The Ganador thread - really digging down on details

[Caenwyr]

Uh, I never expected detailing the roofs would be this tedious! But I managed to do about half of them by now (almost having lost my mind several times - thank the Gods for podcasts for keeping me entertained!), so I guess that's something!



What do you think, does all this scribbling on rooftops actually add something to the map or is it just a fool's errand?

[Tiana]

Of course it does something. It enriches the detail. I sometimes listen to roleplaying game campaigns while I draw, sometimes music, sometimes music that I'm designing on loop so I can work on it more, sometimes videos that are audio-centric, not usually podcasts specifically. Don't be afraid to cheat the roofing a bit by making say, a chain of different chimney shapes in brushes or a shingle pattern that you can trap over top of all houses facing a certain direction.

[J.Edward]

Uh, I never expected detailing the roofs would be this tedious! But I managed to do about half of them by now (almost having lost my mind several times - thank the Gods for podcasts for keeping me entertained!), so I guess that's something!

What do you think, does all this scribbling on rooftops actually add something to the map or is it just a fool's errand?

This occurred with the Haerlech map. I wasn't going to do roof details.
Then did, and created so much more work for myself.
But, it's worth it in the end.

[QED42]

The detailing adds to the map for sure. Unfortunately tedious elements seem to make there way in to all sorts of maps.

[Narolas]

I am in awe at this, I especially love the shadows and how much information they give, how everything feels real.

It looks like the sun has to be a little low to give such strong shadows, showing the contour of buildings and roofs. I'm going to take inspiration from such beautiful shadows and style, you've given me hope for my own "Why did I make this so big" map

[Caenwyr]

It looks like the sun has to be a little low to give such strong shadows, showing the contour of buildings and roofs. I'm going to take inspiration from such beautiful shadows and style, you've given me hope for my own "Why did I make this so big" map

Oh yes, it's a common issue here on the Guild. We should start a self-help group!

By the way, I drew these shadows assuming the light source to be elevated above the horizon at about 45°, which is roughly noon at moderate latitudes. However, the direction the light is coming from is all wrong for that to be possible: it appears to be coming from the NW. The sun only ever reaches that point (on the northern hemisphere at least) at fairly high latitudes, an then only in summer... and then only much lower above the horizon than 45°. What I did here is follow an old and tested tradition of shading things as if light were coming from the top left. Our mind's eye has become accustomed to that lighting scheme, so much so that if you were to shade a map with the light coming from somewhere near the bottom, it would kinda look inverted, as if the extrusions (houses, hills) were depressions.

Ever stared at a satellite image of, say, Mars, and asked yourself why there are these weird dome-like structures all over the place, only to realize you were actually looking at a crater, lighted from the bottom of the image? This one is a good example, and I really have to force my brain to see the depressions as depressions instead of weird hills.

[Narolas]

Very interesting info about shadow and light direction. I might change my map following that advice.

If the sun is at a noon height, then I guess I'm just too used to putting it really high and having weak shadows. I'm also realising that the scale here is not that large compared to the map I was comparing to, so I'm not actually that far off, I think.

I really love the effect it gives here, so I'm going to change that habit!

Do you have any particular way/technique of reliably drawing the shadows or do you mostly eyeball the relative length/eight of things ?

[Caenwyr]

Okay, this has been a while! Sorry for not getting back to you earlier, Narolas, I totally lost track of this thread while working on my Viridia map, but now that's done (and while I'm waiting for some input from another client) I decided to give this one a long overdue touch of attention. But first, question time!

Do you have any particular way/technique of reliably drawing the shadows or do you mostly eyeball the relative length/eight of things ?

For the dropshadows of the buildings I basically coloured in the roofs, selected all the coloured pixels from that layer (in Photoshop that's by Ctrl-clicking the layer), moved that selection x pixels down and to the right and then bucket filled it with black. Then I went back to the roof colour layer, Ctrl-clicked it again (again selecting the total footprint of the roofs), selected my shading layer again and clicked delete. That made sure there would only be shadows where there weren't roofs. then all I had to do was draw diagonal lines between the roof corners and the shadow corners and fill in the triangles. Actually it's a bit more elaborate than that but that's the general gist.

Also, I hand-selected a few buildings (using the lasso tool) and did the same trick, but moving the shadows a few dozen pixels more down and to the right. These would be taller buildings like towers, and large halls.

Getting the shadows right on the roofs themselves was an entirely different problem, and I mostly eyeballed those, with a lot of trial and error to be sure!

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Alright, another update I said, and here it is. You'll notice I worked on the roof detail a bit more (slowly creeping northward with my dashes, but I also added a pattern to them that should help convey "this is actual terracotta!" a little better). I also threw in some cobbles in the streets, splashed some green muck on them and a bit of dirt in the corners. Not finished yet, but slowly getting there!

[Wingshaw]

I'm gonna be bold and say it: I think we're seeing a Cartographers' Choice in the making here!

Looks great Caenwyr

Wingshaw

[Caenwyr]

I'm gonna be bold and say it: I think we're seeing a Cartographers' Choice in the making here!


Looks great Caenwyr


Wingshaw

Thanks Wingshaw, and hoo boy do I hope you're right! But even if it won't get to that, I'm still quite proud of my progress. It's slow business, but I love to see this place come alive. And in this update, that's more specifically in the sea... because waves! Waves!


Oh, and I detailed a few more roofs, which actually took way more time. But who's counting when there's waves!!