**mearrin69** · 09-20-2010, 02:08 AM

Good advice about keeping the scale. I blew this concept with my NYC map and ended up sketching a whole bunch of trees at entirely the wrong scale...because I thought I had it sussed and zoomed in to 400% to work on them. Wasted at least an hour on it.

BTW, while you're working on this, I'd suggest considering rotating each of your farmhouses (and other extra-city buildings) randomly a little. If they're on separate layers this should be easy. If they're all on the same layer it's probably not much harder...in Photoshop you just select one using the rectangular marquee or other tool and then transform and rotate. That transforms the selection but keeps it in the same layer. Not sure if that works in Gimp or not.

Bevel Police? Great, another badge to try to earn.

M

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