Create all those little buildings on a city map

[aaronil]

Many professional fantasy city maps depict little buildings (in either bird's eye or isometric view). In some cases these actually represent specific buildings, but more often it just seems to be filler and a few unique buildings are called out with distinctive color/architecture.

For example, I've seen John Edwards on the Cartographer's Guild do this....by hand I think?....and you can see a good example of this from this Warhammer map of Praag: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/...20130829165723

How do mapmakers do this?

Are they painstakingly doing this by hand? Using some kind of a custom brush in Photoshop? Some sort of algorithm or plug-in for Illustrator I'm unaware of?

I would love to incorporate this into my current mapping project, but so far I haven't found the answer anywhere. Hopefully one of you savvy cartographers can fill me in on the secret

[Tom]

The hard truth is your first one, "painstakingly doing this by hand", that one for sure

[ladiestorm]

The program I use, cc3+ with cd3 has a generic drawing tool that makes type of buildings... it I still have to make them one at a time. I'm creating my first ever city right now. So yes, painstakingly one at a time.

[Mark Oliva]

It really doesn't have to be as painstaking as some describe it. There are thousands of buildings symbols or objects available for free download in the Internet, enough, I think, for anyone's needs.

I'm going to use our own Vintyri Cartographic Collection as an example because it's free, non-commercial and available as symbols and fills for Fractal Mapper 8 and Campaign Cartographer 3+, as objects and textures for Dundjinni and as brushes and textures for The Gimp and Adobe Photoshop. There are more than 1,000 buildings in various roof types in the collection. There are many more sources such as the Dundjinni forum or RPG Map Share.

If you use Fractal Mapper 8, you can group building symbols of a given type into random sets and with a mouse click at a time, place one building after another along a street. In the same manner, you can quickly place specific building symbols on your map ... such as mills, breweries, taverns, inns, farm barns, etc.

If you use CC3+ and have the City Designer 3 add-on you can use the random street option and, with a single sweep of the mouse, fill an entire street with buildings.

The bottom line: If you make and place each building by hand, it's not because you have to do that but because you've decided for your own reasons to do that.

Happy Weekend!

[Mouse]

MARK SAID: If you use Fractal Mapper 8, you can group building symbols of a given type into random sets and with a mouse click at a time, place one building after another along a street. In the same manner, you can quickly place specific building symbols on your map ... such as mills, breweries, taverns, inns, farm barns, etc.

Just inside the northernmost wall of the city you may be able to pick out a certain long building that looks a bit like a J that's fallen on its side to the left (a long curved building). If you move your line of sight back and forth across that same latitude left and right, you will eventually see the same building again. Look closely at both of them in turn, and you will see that the buildings closest to it are identical. This is a grouped symbol similar to the one Mark describes, but in each case it has different grouped symbols clustered around it, so that the only way of identifying it as a grouped symbol is by noticing the one building that actually sticks out - the long building.

Despite that discovery, its still a very beautiful map.

[aaronil]

MARK SAID: If you use Fractal Mapper 8, you can group building symbols of a given type into random sets and with a mouse click at a time, place one building after another along a street. In the same manner, you can quickly place specific building symbols on your map ... such as mills, breweries, taverns, inns, farm barns, etc.

Just inside the northernmost wall of the city you may be able to pick out a certain long building that looks a bit like a J that's fallen on its side to the left (a long curved building). If you move your line of sight back and forth across that same latitude left and right, you will eventually see the same building again. Look closely at both of them in turn, and you will see that the buildings closest to it are identical. This is a grouped symbol similar to the one Mark describes, but in each case it has different grouped symbols clustered around it, so that the only way of identifying it as a grouped symbol is by noticing the one building that actually sticks out - the long building.

Despite that discovery, its still a very beautiful map.

Yeah, I'd noticed that too, but I'm not clear about how a "grouped symbol" works...

I'm assuming in the map sample I linked that he was using a professional graphics or vector software (Photoshop or Illustrator) and not something like Fractal Mapper 8 or CC3 or Dundjinni -- which can produce great stuff, just not the kind of polish and professionalism to the map I linked. At least from what I've seen so far.

So would the workflow be to (1) create a bunch of group symbols in the graphics software, keeping in mind a sort of "geomorphic" way to connect them?, then (2) copy+paste different symbols in different combinations a whole frickin' lot from your resource document into your map document?

