Shaded mountain symbols
Loopysue
ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
Hey everyone 
I've been thinking of making a set of shaded mountain symbols - simple top view mountains that react to the global sun in the same way that city building symbols do.
I've done my own set of buildings, and I understand how the pinky-bue "MAP" pngs work with the global sun to shade the rooftops correctly according to the angle and slope of the roof.
(MAP files are the pinky-purple files mixed in with the ordinary image files in any of the city symbol sets if you open the folder instead of the catalogue)
The amount of red in any one part of the MAP image corresponds to the direction in which the rooftop is facing, in CC3 compass degrees. The amount of blue in any one part represents the angle of the roof - the steeper, the bluer)
So... I've already done a building set, but mountains would be a lot trickier, since they are not composed of convenient planar surfaces that can be painted a particular shade of pinky blue for that angle and pitch. They would require a more natural painterly pinky-blue map for the shading - a hand painted one.
I'm trying to work out if there is any correlation between CC3 MAP colours, and 'Normal maps'. A normal map uses the green component of an RGB image as well as the red and blue, but if I simply create normal maps for my mountains and remove the green component of the image, am I going to end up with a usable MAP file?
I mean - are the two things even remotely related?
If not, then I will have to hand paint the MAP files using two layers in a GIMP file, and judge by eye and trial and error. That's going to be a whole load more complicated, which is why I thought I should ask if there was any kind of a relationship between CC3 MAP files, and Normal maps.
I could run a test by creating a symbol with a MAP file, and also with a Normal map that's had all the green taken out of it, but even just doing that would be very fiddly and time consuming if anyone just happens to know these things anyway...
I've been thinking of making a set of shaded mountain symbols - simple top view mountains that react to the global sun in the same way that city building symbols do.
I've done my own set of buildings, and I understand how the pinky-bue "MAP" pngs work with the global sun to shade the rooftops correctly according to the angle and slope of the roof.
(MAP files are the pinky-purple files mixed in with the ordinary image files in any of the city symbol sets if you open the folder instead of the catalogue)
The amount of red in any one part of the MAP image corresponds to the direction in which the rooftop is facing, in CC3 compass degrees. The amount of blue in any one part represents the angle of the roof - the steeper, the bluer)
So... I've already done a building set, but mountains would be a lot trickier, since they are not composed of convenient planar surfaces that can be painted a particular shade of pinky blue for that angle and pitch. They would require a more natural painterly pinky-blue map for the shading - a hand painted one.
I'm trying to work out if there is any correlation between CC3 MAP colours, and 'Normal maps'. A normal map uses the green component of an RGB image as well as the red and blue, but if I simply create normal maps for my mountains and remove the green component of the image, am I going to end up with a usable MAP file?
I mean - are the two things even remotely related?
If not, then I will have to hand paint the MAP files using two layers in a GIMP file, and judge by eye and trial and error. That's going to be a whole load more complicated, which is why I thought I should ask if there was any kind of a relationship between CC3 MAP files, and Normal maps.
I could run a test by creating a symbol with a MAP file, and also with a Normal map that's had all the green taken out of it, but even just doing that would be very fiddly and time consuming if anyone just happens to know these things anyway...
Comments
The next question is also how you intended to generate the normal map in the first place. If you planned on using a flat image in GIMP as a starting point, and just have GIMP generate the normal map, that doesn't give proper results, because GIMP only knows the colors in your image, and not how it slopes, so this method doesn't give good results. If you start out with a 3D-model of the mountain on the other hand, you should get a proper normal map from that(but again, it is not the same as a CC3+ roof map)
Now that I know there's no relation between the two things I won't waste any time attempting to generate normal maps (which I was going to do by creating the mountains initially in Blender and applying a normal map material to them).
This is how I *think* I will do it in GIMP:
First, draw the mountain, being careful not to add any shadows or highlights.
