Deserted Mines

[jfrazierjr]

I'm definitely going to bother you for that technique in a bit. I can see the basic principles of how it's done, and I'll have a shot at it, but there's some subtleties I may need to ask you about. I never print my maps, so it's less of an issue for my own use, but definitely an issue for commissions.

Here's an update. I think I've settled on a style (more or less). The next stage will be to do some detailing of the contents, most of which will be placeable objects, but some of which will be part of the map itself.

Attachment 5410

Torstan, do you have the rubble lines on a seperate layer from the main walls outline? If so, I would like to see if you would upload the GIMP file as I want to give something a bit of a try.

How do you do the darkness around the outside (solid earth) of the walls? Are you using just a straight dodge brush?

Joe

[torstan]

Its a dodge brush onto a 50% grey layer set to overlay. It's not quite finished yet. It's still a bit rough and needs some work. Here's the xcf (shrunk to 1000x1000 to get under the filesize limits)

upper2b.zip

If that isn't the bit you need, the image layer that is listed as 'background' in this one is broken out into layers in a separate image file. It was getting a bit hefty so I had to flatten it before carrying on.

[torstan]

Okay. I have stopped tinkering with the detail now. This is the base for the contents of the map and can serve as a basic deserted mine map before I go on to personalise it to the campaign I'm running (basically the next step is to throw goblins at it )

[jfrazierjr]

Its a dodge brush onto a 50% grey layer set to overlay. It's not quite finished yet. It's still a bit rough and needs some work. Here's the xcf (shrunk to 1000x1000 to get under the filesize limits)

upper2b.zip

If that isn't the bit you need, the image layer that is listed as 'background' in this one is broken out into layers in a separate image file. It was getting a bit hefty so I had to flatten it before carrying on.

Bummer... You have probably tried what I am thinking about before, but in a nutshell, I was hoping to be able to get just the outline of the halls. What i was thinking of was selecting the "rock parts surrounding the cut out walls. Then turn that into a path and play with different stroke techniques. On one of the maps I did toward the end of the playing with mountains thread a few weeks ago, I did that on my ocean with a large fuzzy brush with high jitter to make my shallow water bits over top of the darker blue base and it turned out quite nice. Now that I have a few more brushes, I am going to play with some other techniques, including using smear and dodge/burn on a selection path to see how that comes out. Basically, I am wondering if the extra work of creating the path might give some more options further down the line of work...

Joe

[torstan]

I see what you mean. No, that's really easy. I do indeed have the lines on a separate layer as that really helps to set up layer masks which are crucial for doing the shading.

I'd forgot about turning it into a path and stroking it. Good thought.

[torstan]

Okay, I pulled out the rock area, selected it and stroked it with Gimp's default pencil sketch#2 brush with a .4 jitter. I used the selection to cut out the strokes that fell within the tunnels and set the whole layer to overlay. Got this result:



Similarly with the same procedure and the galaxy brush with a jitter of .7 and reduced spacing, gives this:



Both quite nice actually. I'm not sure I'll keep them, but its a technique I'll work with in the future I think.

[jfrazierjr]

Okay, I pulled out the rock area, selected it and stroked it with Gimp's default pencil sketch#2 brush with a .4 jitter. I used the selection to cut out the strokes that fell within the tunnels and set the whole layer to overlay. Got this result:



Similarly with the same procedure and the galaxy brush with a jitter of .7 and reduced spacing, gives this:



Both quite nice actually. I'm not sure I'll keep them, but its a technique I'll work with in the future I think.

Cool! Glad you liked it. Like I said, I used it on a coastline one day. Here is the original:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...93&postcount=9

And the one with more stuff done and where I stroked the coastline:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...0&postcount=19

I know had I had the jitter set really high, but I am not sure what tool I used, I "think" I used the smear tool. I did this on a copy of the land layer, set it to overlay or soft light(I think??) and put it between the water layer and the land layer in a nice sandwich. I ended up really liking the wispy effect it made with the lighter shallows quite a bit, so will be playing with that technique some more.

Joe

[jfrazierjr]

Okay, I pulled out the rock area, selected it and stroked it with Gimp's default pencil sketch#2 brush with a .4 jitter. I used the selection to cut out the strokes that fell within the tunnels and set the whole layer to overlay. Got this result:



Similarly with the same procedure and the galaxy brush with a jitter of .7 and reduced spacing, gives this:



Both quite nice actually. I'm not sure I'll keep them, but its a technique I'll work with in the future I think.

The galaxy brush one is really cool, but the pencil one at the top ROCKS.

[nolgroth]

Haven't been keeping up like I should. Those maps absolutely rock Torstan! I love to watch how a map evolves with each iteration.

[Steel General]

I actually prefer the one done with the galaxy brush (though both are really good), the pencil mark one tend to distract my eyes to much. But that's just me