[aaronil]

It really doesn't have to be as painstaking as some describe it. There are thousands of buildings symbols or objects available for free download in the Internet, enough, I think, for anyone's needs.

I'm going to use our own Vintyri Cartographic Collection as an example because it's free, non-commercial and available as symbols and fills for Fractal Mapper 8 and Campaign Cartographer 3+, as objects and textures for Dundjinni and as brushes and textures for The Gimp and Adobe Photoshop. There are more than 1,000 buildings in various roof types in the collection. There are many more sources such as the Dundjinni forum or RPG Map Share.

If you use Fractal Mapper 8, you can group building symbols of a given type into random sets and with a mouse click at a time, place one building after another along a street. In the same manner, you can quickly place specific building symbols on your map ... such as mills, breweries, taverns, inns, farm barns, etc.

If you use CC3+ and have the City Designer 3 add-on you can use the random street option and, with a single sweep of the mouse, fill an entire street with buildings.

The bottom line: If you make and place each building by hand, it's not because you have to do that but because you've decided for your own reasons to do that.

Happy Weekend!

Thanks Mark. I looked over the Vintyri Project and it's a tremendous resource!

My project is going to be for sale, however; I'm doing my own cartography for an adventure. My understanding is that the free resources on Vintyri are for personal non-commercial use only, right?

[Mouse]

Yeah, I'd noticed that too, but I'm not clear about how a "grouped symbol" works...

I'm assuming in the map sample I linked that he was using a professional graphics or vector software (Photoshop or Illustrator) and not something like Fractal Mapper 8 or CC3 or Dundjinni -- which can produce great stuff, just not the kind of polish and professionalism to the map I linked. At least from what I've seen so far.

So would the workflow be to (1) create a bunch of group symbols in the graphics software, keeping in mind a sort of "geomorphic" way to connect them?, then (2) copy+paste different symbols in different combinations a whole frickin' lot from your resource document into your map document?

CC3+ allows the user to CREATE your own symbols. So the process is much as you describe, except its more simple. You paste your little hamlet together on the map and then select them all together and make a symbol of them. Make ten or so of these and you have your very own personalised city building blocks.

To take it further than that you can create a symbol SET of all your little hamlet symbols, such that it is only a case of selecting one of the hamlets in your palette and hitting TAB to get the next one in that set each time you paste - paste, TAB, paste, TAB... etc

Another method is to use the command that allows you to paste a whole string of symbols at the same time. You pick a line - any line you like - and the command will paste a neat little row of randomly selected symbols from your chosen set along that line.

Does that make it a bit clearer?

[aaronil]

CC3+ allows the user to CREATE your own symbols. So the process is much as you describe, except its more simple. You paste your little hamlet together on the map and then select them all together and make a symbol of them. Make ten or so of these and you have your very own personalised city building blocks.

To take it further than that you can create a symbol SET of all your little hamlet symbols, such that it is only a case of selecting one of the hamlets in your palette and hitting TAB to get the next one in that set each time you paste - paste, TAB, paste, TAB... etc

Another method is to use the command that allows you to paste a whole string of symbols at the same time. You pick a line - any line you like - and the command will paste a neat little row of randomly selected symbols from your chosen set along that line.

Does that make it a bit clearer?

I used to use CC3 years ago, but was never really satisfied with the quality of the maps I produced with it. They were "good enough" for game night, but not something I'd want to share on artistic merit. Then I switched over to a Mac, and even with a dual boot drive, I've found Photoshop and Illustrator to give me better results (albeit more time-consuming).

Though I didn't realize you could create user-defined symbol sets, and now it seems like they have a lot more Annual sets which look pretty cool.

I did find a post over here: https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...eration+cities in which Keith Curtis gets into how he created the Tallon map using a Mosaic filter in Photoshop (or a Voronoi diagrams plug-in for GIMP). Not quite the look I'm going for, but definitely interesting.

[Mark Oliva]

I used to use CC3

So did I.

but was never really satisfied with the quality of the maps I produced with it.

I might have agreed there too. But after seeing this:

https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=34676

I wonder if the problem wasn't more with you and me and our imaginations than with CC3 and now CC3+.