[WIP] Haunted Mansion
Royal Scribe
🖼️ 250 images Mapmaker
It's "spooky season," so I had to map something in honor of the season. I have a few other ideas, including a swamp witch's home (we'll see if I can pull off designing a swamp). But first, a haunted mansion on a hill overlooking a church and its appurtenant graveyard.
This is done mostly in Creepy Crypts, with buildings from Darklands City and CD3, and a few things brought in from Forest Trail (mostly the trees and the tower ruins for wells). The stained glass window reflections are from the Mike Schley monthlies. (Why, you may ask, are the reflections outside? The last thing I will do will be to play with the lighting to show that this is at night -- the lights are inside the church, shining out, rather than the other way around.)
Working on the environs first and then with tackle inside. Still have to finish populating the graveyard and
Comments
Added a bit more to the haunted mansion and its environs, including populating the graveyard more and adding some low-hanging fog for atmosphere. I didn't want too much fog, but enough. Let me know whether it works. I can always add a transparency effect to soften it more. Of course, the real test of whether it works will be when I set it to be nighttime.
It's going well :)
The fog is a bit dense in some places, but a transparency effect may not be the answer. Perhaps reduce the number of overlapping symbols? I also recommend putting the fog above everything.
Yeah, I tried the transparency but it didn't work. I will try thinning it out.
I deleted the fog symbols (after moving the sheet above everything else) and placed them again, trying to avoid overlapping them. I wonder if it would look less patchy if I made them larger?
Larger would probably work.
The symbols are very variable. Some of them are less patchy than others. Expand the collection and try each one in turn. There should be a couple of smoother ones in there somewhere.
Round 3! These fog symbols are scaled at x4.
That looks a lot better :)
Here's a look at it at night, with lights added. I experimented with adding a moon like Jeff B did with his contest entry, but it was creating weird banding effects that I couldn't resolve. Instead, I played with the Shadow-Transparency in the Global Sun settings.
This is 35:
This is 50:
Great work :D
50% is still 'night' to me. It will make it easier for players to see what they are doing.
Hi Dalton,
Good ideas about breaking up the church's tiled plaza. I can add some planter boxes, benches, statues, maybe even a fountain. Here are some images zoomed in to see the tilework better.
For the night version, I tried moving the light's point of origin inside the church, and the sheet the light was on to be before the sheets the building symbols are on, to better show the light coming from the whole window pane and not originating outside of the window. Couldn't get it to work right -- kept showing the light coming from on top of the roof despite having the sheets ordered so that the light rendered before the building symbol. I've watched the lighting tutorials so many times, but it's tricky!
Yes, the haunted mansion is in the upper left corner on the hillside. The floorplans will show that in addition to the graveyard, the church also has catacombs beneath it...and there are secret passageways from the mansion to the church catacombs.
BTW, here's the FCW for the nighttime version if anyone has tips for how I can move the lighting to make it look like the light is coming from inside the building rather than a point outside the window.
Well... you could move the "lights end" sheet up the list till the buildings are above the light effects altogether.
Then, given that they are now far too light and need to have that light dropped to 50% like the lit part of the map, you could add an RGB Matrix Process to each of the "Symbols Buildings" sheets, and set it up to give only half the unity colour. (Unity is a diagonal of ones)
Notice how I also moved the SYMBOLS Trees sheet up the list to keep it above the Lights - End sheet. That's because I'm not sure if an RGB Matrix Process will work on regular symbols (ie, not shaded symbols like houses and buildings)
Wow, learning new stuff! I will experiment with that. Thank you for the tips!
You're welcome :) It was relatively easy on your map because you have everything really well organised.
I made the changes that you recommended, Sue, and it appears to work on-screen. I was able to move the light sources for the four stained glass windows on the sides of the church to a point where the lights look normal. Here's a screengrab.
But something weird is happening (which is why I had to do a screengrab instead of saving an image). Whenever I go use "save as" to create a JPG or PNG image of the map, it crashes during the first pass of rendering as soon as it reaches the "Lights - End" sheet. It does that regardless whether I am trying to save an image of the entire map or just a rectangular section of it.
I just did a test and turned off the RGB Matrix effect on the "Buildings Low" sheet, the first sheet to have that effect on it (on the assumption that if the problem was with the RGB Matrix, it would get through the "Buildings Low" before crashing). It still crashed at the "Lights - End" sheet. Then I did another test, turning off the "Wall Shadow, Point of Light Finalize" effect on the "Lights - End" sheet, and it was able to render a JPG correctly (except it's no longer night without that effect).
