Cliffs Perspective Tricks?

ScottA · May 2017

I'm wondering if anyone has any good tricks or tips for rendering cliffs for an overhead (looking straight down) city map and keeping the perspective right? I've come up with a cliff design that I'm very happy with the looks of except for the perspective (it would be great for a side-view map). As always, thanks!

Loopysue · May 2017

Top down cliffs are difficult, but Shessar's acclaimed tutorial on Cliffs and Streams is always a good place to start.

Its really really late/early right now in the UK, so I can't remember how to create a link in my half-asleep mode, but they can both be got to from here:

http://forum.profantasy.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=5869&page=1#Item_0

You can also get to exactly the same page through the sticky at the top of the forum advertising tutorials. Just look at "Shessar's Battle map Tutorials"

The thing to remember about cliffs is that completely vertical cliffs are extremely rare, so usually at least some of the rock face is visible from above. Having said that, however, its depicting the foreshortened rock face that seems to present most people (me included) with quite a challenge. In Merelan City I used a modified version of Shessar's cliff technique, but I was always fussing around with it - adjusting various glows and shadow settings etc, and truth be known I'm still not 100% happy with it even now.

JimP · May 2017

link here to Shessar's Cliffs and Streams info

Dogtag · May 2017

You can make some amazing looking cliffs using shaded polygons. For a nice example, and a detailed discussion, check out this discussion by Joachim de Ravenbel about just how amazing this feature is, and note the small, cliff-like sides along the stream in his first example map.

Also, if that interests you then you may be interested in his in-depth look and his PDF tutorial (linked near the end) in this amazing discussion.

Cheers,
~Dogtag

jslayton · May 2017

The escarpment command (ESC from command line, Draw>Symbols Along in the menu) offers a quick way to plop symbols along a path, which can be used to give the appearance of an escarpment quickly. It's a useful command for quick cliffs, but it does lack a few features that would be really spiffy (e.g. placing random symbols from a group, random placement angles relative to the path, and random scaling).

ScottA · May 2017

Holy CRAP! Joachim de Ravenbel's maps are amazing! Thanks for pointing me in that direction, as well as everyone else's assistance.

I'd actually "come up with" pretty much the same process that Shessar describes, but I was making my boulders way too big, which really tipped back the perspective. Now I see where I went wrong and will adjust and experiment until it looks better.

But that Ravenbel stuff is drool-worthy! If I get ambitious/brave enough I'm going to give that a try, as I love the look of it and is probably the best I've seen.

Dogtag · May 2017

Agreed. Joachim de Ravenbel is always pushing the boundries of CC3 and has achieved some mind-blowing results. He's also contributed some of the more amazing annual issues.

You might want to check out JdR's blog for a wealth of information, some additional fills and symbols, and some other extremely helpful — and well-written — tutorials. Be aware his site is bilingual (French/English) so it might throw you off at first, but the English content and links are there.

Cheers,
~Dogtag

ScottA · May 2017

Thanks, Dogtag. I did go over to his blog earlier to look at that cliff tutorial and bookmarked the page so I'll definitely be going back and reading through his blogs and other tutorials!

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Cliffs Perspective Tricks?

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