Ethran: Merelan City

[Mouse]

Version 42

This is going to look a bit different to the way it was before, but please feel free to voice whatever you feel. I've reduced the scale - buildings and textures. I've replaced the rocks texture with one I made for myself, and I'm using primarily built in CC3 symbols and quite a few fills and extra symbols from the Bogie Mapping Objects collection.

Everything will be much smaller than it was before, so you may need to get your reading glasses on to see any of the detail.

The trees are still in the pipeline, but you may see a couple of experimental tree-like objects lurking around on top of the island and one in the marsh (I think) - there for the testing.

[Falconius]

It looks a lot clearer and cleaner now, even zoomed in to a comparable level as the last previous posted map. The buildings don't seem to have the same aliasing issues.

I think the leafless trees are great, the green ones do look a little flat though. About the only thing I actually preferred in the previous one was the green roofs on the buildings in the square, and the roughness of the vineyards. Also I assumed in the previous one they were roofing with wood shingles, now it appears to be roofing with slate from the surrounding rock. Which actually kind of makes more sense, since people build with what's nearby for the most part.

[Mouse]

It looks a lot clearer and cleaner now, even zoomed in to a comparable level as the last previous posted map. The buildings don't seem to have the same aliasing issues.

I think the leafless trees are great, the green ones do look a little flat though. About the only thing I actually preferred in the previous one was the green roofs on the buildings in the square, and the roughness of the vineyards. Also I assumed in the previous one they were roofing with wood shingles, now it appears to be roofing with slate from the surrounding rock. Which actually kind of makes more sense, since people build with what's nearby for the most part.

Thanks Falconius

The clearer buildings are down to three things: I'm using built in CC3 symbols, and they are unbelievably high res - good enough to blow up and use as buildings in dungeon maps, the scale is half what it used to be, so everything will be a lot sharper anyway, and I've added a very slight black glow to the sheets/layers with the buildings on them to make them 'pop' very slightly from the background.

Thanks for having a look at the trees for me. I couldn't decide about the green one. Its meant to be a silver birch, but you're right - it really doesn't work all that well. Never mind, it was only a 2 minute 'splodging' experiment. It doesn't even have a trunk or any branches

That's great that you realised what I was thinking when I modified the base colour of the buildings to make them more similar to the surrounding stone. Making them look like the people were using what was lying around was my intention. I'm also hoping that since a great many of the trees will be in a dying state (and therefore various shades of orange, yellow and brown) that the silver/grey buildings will act as a foil for their last burst of colour. Some of the flowering trees will even be in flower out of season - as trees do have a tendency to do some very strange things when they are under stress.

The vines have sharpened up and become more ridged lines because I halved the scale of the texture being used to fill them. I think I will have to experiment with a bit of fractalization to see if I can't get that 'fluffy' feel back. Failing that, I may use a second copy of the same fill and set it back to the original resolution level.

As for the copper roofed buildings... I think I can do something about that using the same technique that I used with the temple and the windmills - none of which are actual buildings, but merely groups of shaded polygons with aligned fill styles

[kacey]

Glad to see this coming back to life Mouse, It's looking good, I like the new buildings better then the old ones, they look really nice.

[Mouse]

Thank you Kacey

Those are Profantasy CC3 buildings - they come with the software, so I can't really take any credit for how good they look, other than for the particular combination of sheet effects I have applied to them.

[Mouse]

Version 43:

The Windmills of Morran (bottom right hand corner).

I drew the windmills some time ago, but I've only just gotten around to generating a suitable texture to complete the ground around them - the ground vines (also known as 'pace flowers' by the locals).

Also finished (or more or less) are all the buildings in that bottom right-hand 'corner' (Morran).

I can't seem to make the vineyards fuzzy with sheet effects alone. I suspect I am rendering this map at a slightly different resolution to the way I was doing it before, and the sharp lines really are sharp nowadays. I think this calls for another transparent texture similar to the ground vines, but now I know how to make transparent textures it shouldn't take that long.

I've made new copper-roofed buildings similar to the original for the entrance/gate into the city in the north, but I suspect the new copper fill I made is a little too flat. I'll work on it

[- JO -]

So good to see Merelan coming back to life !!!!
Great job to recover or redo everything that disapeared !
You showed great courage !

[Mouse]

Aw thanks, Jo

Novel and map are inextricably linked in my mind. There cannot be one, without the other, and I wouldn't really say I was 'brave' as such (though I thank you for the compliment). More like cast-iron stubborn! LOL

[Robbie]

Speaking of novels...

Sent from my m8wl using Tapatalk

[Mouse]

Yes Robbie?

EDIT: If you mean have I finished it yet - the answer is no. I had a few life problems going on that put a kink in my plans (my father died) and everything is currently, er... a not-unattractive kind of... pear shape!

I need to finish all the maps before I repair the writing that went a bit off the rails at that time. Plus there are a lot of new ideas to put into the story that have happened as a result of drawing the maps - Somnee Arena and the story that goes with it is one of them.

I have MC to finish, and then a smaller project of the Ruins of Urrowan, which I'm hoping will only take me a couple of weeks after I finish MC - which itself is hopefully going to be done within a fortnight now - tree and tent drawing skills providing.

Then I reckon it will take about 3 months to tidy up the script to the point where I'm ok about it leaving my hands