I really like the new grille-less frame. Works as both an open grille and a "traditional" map border for me.
Posted By: Loopysue...I have a few major problems still to sort out with that troublesome spiral (right now it looks like someone spilt some ink on the rock and the spiral is just floating in space above it
That's because it's magic!
Hill shading might need to be increased in contrast (darker shadows, brighter top highlight, say), and the road (somehow...) shaded in to match the appropriate hill contours, perhaps?
Posted By: LoopysueI just had a really weird idea.
Imagine that these mesa are actually giant flat topped fungi, shaped a bit like bracket fungi...
And that the thing the spiral is attached to (or will be when I get the shading right) is the stump of one of those fungi...
Is that just a bittoomuch?
Interesting idea. Natural fungi fruiting forms tend to decay to mush within days is all. But you could always invent a non-decaying type for the purpose here. If so, maybe there should be more "fungal topography" elsewhere, given there could be other "stumps" and smaller mesas nearby. If they're hard as rock (that's a lot of buildings to support, after all), there should be more such surviving.
Not just Lorelei who could be interested in some of those very seasonal trees (Northern Hemisphere), by the way!
Magic spirals? Very kind of you to make such a generous excuse for my really bad drawing!
I like the idea of giant stone-like fungi very much, and it will give the excuse to sculpt more interesting 'land forms'.
As for the trees....
Well I have a couple of hundred of the things, but I really need to sort them out, name them all in a sensible and logical fashion, make them into a proper symbol catalogue with all the usual bells and whistles, then give it to someone far more organised than I am so we don't end up with a million different versions lying around the place - all of them subtly different. The help requests on a situation like that would be a nightmare!
For myself I don't even have anywhere to host such a thing, never mind the bandwidth to distribute it by email, for example.
I'm hoping that Ralf might be at least a bit curious, but I have to make sure they are all looking their best before he gets back from Australia
I also need to save up and buy a decent pine tree model, and a fruit tree model, so there's more to the set than a lot of rather 'samey' fluffy little deciduous trees to chose from. Right now, all I can vary on the one original plum tree model, and the one original silver birch tree model, are the colour and size of the leaves. Each one that is generated when you click the new tree button is of course a unique member of its species, with different branch arrangements and fronds, but after the first fifty they all start to look rather similar.
A tree.. is a tree... is a tree... after all.
There are many (perhaps more beautiful) trees available in the CSUAC/Dundjinni collections if you need any in the meantime. I haven't got either on my system, so this is only from memory, but I think there's a folder called something like Trees/Fall, or Autumn, or something like that. I also remember that the very slight problem with transparency around the edges that you can sometimes get with greatly reduced tree symbols that once had inbuilt shadows, can be largely resolved by adding a very subtle black glow inside on the tree symbol sheet. It disguises the milky appearance of imperfect transparency by turning it into shade and shadow.
If and when my own trees become generally available you will have the opposite problem with them. I have designed them specifically for use with CC3, which means that since CC3 can cast its own shadows I have rendered the trees in such a way that none of the shadows cast by the tree or its leaves fall anywhere but on the tree itself. There are no ground shadows. The advantage of doing it this way is that the transparency of the full sized symbols is pin sharp, BUT... without any shadow or glow effects they look like they are just coloured blobs on the ground.
I'll go and make an example picture to show you what I mean. Be back soon!
The trees on the left have a black glow outer effect on their sheet, whereas the identical copies of the same trees on the right have no sheet effects.
That is what I mean when I say 'designed with CC3 in mind'
There are a couple of advantages to this method. I've discovered that all you need to do to make bigger, bushier trees with the same symbols is to paste them on top of each other on different sheets with the same glow effect on each sheet. This causes the bottom tree to appear shaded by the upper branches. You have to really fiddle around with the settings, however, so I will probably make a set of symbols with that same effect already set up.
[Image_6875]
Half the glow. Even the tiniest barely visible glow makes all the difference.
This is two trees, one on top of the other on separate sheets.
To me it looks a lot better than the single trees, but there is quite a lot of work to be done twinning up all the small trees into suitable pairs to make a new set of ready made bigger trees.
[Image_6877]
This is so enlarged that quite apart from the texture in the background pixelating rather badly (despite being a resolution of 3000x3000 pi), you can see exactly how the tree model is made, with really quite simple branches and groups of four fingered fronds. These are 'birch tree' leaves, on a 'plum tree'
LOL! Thanks Jim. Didn't think you were. I was explaining why I couldn't just give them all away right now.