Add a transparent layer and paint in blue in various levels of transparency to create the slopes (I think its: transparent = horizontal, 100% opacity = vertical, but I will check)
Add a second transparent layer and create a conical fill that shades smoothly around the cone from transparent to 100% opaque red, and which leaves a sharp line between the two extremes at 90 degrees (?). This layer I will trim using the alpha mask of the mountain.
This is the stage at which I may become thoroughly unstuck, since I then have to combine the red and the blue layers in such a way that the values are not compromised - so that no green, black or white is produced, and neither red nor blue dominates the other colour. Not entirely sure I know which blend mode to use!
Once I've got that far I would export that as a transparent png, and make it my MAP.
The mountain image would be an export of the rock texture blob I drew first.
Do you think it might work?
That's not going to work, is it - not unless my mountains are all perfectly conical!
LOL!
Back to the drawing board...
This works for rounded towers, but mountains most certainly would not have a smooth circle describing their cirumference.
Edit: You managed to realize this before I posted
(My brain has reached maximum thinking capacity!) I think you might be right
I wonder if the shading in CC3 works with variably transparent MAP pngs?
I'm asking because of the way that the buildings MAPS work with a black background masked out, and no transparency in the colours at all...
[Image_10045]
[Image_10046]
I will now try to remember how to create symbols and try it out - see how CC3 reacts. I have a feeling that where the Red is concerned I might get a sort of spiral effect :P
The illegal values are down to me rushing into it without revising all the relevant information properly.
Thanks for your help tonight, Remy. It must be most horribly late for you - its gone 3 am over here.
Its time for me to leave it be and pick it up again in the morning now.
Thanks again - and rest assured, I won't give up
Sorry!
I mean... thank you, Joe!
That is exactly what I want to do.
Its just that I can't work out how to do that in GIMP, or Krita. There's no equivalent filter (unless I can mess with the normal map filter), and I really don't have the money for PS!
...
As a side note - a suggestion
Maybe those fully shaded mountain symbols you make that are in essence black and white symbols like the Schley ink symbols, would work even more beautifully if you put them underneath the LAND Sheet, and added a suitable blend mode to the LAND sheet to let them show through - something like Multiply? They would then be painted the same colour as the surrounding land, and merge seamlessly with the 'background' (which would really be the foreground then), raising themselves up underneath the colouring like folds in a tablecloth?
You could put patches of mountain fill on a secondary LAND sheet wherever you placed the mountains in your map, to make them more... 'mountainy' (though you might have to copy those patches to the main LAND sheet and turn them solid magenta and use a Colour Key to cut them out of the general land colouring on the primary LAND sheet)
It looks fabulous in my imagination, but sounds horrendously complicated in words. If I get as far as making my own shaded mountains without PS, I'll show you what I mean. Its the same technique that Storm is using for her watercolour maps, but using shaded top down mountains, instead of ordinary black and white ISO symbols
I'm going to go back to the Blender idea, and try to develop a shader that will cause the right colours to appear on the mountain model, so that I can render the MAP files directly from Blender...
Another question:
If I create a symbol that is totally transparent, but with a MAP file accurately and correctly rendered from Blender, will the 'invisible' symbol react to CC3+ global sun?
EDIT: the way I envisage that scenario is that it could be possible to create a set of 'shadow symbols' that are totally transparent, but which create the shadows that describe a mountain. You wouldn't have to faff around with moving the LAND sheet or adding any effects to that sheet if these shadow symbols were possible... You could just do the map the usual way, and add the mountain shading to the areas already denoted as mountainous by the filled polys on the MOUNTAIN sheet.
(I'm so sorry - my brain seems to be doing overtime!)
float nx = GetRValue(GetPixel(x, y));
float ny = GetGValue(GetPixel(x, y));
float nz = GetBValue(GetPixel(x, y)) * scale;
float t = sqrt(nx*nx + ny*ny + nz*nz);
nx = nx / t;
ny = ny / t;
nz = nz / t;
float az = atan2(ny, nx);
float r = sqrt(nx*nx + ny*ny + nz*nz);
float el = acos(nz / r);
az = fmod(-az + 6.2831853, 6.2831853);
el = 2 * (3.14159265 / 2 - el) + 3.14159265;
PutPixel(x, y, RGB((az / 6.2831853) * 255, 0, (el / 6.2831853) * 255));
I've definitely just thrown a mental cog somewhere, since I can't get Blender to do more than half the job for me, so its back to hand-drawn/Wilbur now.
