01 - Supreme residence of the August Grandmaster of Guild City [tonnichiwa]

[Tonnichiwa]

Hehe, it's ok. I'm saving the special effects as a surprise for everyone later

EDIT: Sure thing Mouse. I'd love to see what you did to fix the Edge Fade Inner problem But how can I respond properly to you if you keep editing what you said?

[Tonnichiwa]

A minor update. I was checking to see how J.Edward's terrain and graph overlay fit with my shadows and such, and I was checking placement of some towers for the entrance to the Castle grounds. I'm not sure I want them there because of how the road interacts with it.

### Latest WIP ###

[DarkInfinity]

Looks like it is starting to take shape.

[Mouse]

I prepared a whole reply to you telling you all about the effects and all, and I accidentally brushed my sleeve over something on my tablet and the whole page disappeared

I'm not sure whether you want to know about the altitude colouring, which was done with 8 sheets of grass that got progressively more yellow and grey the further up the island I went, or about the relief shading, which is a totally separate thing.

Sorry Tonnichiwa. I did the whole explanation thing with three pictures and everything - took me a whole hour to put it together, and the whole lot just vanished

EDIT: I see the attachments are still there! Crap! Why not the words!

First picture - extent of deep shade. Second picture - extent of pale shade. Third picture - both with the effects turned on.

Both relief sheets had a Blur effect on them, followed by a Blend Mode and the extents of both were drawn with the blend mode in mind - an average extent considering the blur effect would spread the edge both ways.

[Tonnichiwa]

Oh that sucks, I'm sorry to hear that happened to you Mouse

I was hoping to be able to see what you did about the relief shading.

[Mouse]

I think I've worked out what happened - I took so long that when DarkInfinity quite innocently came along and made a comment in the middle of my much longer essay the server kicked me off – my transaction incomplete. I brush past the tablet all the time, so I didn't really think it was that. In future I will prepare my longer replies in Word and then copy and paste them here.

What I was saying is that the relief shading isn't part of the terrain at all. Its achieved by adding a couple of relief sheets right over the top of all the grass and rock stuff, and which have nothing more complicated on them than a Solid polygon shape in black - as per the first and second images above.

I abandoned the Edge Fade Inner effect that I had on these two sheets (deep and light shade) really early on with the MC map because they cause transparency acne. Use a Blur, and then a Blend Mode. Blur does the same job as the EFI.

The shadows on these two sheets are drawn about the size I wanted them to appear, because the blur creates a fade band that is an average rather than fading in from the outer edge.

I’m hoping that explains a bit more. I have to confess that I was so deeply into what I was writing before that my mind is just a bit fuzzy now that it just… flipped out of sight on me, never to be seen again.

[Abu Lafia]

Hey Tonnichiwa, i really love your shading of the terrain, it looks awesome already! Have to admit though that i'm not too fond of that heavily patterned background texture . Looking forward to see this castle coming together.

[Tonnichiwa]

That makes perfect sense, even though I haven't had my morning cup of coffee yet, thank you

Yeah, that is how I feel when I lose one of my lessons for the class over on the PF forums. My head gets fuzzy as I try to work out what I did. I've started doing the same thing. Writing it all in word and then copy - paste. But I'm an old dog and don't learn new tricks very well

EDIT: Thanks Abu Lafia. That texture will all be blended together into something wonderful in the end. CC3 maps always look terrible until you load the map with the things you want on it and then turn on the Sheets and Effects.

I'm not really a fan of repeating textures either. So I promise I'll do my best to make sure none of it ruins the map

[Mouse]

If you're worried about the redundancy in the grass pattern, I'll shortly be uploading a couple of grass textures to my texture album you can use if you want. They are the same ones as I used in MC - They were made in Genetica simply because I was having exactly the same problems with the patterning inherent in the native grass textures as you are - the pattern that Abu has noted.

[Tonnichiwa]

Well, the way I am picturing this map, a lot of that texture will be covered by buildings and other things so I'm not even sure it will be much of a problem. But if it does get to be then yes please, I would love to use one of your homemade textures Mouse