I really don't want to flood everyone out with badly organised, poorly thought out sets of trees. I also need to expand my repertoire quite considerably.
I've played around with items on different sheets so you get the multiple shadow effects you've described, giving a stronger impression of height/depth and layering within the picture (like window-sills and arrow-slits within a wall), but hadn't thought of doing the same with trees and other foliage.
More trees are always good. Actually more everything is usually good, since I always seem to want a symbol that's not quite the only one available, or I find one that's ideal, but not in the style I've used on the rest of the map...
A large number of symbols to chose from is good, but there's also nothing wrong with stretching the muscles of your imagination every now and then to improvise.
The concrete chute around the drain is actually the very same red desert texture I used for the ground. Its just handled differently by the sheet effects. And the only difference between the rusty grate and the galvanised grate is a single HSL effect on that sheet. My Merelan City map might look like it has a whole crate full of textures in it, but really there are only 10, 2 of which are grass. I just use a lot of effects to morph 1 thing into the 5 or 6 different things it has the potential to become.
Need to do the dockyard area (sort out a set of boats for myself, which will probably be rendered from Vue models like the trees), and lay out the fields in the valley.
EDIT: I could use the boats that -Jo- let me use in Merelan City, but I would like to make my own - simply because I can (once I have the models). I would also be able to share them with you, and feel good about sharing them
I've more or less finished the land by adding the river and the fields on either side. The effects on the river itself are not quite right, but they will come.
I figured the road heading off into the ocean would be better as a suspension bridge than as a port quay, since there wasn't enough deep water to make it really interesting.
Besides - I've never done a map with a suspension bridge on it before
I've just noticed I seem to have a transparency acne problem (or some kind of stray dark blur effect) around my new suspension bridge, so this may only be the penultimate. I'll give myself a few days to tweak before uploading the real final version.
I also think the river may be just a tad on the harsh blue side, or have too much glow on it.
Agreed! Hauntingly beautiful, aided especially by the limited palette. I also really like the suspension bridge and cables!
I notice, however, that nothing on the map, not even the "mesa," casts a shadow. It throws me off, especially when there's so much other attention to detail (like the cables on the bridge) and the wake around the bridge support. The "mesa" now looks quite flat to me or, again, lacking the beveling from before or directional shadow, like a depression rather than a raised area. As before, I think the fairly uniform border of darker color around the area (a glow effect?) removes any impression of shadow. The lighter color helps a little but without additional cues (for me) to indicate it's raised, it causes a little dissonance when my eyes travel to the roads leading to and from, especially the spiral.
I can certainly discern some subtle shading but I think my brain expects deeper shadows from 1) a "mesa" and 2) subterranean landscape where light appears to be provided from outside and above the hole through which we're viewing. If there is a shadow along the top half of the mesa, it's not registering with my brain (such as it is) as an indication of height.
Just my two cents and, naturally, completely subjective. Nothing I mentioned deprives the map of its overall beauty.
I nearly posted this 'more or less acne free' version before I saw your comment there. (I'm posting it anyway because its an improvement on the last version, but at least I get a chance to respond at the same time)
The shadows have been a bane on this map right from the outset. I think its because we are looking at it out of the sun. Technically speaking there shouldn't be any shadows whatsoever, but from an artistic perspective it still needs them. That's why there are only very pale shadows around things.
I was hoping that the darkness around the edges of the picture would disguise the fact that there are no real shadows cast by the mesa, but evidently it isn't working well enough! LOL
I wonder if you would be kind enough to be a little more specific about the mesa shadow. Is it that you would expect to be able to see nothing beyond the northern extent of it - that part being totally in the shade?
Here is the current version. I won't call the final one! LOL!
btw - I've noticed that having a glow on anything at all (a glow on any sheet I mean) can cause transparency acne with other sheets that have complicated transparency effects on them (like the relief sheet in this case). I've half remedied this by changing all the black glows I have to the darkest brown, but there's still something not quite right with the transparency as a whole.
Changing the suspension wires from black to the darkest grey cured that area of acne entirely. There's just something about black, or black glows that seems to disrupt the overlying transparency sheets.
I'm running late for something so please forgive my brevity.
Shading at the corners of the map seem fine and, to my eye, are caused by the limited light shining down through a small opening (grate).
In order to see anything, light must be filtering from above down through the grate.