The bit I'm not getting is this instruction:
"Use Texture>>Other Maps>>PF Angle Map with a Vertical Scale value of 120 to generate a ProFantasy-
style angle map that will work with the CC3+ lighting computations:"
Is that in Wilbur, or PS?
(I'm on Linux right now so I can't open Wilbur to see. My Win 10 partition has become a total nightmare. Every time I open it it starts automatically downloading 'critical' updates, and I just don't have the Broadband to cope with it right now, so I'm kind of stuck on my new Linux partition for the next couple of weeks... thank goodness I have an alternative, even if its not ideal for this particular job. If this is Wilbur, I can't do it for a couple of weeks, but it would be nice to know what I need to do to fix what I'm doing wrong
Also, please can I have a link to "Fun with Wilbur Vol 6"? I've got it somewhere on my Window partition, but I can't seem to find it!
The "Texture>>Other Maps>>PF Angle Map" is a Wilbur process.
You should be able to run Wilbur under WINE. I suppose I should try it some day...
All of the earlier "Fun With Wilbur" tutorials can be found at the Wilbur site ( http://www.fracterra.com/wilbur.html ) at the bottom of the page. There are PDF versions at https://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=29412 if you prefer those. I still need to get vol 7 posted elsewhere.
Thanks for the reference. I'll revise Vol 6 as well
Also having trouble running CC3+ on Linuxmint through Wine/Playonlinux as well. It opens, but all the toolbars and symbol trays and everything - no sight of them.
I've tried to upload the log file, but it might not work....
(it didn't work)
I've got a few more questions before I really get going with this.
Well, its more of a thought process I need to share with you for your feedback.
Top down shaded mountains aren't going to be as easy to use as ISO mountains. That's because overlapping them will create peculiar 'mountain on top of a mountain' visual effects, where the symbol in front will look like its sitting right on top of the symbol its overlapping.
So. It would be better to make them with some kind of regular footprint so that they can be butted up to one another but not overlap all that much except here and there just a little bit.
That's screaming 'Hexagons' at me, and I really don't like hexagons. Too regular for my tastes.
Thinking of all kinds of solutions...
How about a range of different shaped footprints - triangular, pentagonal, hexagonal, septagonal - all with a standard side length (note how I've deliberately omitted square and gone no more towards circular than septagonal. Square and octagonal mountains would just look too geometric... I think)
I can make them lumpy and bumpy within those footprints, and the edges don't have to be perfectly straight (they might even be slightly convex or concave), nor the corners sharp (some can be rounded right off). I'm just talking about the vague basic footprint shapes here.
Any thoughts on the matter?
If you're willing to allow for some overlap, then you should be able to get solid approximations on any of the standard grids. For example, the multi-sided shapes with irregular edges that you describe above could use a hex grid for the snap placement to keep things from getting too close together, but allow for some overlap in the edges. If you're careful about how you construct the coloration, you should be able to achieve a good effect with minimal visual artifacts. The solid-white or solid-texture underlayment that you described in your first post will minimize visible artifacts due to overlap. Setting a random rotation attribute for the symbol would also serve to reduce the visible artifacts.
The ideal solution for this kind of operation is to use a symbol with a "height" texture that would create an offscreen height map that's then illuminated as a single operation at the end of rendering the sheet. Each symbol would add to or subtract from that height field, allowing creation of roughness without overlap. Adding on a coloring-by-height operation would allow most of the visible effects of Wilbur or FT3 without too much effort and all from the comfort of CC3+. However, what I'm describing would take a fair bit of code to make work.