Advice on making a bottomless pit

jedius

Hi! So I am on to my second map, a cavern. Within the cavern I'd like a large bottomless pit. I've created two colored polygons and added some glow effects for illusion of depth, but it still doesn't look quite right. Can anyone offer advice on how to make the pit seem more ominous and deep?

Since PNG seems to be too big to upload: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8732704/Mithralfast%20Caverns%20pit.PNG

Thanks!
jedius

Ralf

You can experiment with an inverted bevel effect. That can give a good illusion of depth. If you make the bevel wider than the entity itself, there will also be no bottom.

P.S.: Made your link clickable.

Joachim de Ravenbel

Try something like this, though I'm not sure how it adapts to smooth shapes...

01i

I personally think you pit already looks pretty good to be honest. However, if you were to duplicate the pit layer play around with the effect gallery in photoshop and then reduce the opacity of the modified layer (so your original shows through) you can get some good depth effects.

For example

plastic wrap with low highlight strength and high detail and smoothness, luminosity setting on the top layer, with 13% opacity

JimP

Thanks Joachim ! I've been wondering about that myself. In the past, I saw the maps, and gave my players a verbal description with some help from home made dungeon tiles.

jedius

Thanks for the suggestions. I added a third copy of the polygon and added some additional inner glow effects.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8732704/Mithralfast%20Caverns%20pit%202.PNG

I actually realize now I probably should have done a fractal polygon to give more of an effect of an "erupted" hole rather than an "eroded" one. One thing I found with fractal poly was that CC3 was unresponsive to the U/D and L/R keys to adjust the fractal (though spacebar worked). Has anyone seen this?

JimP

I made one with depth and then did the first one with a red poly, second with a black poly on depth 2. I chose a width of 4 in inner edge fade. I also fractalized the second poly.

Joachim de Ravenbel

JimP, looks like you have a wall shadow effect on your square poly.

Did you use a bitmap fill style on this main poly?

JimP

No, just a color square in a poly. First one was 240 then red. The next one was 240 with color changed on the red to a zero black.

SlaveOne

If i might make a suggestion.

Using Joachim's technique, try using the Fractal Poly draw tool. It will give your Pit a more natural look.

JimP

I was mostly trying to duplicate what others had done. I think I missed the mark so far.