Shading on the rooftops indicate light from the "southwest"
Given a direction for the light, I'd expect something as relatively massive (to other objects in the map) as the mesa to cast a shadow to the north/northeast
Angle of the light is tricky but, given restrictions by the area of the grate, I'd still expect at least a much darker outline along the north/northeast edges of the mesa, deeper/darker if not necessarily longer (again, the height angle of light is ambiguous so shadow length isn't as obvious to me as depth)
Nothing else seems to be casting shadows so it all might be moot in the end, anyway
Beautiful and, as I said before, haunting, nonetheless. This is a noteworthy piece of art.
Well then - thank you for being a couple of minutes extra late, and again for the compliment
This is more of an explanation than anything:
Restricting the dungeon lighting to the centre of the map was a conscious decision, even though the buildings can't respond to it and shade themselves accordingly. I did consider using mirror image buildings for the lower quarter of the map, but thought that might look worse than just carrying on with them the same across the map. I almost didn't put any buildings on the lower level because I was aware that it wouldn't look right to the discerning eye.
Short of having the sun directly overhead, which immediately makes all the buildings seem flat, there isn't really a lot I can do about the way they are shaded... though I will experiment and see if flattened buildings make the rest of the map look more natural.
I will also experiment with a transparent sheet - see what I can do with that mesa shadow
Well this is just stunning, Sue! There's so much to love about it!
Not having any real problem with the shadows at all now; it all seems to make sense as it is to me, variant height levels, etc.
However, I recall right at the start, you mentioned the Inferosians "stole" electricity for their streetlights from the surface-world, and while liable to add far more work for you, maybe a few such lights and their shadows might be interesting additions (assuming you haven't decided against them entirely by now), perhaps even lights from a door or window or two.
Like the new fields and river section, and the suspension bridge, and, and, and...
One thought - somehow missed this before, not sure how - maybe the northeast mesa-let roadway needs a bit of bridge edging to it?
And sorry to see the blind white sea serpent twisting in the ocean depths didn't make the cut after all
LOL! I'm sat here giggling at all the things you're reminding me of.
The electric street lights went pretty early on, when I was already having enough trouble just trying to get the main dungeon lights to play nice with the three transparent relief sheets. Now that you've reminded me I might have another look at it - now I know that pure black glows and objects are what's really causing the problem
Bridge? What bridge....Oh - THAT bridge...
Hmmmn... That's weird - I could have sworn I put a bridge in there!!! Thanks for spotting it
As for the coiling white sea serpent - well... lets just say I sometimes get a bit carried away and imagine I can draw a whole lot better than I really can... but again - I might give it another go.
Comments
Imagine that these mesa are actually giant flat topped fungi, shaped a bit like bracket fungi...
And that the thing the spiral is attached to (or will be when I get the shading right) is the stump of one of those fungi...
Is that just a bit too much?
Hill shading might need to be increased in contrast (darker shadows, brighter top highlight, say), and the road (somehow...) shaded in to match the appropriate hill contours, perhaps?
Interesting idea. Natural fungi fruiting forms tend to decay to mush within days is all. But you could always invent a non-decaying type for the purpose here. If so, maybe there should be more "fungal topography" elsewhere, given there could be other "stumps" and smaller mesas nearby. If they're hard as rock (that's a lot of buildings to support, after all), there should be more such surviving.
Not just Lorelei who could be interested in some of those very seasonal trees (Northern Hemisphere), by the way!
I like the idea of giant stone-like fungi very much, and it will give the excuse to sculpt more interesting 'land forms'.
As for the trees....
Well I have a couple of hundred of the things, but I really need to sort them out, name them all in a sensible and logical fashion, make them into a proper symbol catalogue with all the usual bells and whistles, then give it to someone far more organised than I am so we don't end up with a million different versions lying around the place - all of them subtly different. The help requests on a situation like that would be a nightmare!
For myself I don't even have anywhere to host such a thing, never mind the bandwidth to distribute it by email, for example.
I'm hoping that Ralf might be at least a bit curious, but I have to make sure they are all looking their best before he gets back from Australia
I also need to save up and buy a decent pine tree model, and a fruit tree model, so there's more to the set than a lot of rather 'samey' fluffy little deciduous trees to chose from. Right now, all I can vary on the one original plum tree model, and the one original silver birch tree model, are the colour and size of the leaves. Each one that is generated when you click the new tree button is of course a unique member of its species, with different branch arrangements and fronds, but after the first fifty they all start to look rather similar.
A tree.. is a tree... is a tree... after all.
There are many (perhaps more beautiful) trees available in the CSUAC/Dundjinni collections if you need any in the meantime. I haven't got either on my system, so this is only from memory, but I think there's a folder called something like Trees/Fall, or Autumn, or something like that. I also remember that the very slight problem with transparency around the edges that you can sometimes get with greatly reduced tree symbols that once had inbuilt shadows, can be largely resolved by adding a very subtle black glow inside on the tree symbol sheet. It disguises the milky appearance of imperfect transparency by turning it into shade and shadow.