Hmmmm...?
In the meantime, I've added a bit more to the daytime version of the church plaza, which will be copied over the nighttime version once things are finalized. Increased the size of the statue in the lower right, added a fountain (with a cat statue) with benches around it in the lower left, a flower bed in the upper right, lion statues on either side of the south entrance, and a few rows of benches along the walkway to the eastern entrance. Also added a slightly darker shade to the entrances (and a side door used by the priest to go between his rectory / parsonage / vicarage and the church). Here are two versions of it, a slightly lighter and slightly darker version.
@Royal Scribe
I have been playing around with you file and added a moonlight. Would you like me to send it to you or post it here?
Hi Jeff! Sure, you can post it here in case others would like to peek. Thank you!
Here you go.
Changes
Added moon light to Sheets Moonlight (Light #45) Light is set to a light green just so you can see the effect.
Change global light to 15% blur 2.5 intensity to 50% (Don't know if the blur and intensity effect any thing) also set angle of light to 90 degrees
I also adjusted the lights out of the church.
FYI - I cannot get your file or my edited file to render to a jpg as it crashes when it hits the lights-end sheet. This is a screenshot.
Also uploaded the .FCW file
Thank you! Yeah, this file is crashing for me, too, when trying to create a JPG version, just like mine was. Strange. Appreciate your help -- looks great on screen, but I will be curious to see a JPG export. If I recall correctly, the weird banding I was getting happened with the export.
Should be good no banding where the light is placed.
I appreciate the reflection of the stained glass windows shining OUT from the church at night, when the light is from inside, but in the day, the reflection is to the INSIDE of the church, because of the superior power of the sun's light. First hand experience as organist and choirmaster at my father's church in Stdney.
Yup, yup! Originally I wasn’t going to have a daylight version, just set it up and then apply the lighting. It is a haunted house and spooky graveyard, after all. But now I think I will — and I’ll remove the reflections from that one.
I just did a test and turned off the RGB Matrix effect on the "Buildings Low" sheet, the first sheet to have that effect on it (on the assumption that if the problem was with the RGB Matrix, it would get through the "Buildings Low" before crashing). It still crashed at the "Lights - End" sheet. Then I did another test, turning off the "Wall Shadow, Point of Light Finalize" effect on the "Lights - End" sheet, and it was able to render a JPG correctly (except it's no longer night without that effect).
Oh, that's not good.
I played around with various changes for a while and crashed every time no matter what.
Then I found some sheet effects on the Lights Global sheet that seemed a bit odd. I switched that one off and tried again. It worked that time, though it did take a while to get past the Lights - End sheet. The export settings I used are below.
Here is the map again, in case I made other changes I didn't remember doing leading up to that point.
EDIT: Sorry, I was concentrating on the problem and didn't see Jeff B's suggestion. You might have to somehow combine the two. I think its all down to that sheet effect on the Lights Global sheet. Maybe switching it off in Jeff's version would work?
Thank you! I have a busy morning but will check this out later today and try to integrate both of these changes. Really appreciate all the help!
It might just be that one effect you need to switch off/delete, in which case you could do that to Jeff B's map if you want those modifications.
So, still struggling. I was able to render an image using Sue's, so that worked. Then I tried copying Sue's effects changes into a copy of Jeff B's file, but it crashed when trying to render an image. So then I made a copy of Sue's and tried to copy over Jeff's point of light for the moon and other changes. The good news is that it can render an image. The bad news is that while it looks fine on screen, the rendered image has a weird band of light across the middle. Weird!
@Royal Scribe
Your problem is two fold.
1) you have 2 lights on top of each other - We can deal with that but change the radius of one of the lights to 400.00
2) Change Width in degrees to 360.00 (you are set to 0 and that is the problem)
3) option change the light with the smaller radius to a different color.
Yes this is a render not a screenshot.
I also used the collar command on the file to hide the overflow objects beyond the screen.
The strange band across the map you describe may be down to the number of passes the render has to do to export the bitmap.
Use the command EXPORTSETMPPP to find out how big each pass is. The default value is 4000000 (4 million). If yours is still at the default, change that to 40000000 (40 million) and try the export again.