My Dungeon Stuff

[Falconius]

So, having been inspired by Max's workshop and the recent map components challenge, combined with an assertion in another thread to map my Dwarf Fortress I decided I'd make some good ol'e dungeon tiles. First my plan was to draw the thing out (which probably would be the simplest and most straightforward approach, and therefore most likely to succeed) but then I hit the problem of not being able to draw as well as I envision my end goal. A frustrating disability only solved by drawing more things of course. So of course I said no to self improvement, then I figured why not just make a big fat specialized tile set for DF and I can export that and have a ready made map with few adjustments. That way I only have to draw a few things. Still, it involves drawing, then I hit upon the idea of sculpting the floor tiles and taking pictures of them instead as I'm doing for my CWBP thread. It seems obvious now but it took a while for me to get there. All this is supposing that I want to bother using DF to export an editable image or if I just want to construct an image with the tiles, for all I know loading a huge tileset into DF may cause it to die and kill my computer (I've only ever used small ones like 18x18 or 20x20 pix).

I set up a grid of 4 cm x 4 cm squares to sculpt the tiles. Originally I was thinking I'd sculpt a whole set cast them in plaster and then take pictures of those, so I wanted to set it up so that I could make a large mold of all of them at once. It makes it cheaper to mold and easier to cast. Drawbacks are it's more difficult to sculpt without screwing up the other tiles, and since I'm using white plastilina it makes it difficult to take pictures of the tiles in an easily repeatable manner as opposed if they were just single pieces. Also sculpting it made the plastiline kinda dirty. Here's the set up:


The second issue is whether to use colour photography and use lighting to cast colour onto the sculpt or just use black and white which would I think allow greater freedom in editing.


My plan was to just make this board all flattish type tiles (as opposed to wall or door tiles) and I've already made more than dwarf fortress calls for as it uses only four tiles for random ground and one type for every other type of tile. It didn't really seem diverse enough to read well in a map so I've started making more than called for. Here's what I got so far, I think they look sufficient so far:


Besides making more tiles obviously. I need to set up a lighting box and rig to hold everything and light everything the exact same for each tile.

If I manage to get this working it also opens up the possibility of taking "isometric" type photos maybe. Although that is just an idea. It could work perhaps if I took the photos far enough away to minimized perspective distortion.

[madcowchef]

Hmm I always model in blender when I can't draw what I want, I've never thought to actually get out my clay and use that. I'm very interested in seeing how you progress with this.

[- Max -]

Reminds me when I was sculpting plaster stuff for miniatures back in years

[Falconius]

Hmm I always model in blender when I can't draw what I want, I've never thought to actually get out my clay and use that. I'm very interested in seeing how you progress with this.

Hehe, yeah that would be my plan too. Learning how to use Blender though is a task all on its own.

[fifty]

Very novel way of approaching the problem - you definitely win the "outside the box" competition!