Create all those little buildings on a city map

[Mark Oliva]

My understanding is that the free resources on Vintyri are for personal non-commercial use only, right?

Wrong. The Vintyri collection, the CSUAC and the large Bogie collection, targeted for release on Monday July 18, all are very specifically licensed for personal and commercial use.

[Mark Oliva]

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.

<SNIP>

Mouse is explaining what CC3+ alone can do. The abilities of CC3+ in this respect grow tremendously when City Designer 3 is added to CC3+. On 3rd party level, structural symbols in the Vintyri collection and the coming Bogie collection are integrated into CD3 as well as CC3+, and I believe that a similar integration will be available in the not too distant future too for the CSUAC, all free add-ons that are licensed for personal and commercial use. The Vintyri collection, the CSUAC and soon also the Bogie collection also are available for FM8 and Dundjinni, and the Vintyri collection also can be downloaded free as brushes for The GIMP and Photoshop.

[J.Edward]

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

Are you using CC or some other software for mapping?

I tend to do stuff by hand because I'm already working by hand, so it's just easier and faster for me, most times.
Sometimes not fast, per se, but you get the idea.
It also allows me to make things a bit more organic or more natural looking/feeling.
But it could be done by pre-drawing elements and placing them, to some degree.

You could do it with a brush, well... brushes, as you would need a good variety of buildings, but it could be done to decent effect I think.

[aaronil]

So did I.

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+.

Amazing. If Mouse didn't clearly state that he didn't use Photoshop at any point, I'd have assumed much of the map was done in Photoshop, just importing the Fractal Terrains continent outlines.

When I was looking at CC3 again, I did notice Herwin Wielink had several templates/symbol sets that he'd done for ProFantasy -- if were to give CC3 another try, I'd be using Herwin's stuff for sure.

Are you using CC or some other software for mapping?

I tend to do stuff by hand because I'm already working by hand, so it's just easier and faster for me, most times.
Sometimes not fast, per se, but you get the idea.
It also allows me to make things a bit more organic or more natural looking/feeling.
But it could be done by pre-drawing elements and placing them, to some degree.

You could do it with a brush, well... brushes, as you would need a good variety of buildings, but it could be done to decent effect I think.

I no longer use CC3 because I just couldn't get it to do what I wanted. This was...maybe 8-9 years ago? I looked at hours of video tutorials, experimented and experimented, purchased one of the earlier Annuals (maybe the first one), and the end results were just OK.

I've become almost moderately skilled with the Adobe Creative Suite, so that's my go to choice for design.

I also recently picked up a tablet after discussion about replicating Jon Roberts' technique for drawing top-down mountains, so I'm getting set up with that.

When it comes to fantasy gaming, mostly I'm a writer of adventures and of fiction. I haven't done any big projects since Tales of the Caliphate Nights, but I've done several smaller ones and recently wrote an adventure for Russ Morrissey's W.O.I.N. Future RPG as well as my own The Beast of Graenseskov.

However, I've always been a hobbyist artist on the side and professionally I'm in the architectural field (working on my doctorate).

My latest very humble cartographic work is this map from The Beast of Graenseskov:

[Josiah VE]

I would definitely encourage doing hand-drawn instead of CC3, you have more freedom hand drawn and in my opinion can produce better works, and it is completely original.

There are other techniques for drawing buildings, little tips and tricks for shortcuts if there are A LOT of buildings.

Check out this thread:https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...t=capital+city
And these tutorials from Fantastic Maps: http://www.fantasticmaps.com/2013/03...namic-brushes/
http://www.fantasticmaps.com/2013/03...o-draw-houses/

Of course you could always draw them by hand (especially if it's a smaller city), if you stick with it it gets done pretty quickly.

Your map looks great by the way! If you're already an artist you'll excel at cartography I think. A number of cartographer's on here are actually also illustrators.

[aaronil]

I would definitely encourage doing hand-drawn instead of CC3, you have more freedom hand drawn and in my opinion can produce better works, and it is completely original.

There are other techniques for drawing buildings, little tips and tricks for shortcuts if there are A LOT of buildings.

Check out this thread:https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...t=capital+city
And these tutorials from Fantastic Maps: http://www.fantasticmaps.com/2013/03...namic-brushes/
http://www.fantasticmaps.com/2013/03...o-draw-houses/

Of course you could always draw them by hand (especially if it's a smaller city), if you stick with it it gets done pretty quickly.

Thanks for the Jon Roberts' links. That dynamic brushes jitter trick (2nd link) is pretty cool. He always has great tips.

Looking back at Warhammer Praag map I posted in the OP, I'm pretty sure the artist used hand-drawn buildings but grouped them into clusters which were copied, pasted, rotated/resized, etc. Like with building, the real trick is in the connections –– like how did the artist get the transition between copy-pasted building clusters looking so smooth?

Your map looks great by the way! If you're already an artist you'll excel at cartography I think. A number of cartographer's on here are actually also illustrators.

That's very kind. To be honest, I see several flaws in my map (e.g. the topography) and I feel it demonstrates just a minimum competency in Photoshop (layers, layer styles, drop shadows, cool brushes found online, curving text along a path, coloring techniques, and the grow command to create river outline). But I guess I've got to start somewhere.