Creating a Curtain of Blackness

LordEntrails · February 2018

I'm trying to create a "rippling curtain of blackness" that no light can pass through etc.

Of course this should technically be a wavy flat black line. But that's not very interesting for a dungeon map. So I'm looking for suggestions on how to make a symbol or fill for such. I've foudn online some images like this (http://www.asacocirco.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/curtain-blind-black-background1.jpg) which look reasonable, but of course I need to do something "top-down" for a dungeon/battle map.

I've tried making some smooth fractal paths and giving them a width and filling them with one of those bitmaps., but that sample is not tileable, nor can I control the angle of the fill.

Any suggestions on how to do this?

ScottA · February 2018

Here's a tileable version. Just needs to be converted to a png.

ScottA · February 2018

Or a top-down version. This one isn't tileable, of course.

LordEntrails · February 2018

Thanks Scott!

What do people think of this symbol (Using the Top Down Texture from Scott). It has a small outer black glow effect on it.

ScottA · February 2018

Hm... the perspective could be even steeper on that one, I guess. I was just worried if I made it too steep it wouldn't be recognizable...

Lorelei · February 2018

i have a black silk with swirls in it.....try this

LordEntrails · February 2018

Thanks Lorelei

Here's both for comparison, Is the black silk fill too dark? Should I mess with the fill scale?

Loopysue · August 2018

LE - is this curtain suspended from anything (ie actually defined by a container like a window frame, or even on some kind of metaphysical curtain pole of some kind)?

Is it solid or a ghost thing of some kind?

Does it fall into a pool of folds at the bottom where it touches the floor, or ignore all physical confines?

Does it have more to do with the idea of a force field or a portal than an actual curtain?

…

Interesting thing I've just noticed, but which may be the wrong direction if it doesn't actually look very much like a curtain at all...

If you use both those textures you can use the straight one for the hanging bit of a real curtain, and the folded one for the bit that hits the floor at the bottom. Then you would only need to add some kind of frill at the top end...

LordEntrails · August 2018

The symbols above that I was using (vectors with bitmap fills), have stopped showing up in my map, and in the symbol catalog they are blank, so I have to redo some work and wasn't really happy with the ones above so if I have to redo them, figure I should redo them from scratch. And something better.

So it fills the full corridor. It's not really framed in anything and actually is purely magical so it' doesn't drape. It COULD be just an infinitely thin plane, but that's not interesting to look at!

It's not solid, as you can walk right through them, but they can not be seen through. Only sight is blocked, not sound or objects, etc.

But I want it to look visually interesting and evocative. What that means I don't know

The practical requirements are that it fits the description "before you the corridor is filled with a rippling wall of darkness" and that when using a manual mask to reavel the maps to the players, that it's easy enough to reveal a corridor up to and part of the curtain without revealing what's on the other side of the curtain. So, in dungeon mode the curtain is 10 feet wide, and 1-2 feet wide.

Loopysue · August 2018

So its not necessarily a material thing like an actual curtain made of cloth at all, then.

Hmmm...

Have to think about this one!

LordEntrails · August 2018

LoL, yea. I wonder if something like the wavy type outline I did above, but then shaded with Lorelei like silk. But I don't know which direction the ripples should run, or if they should be random, or what. I'm not good with Gimp, but I would think that would be the way to go rather than in CC itself...

Loopysue · August 2018

Well.

I'm not sure I know where I'm going with this, but here is a basic idea.

[Image_11470]

With a couple of image manipulations thrown in

[Image_11471]

And my personal favourite of the three -

[Image_11472]

Loopysue · August 2018

Don't be discouraged if this is a million miles from what you imagined. Its just an idea, and like all ideas it can evolve

LordEntrails · August 2018

It's a million miles from what I've done. Doesn't mean it's wrong thought...

What if it were to be folded or angles so it looked like a mostly top down view of such a thing? Then maybe grey scale since it's supposed to be black? Though I could change the descriptions to be more like a black hole that sucks in all light and color, that might be more... dangerous than it really is. (It's harmless in it's self.)

Loopysue · August 2018

It would have to be grossly simplified to make sense if it was squashed down.

I'll have a look at it.

Loopysue · August 2018

Two very similar versions. And they will have to be the last for tonight. I'm shattered after spending 4 hours doing the non-stop washing up by hand at a village hall thing today. The boiler broke down, and then flooded the floor with boiling hot water, just to make things a little more exciting! :P

Thinner...

[Image_11474]

And thinner again with perspective (which may be more of a pain in the neck on a top-down map)

[Image_11475]

Loopysue · August 2018

This is as thin as it can be, and still have the image make sense.

[Image_11476]

LordEntrails · August 2018

You weren't supposed to work anymore on them today!

Thanks, Let me see what I can do with these tomorrow

Loopysue · August 2018

Well it was open, and took only a few minutes to adjust

ProFantasy Community Forum

Creating a Curtain of Blackness

Comments