Bloodrock Revived

[Straf]

A mesa in a drain with a town on it? You don't see those every day Excellent imagination there Mouse. I had to look again to appreciate the depth - I don't seem to see it at first and I have to make myself see it. I don't know why. I feel sorry for the paper lad, having to get up that hill every day

I like the trees and those ploughed fields look great, although I bet they're swarming with metal detectorists right now! The flow lines round the bridge stanchion give the impression that there's a strong current at play there as the water drains away. I'm just glad you didn't choose yellow for the water as that would have been a little gross

[Mouse]

LOL! Yes, its a mesa in a drain with a town on it, but that's what fantasy is all about

The original concept was born as a result of the challenge specification - that the map be a map of the underworld. I fell back on my early childhood fantasies from that certain golden age of childhood where a child is old enough to walk and talk, but still young enough to have to hold mother's hand when walking in the street - and still just about young enough to believe quite fervently in things like fairies and magic. I used to catch glimpses of these imaginary worlds in the eye of my mind whenever we walked over one of those pavement skylights you sometimes get, and one or more of the glass pieces was broken. Instead of seeing the fragment of a cellar wall beneath, I'd see something like this in the split second that it took my mother to whisk me past it along the street.

When I first started this map there was a grid over it, which I later got rid of because it was obscuring the view rather a lot, but that grid represented the open square lattice of a totally smashed pavement skylight, which is also why the 'drain' surround is rather rusty. The hole in the ground has become a drain in my mind because its easier to explain to people who've never seen a pavement skylight.

And less of the yellow water, you rascal! I'll have you know that this is one of those extremely clean storm drains you only get in the well-to-do areas of the town! LOL!

[Straf]

I know what you mean - those really thick squares of glass set into the pavement to allow light in to a basement below? I can remember them when I was a youngster as well but I can't remember where they were. Apart from in the ground! When I think of it it comes with the smell of bread so I think it was a bakery and I don't think I saw it that often so it was possibly in a city rather than a local place.

Ah yes, you live in the poshest part of the country so the water will be champagne coloured and smell of Chanel

[Mouse]

I grew up in Weymouth - famous for its Victorian sea front and the fact that King George used to come for his annual bathe in the ocean from our sandy shores. There were once a great many of these pavement skylights into the Victorian cellars beneath the shops when I was a child. Sadly, most of them are no longer there. I think electric lighting has reduced the need for skylights in shop cellars so much that no one bothers maintaining them, and they just get filled in with slabs of concrete once they rot a bit too much and become unsafe.

And that's almost as bad as calling it yellow! No, this drain is a storm drain. Its a rainwater conduit

[Straf]

You know that's probably where I saw them. Not Weymouth (or Aberweg to give it its (probable) 2000 year old name), but the seaside. Seaside towns became quite fashionable in Victorian times. And the Victorians liked to do things just because they could. And if someone came up with a way of setting glass into the ground to allow light into a basement then they'd dig a basement just to do that.

So back to the map - I like the concept and I like the way it's done as you have to look at it quite a while to appreciate it, just like it's down a drain or something It's not something you can just glance at, you have to study it because the lighting is all different.

[Voolf]

Hey Mouse, just wanted to say that the updated version with shadows look way better. Nice job.

Something i didn't catch before. Your rooftops are great. Guess the shadows make them shand out so i could pay more attention to them.
Anyway rooftops seems quite simple, yet arrange in a very nice way. I often have problem to draw top dawn view nice rooftops because i lack of ideas. Your map defeinately becomes an inspiration for me next time.

[Mouse]

You know that's probably where I saw them. Not Weymouth (or Aberweg to give it its (probable) 2000 year old name), but the seaside. Seaside towns became quite fashionable in Victorian times. And the Victorians liked to do things just because they could. And if someone came up with a way of setting glass into the ground to allow light into a basement then they'd dig a basement just to do that.

So back to the map - I like the concept and I like the way it's done as you have to look at it quite a while to appreciate it, just like it's down a drain or something It's not something you can just glance at, you have to study it because the lighting is all different.

I prefer the name that Thomas Hardy gave the town in his novels - "Budmouth"

Thank you. The lighting is a little on the dark side still, but I will only be adjusting it very slightly. Drains are dark! LOL!

Hey Mouse, just wanted to say that the updated version with shadows look way better. Nice job.

Something i didn't catch before. Your rooftops are great. Guess the shadows make them shand out so i could pay more attention to them.
Anyway rooftops seems quite simple, yet arrange in a very nice way. I often have problem to draw top dawn view nice rooftops because i lack of ideas. Your map defeinately becomes an inspiration for me next time.

Well... I could lie, and just say 'thank you' and walk off with all the credit, but the cottages are the only thing in the map that I didn't have any hand in creating. Those are standard City Designer 3 thatched cottage symbols from the "Bitmap A" collection, and they automatically shade themselves by means of a built in normal map that responds to the position of the global sun, so all I had to do to make them pop was reduce the inclination of the global sun just a little from 90 degrees (directly overhead), to about 75 degrees (I think) - a 5 second job.

Thanks anyway, Voolf - they certainly didn't position themselves on the map, so I can at least take credit for... umm... :Mouse scratches head and tries to think of something that sounds impressive: er... 'artistic arrangement'?

[Falconius]

I'd say the reason the rust texture doesn't look like rust is that it is very much closer than the rest. and that looks like it should be very far away. That blender course I took on line utilized with a 30 day free trial of textures. Poliigion dot com. Even if you don't sign up you wind up with potentially 300 textures (10 a day for a month)

[kacey]

I'm glad to see you're working on this again, can't wait to see where it goes from here, I'm loving the colours, and textures... Looks good so far.

[Mouse]

I'd say the reason the rust texture doesn't look like rust is that it is very much closer than the rest. and that looks like it should be very far away. That blender course I took on line utilized with a 30 day free trial of textures. Poliigion dot com. Even if you don't sign up you wind up with potentially 300 textures (10 a day for a month)

Oh thank you, Falconius! That sounds like an excellent tip. I created all the textures in this map myself using Genetica, but there's no way that I could match 30 new usable textures a day! I'll have a look at that later and see what the resolutions are like

Another place you can pick up high res free textures is from the Genetica website itself. Believe me - some of them are just downright gorgeous, and... they're royalty free! You have to download the free viewer to be able to render them out to JPG or PNG, of course because they are Genetica source files. I don't' know what its like to use because I purchased the paid for version of the software, which is how I can edit them to suit my purpose, but the textures (IMHO) are too gorgeous to miss out on.

And I think you are probably right about the existing 'rust' texture

I'm glad to see you're working on this again, can't wait to see where it goes from here, I'm loving the colours, and textures... Looks good so far.

Thanks Kacey

I think it might be nearly finished as it stands, but if you have any new ideas I'm always listening