Okay, Sue, I have to ask you...HOW in the WORLD are you doing this in cc3+?!?!?!?!?
I mean, the program is amazing.....but I didn't know it was capable.of this!!!
There are no words...i'm speechless!
Having spent nearly the entire day attempting to perfect just one texture (the red forests), I haven't done very much else apart from adjust the form of the mountains and soften the hard edges off everything just a little.
I may not finish this in time - at least, not to my own satisfaction. I would like to create textures for the entire map, but that's far too many in just five days if I want to do other stuff, like work on the rivers and add signs of life, etc.
### Latest WIP ###
Okay, Sue, I have to ask you...HOW in the WORLD are you doing this in cc3+?!?!?!?!?
I mean, the program is amazing.....but I didn't know it was capable.of this!!!
There are no words...i'm speechless!
Like a thief in the night
she comes with no form
yet tranquility proceeds
the accursed storm...
check out my new Deviant Art page!
https://www.deviantart.com/ladiestorm
I was wondering the same thing.
Also those mountains you have in the back and to the left side are absolutely beautiful. The shore is brilliantly done. What a great piece of work so far!
Originally Posted by ladiestorm
Thank you, both
Ok. To tell how I've done this particular map would take a very long time, but I can give you the basic method.
Firstly, it is necessary to have what I call a paint-type app - I use Corel Photopaint 11, which is about 15 years out of date and suffering terribly at the mercy of Windows 10 (it crashes every 3-5 minutes when there's a disagreement with the OS about exactly where the active memory is located). You need a paint-type program to make a set of textures that are nothing more than plain colour swatches, like this:
NB: These can be very small because they have no pattern in them whatsoever
Then you need something to help you make your own colour controlled textures - something like Genetica (or a friend who has it, and enough time to do it for you) to produce home-made textures like this:
That's the second largest resolution - I like large sample areas because it cuts down on redundancy.
Then you import them into your map and use them just like any other polygon fill in the usual way.
The next bit is a bit tricky if you don't normally imagine things in 3D. I'm lucky that way - my Aspie brain is 'hard wired' for 3D visual processing, in that I can build and view a scene in my head as if I was viewing and turning the landscape in Blender, or Vue (3D modelling programmes). I can see an imaginary perspective grid like a framework as I work, without any need to draw it on the map as a reference. I imagine that to make this easy for people who don't have such an... unusual arrangement of neurons, we would need to make a template that had a true perspective grid in it, complete with snap points, and that is way beyond my capabilities.
There is a mammoth drawback to working with a true perspective view, and that is there's just no way that you could make a set of standard symbols to cope with all the possible view angles. Imagine, if you will, a simple cube seen on the valley floor, where you would see the front and a good deal of the top, then raise it in your mind to eye level in the air in front of you, where you would only see the front face. To place it anywhere else between those two points you would need to have thousands of different symbols to cope with all the different variations on position and lighting. You would need a 3D mapping programme, with 3D models as symbols. Therefore, there are no symbols in this map.
Having imagined my scene and flattened it into a 2D picture in my mind (like taking a photograph of the real world), I draw the block colour shapes with the freehand drawing tool (as if I am tracing them from that imaginary photograph), convert them to polygons with the "path to polygon" tool, and apply whatever Sheet affects are necessary to make them look as close as possible to the way they look in the picture in my head.
...
Well - that's the theory. In reality the composition is the only thing that looks the way I imagined it. I'm having a huge problem right at the moment with the limitations of the palette and a general lack of time. I imagined this view some time ago, but couldn't see how to engineer the colours till a couple of days ago (when the obvious and simple solution of making the plain textures just suddenly dawned on me).
All I can say is that I almost fear uploading the next WIP, since I messed up pretty badly when loading a new set of textures last night (I was tired), and had to start very nearly all over again from a mid-way backup file, which looked very much like the first WIP. I can only hope that the new direction this map has taken in the last few hours will live up to expectations. However, I'm not quite ready to upload it just yet
Last edited by Mouse; 09-26-2016 at 06:57 AM.
A lot has happened since I messed the main file up about 24 hrs ago. During the panic that followed I had a whole series of further accidents, some of which have turned out rather unexpected results.
In my haste to re-draw, cut and paste things and move others around I ended up changing the basic layout, adding a middle distance field, and by drawing guide lines on the wrong sheet - how to 'airbrush' hill shading in CC3 (results experimental). I lost the blue cliff that used to be on the left hand side, but I never really liked it anyway - so no great loss
### Latest WIP ###
I would definitely if perspectives would have helped with this? Or Diaramas?
Like a thief in the night
she comes with no form
yet tranquility proceeds
the accursed storm...
check out my new Deviant Art page!
https://www.deviantart.com/ladiestorm
Hey Storm
I guess your brain was working faster than your hands again? I think what you may have meant to say was:
I would definitely [like to know] if Perspectives would have helped with this...
(I'm only guessing, mind, because the end of it doesn't fit)
Answering the question I think you were asking...
I don't have Perspectives, or Dioramas (both CC3 add ons), so I don't really know. From what I've seen of maps drawn in Perspectives, I think the particular type of perspective used is "Ortho" like this:
Whereas what I am doing with Gymnopus P has two vanishing points, and is much more like this:
Never was it more true that a picture paints a thousand words!
I could give you a full technical explanation as to why these two images of exactly the same scene in Blender are so different to look at, but that would be such a very long-winded post you would probably fall asleep before I got to the end of it. Basically the ortho view is what is commonly referred to as false perspective. It has no vanishing points - all the grid lines are parallel. The true perspective view has at least 2 vanishing points - the grid lines gradually converge a few feet off screen to the left and right either side. Most maps that show side view mountains and trees are ortho, irrespective of software used, whereas this map is done in true perspective, a bit like a landscape painting.
The easiest way to tell the difference between ortho perspective and true perspective is by looking at the relative size of the features in the map. In an ortho map a mountain symbol is the same size wherever it is in the map, but in a true perspective view it will be smaller the further away it is.
Well. I'm not sure if I answered the right question - but I tried. LOL
Last edited by Mouse; 09-28-2016 at 12:20 PM.
I've been working the middle distance to join it properly with the foreground, and then on down the right hand side of the river. None of this is in any way finished, but its starting to look a lot closer to the way I imagined it would look - overall appearance wise. The back story continues to morph into something that makes more sense, even as the map develops... but I will keep that for the final WIP
I have an altitude problem on the left hand side. Its way too high coming down the river to the sea. I think I know how to cure it, but that's why I've left it for a fresh start tomorrow.
I was also in the right mood to name a few things
### Latest WIP ###
It's really coming along Mouse. I'm still amazed at what you're able to accomplish with cc3. I gave up on that programme a long time ago, but I still have a copy of it kicking around somewhere, I may have to dust it off again after seeing what you've been able to accomplish with it.
Thanks Kacey
That might be an interesting experiment - to see what a PS diva like yourself makes of jumping in the CC3 cockpit for a change. I think personal preference for vector or paint programmes stems from the way we are raised. Most people learn about PC graphics at school nowadays, and that's mostly paint programme orientated rather than vector based (with the obvious exception of precision engineering and AutoCAD)
I got into computer graphics for pleasure back in the days when CAD and CorelDraw were the only main players - long before PS was much more than a glint in its developer's eye, so vector graphics really are my thing.
Please do let us know how it goes?
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