If and when my own trees become generally available you will have the opposite problem with them. I have designed them specifically for use with CC3, which means that since CC3 can cast its own shadows I have rendered the trees in such a way that none of the shadows cast by the tree or its leaves fall anywhere but on the tree itself. There are no ground shadows. The advantage of doing it this way is that the transparency of the full sized symbols is pin sharp, BUT... without any shadow or glow effects they look like they are just coloured blobs on the ground.
I'll go and make an example picture to show you what I mean. Be back soon!
That is what I mean when I say 'designed with CC3 in mind'
There are a couple of advantages to this method. I've discovered that all you need to do to make bigger, bushier trees with the same symbols is to paste them on top of each other on different sheets with the same glow effect on each sheet. This causes the bottom tree to appear shaded by the upper branches. You have to really fiddle around with the settings, however, so I will probably make a set of symbols with that same effect already set up.
[Image_6875]
Half the glow. Even the tiniest barely visible glow makes all the difference.
And I'm afraid that will have to wait now, until Ralf gets back
To me it looks a lot better than the single trees, but there is quite a lot of work to be done twinning up all the small trees into suitable pairs to make a new set of ready made bigger trees.
[Image_6877]
This is so enlarged that quite apart from the texture in the background pixelating rather badly (despite being a resolution of 3000x3000 pi), you can see exactly how the tree model is made, with really quite simple branches and groups of four fingered fronds. These are 'birch tree' leaves, on a 'plum tree'
I'm not being grouchy. I just feel it deserves a wow.
I really don't want to flood everyone out with badly organised, poorly thought out sets of trees. I also need to expand my repertoire quite considerably.
I've played around with items on different sheets so you get the multiple shadow effects you've described, giving a stronger impression of height/depth and layering within the picture (like window-sills and arrow-slits within a wall), but hadn't thought of doing the same with trees and other foliage.
More trees are always good. Actually more everything is usually good, since I always seem to want a symbol that's not quite the only one available, or I find one that's ideal, but not in the style I've used on the rest of the map...
The concrete chute around the drain is actually the very same red desert texture I used for the ground. Its just handled differently by the sheet effects. And the only difference between the rusty grate and the galvanised grate is a single HSL effect on that sheet. My Merelan City map might look like it has a whole crate full of textures in it, but really there are only 10, 2 of which are grass. I just use a lot of effects to morph 1 thing into the 5 or 6 different things it has the potential to become.
I love playing with symbols and effects
If it still looks wrong, then I give up! LOL
EDIT: I could use the boats that -Jo- let me use in Merelan City, but I would like to make my own - simply because I can (once I have the models). I would also be able to share them with you, and feel good about sharing them
I'm having a really bad day today, its nice to know that at least something went right.
I'm glad the shading looks right, because I've no idea how I could have improved on it. One of my weaker points
Next - the 'docks' become a causeway
[Image_6887]
I figured the road heading off into the ocean would be better as a suspension bridge than as a port quay, since there wasn't enough deep water to make it really interesting.
Besides - I've never done a map with a suspension bridge on it before
I've just noticed I seem to have a transparency acne problem (or some kind of stray dark blur effect) around my new suspension bridge, so this may only be the penultimate. I'll give myself a few days to tweak before uploading the real final version.
I also think the river may be just a tad on the harsh blue side, or have too much glow on it.
I notice, however, that nothing on the map, not even the "mesa," casts a shadow. It throws me off, especially when there's so much other attention to detail (like the cables on the bridge) and the wake around the bridge support. The "mesa" now looks quite flat to me or, again, lacking the beveling from before or directional shadow, like a depression rather than a raised area. As before, I think the fairly uniform border of darker color around the area (a glow effect?) removes any impression of shadow. The lighter color helps a little but without additional cues (for me) to indicate it's raised, it causes a little dissonance when my eyes travel to the roads leading to and from, especially the spiral.
I can certainly discern some subtle shading but I think my brain expects deeper shadows from 1) a "mesa" and 2) subterranean landscape where light appears to be provided from outside and above the hole through which we're viewing. If there is a shadow along the top half of the mesa, it's not registering with my brain (such as it is) as an indication of height.
Just my two cents and, naturally, completely subjective. Nothing I mentioned deprives the map of its overall beauty.
Cheers,
~Dogtag
I nearly posted this 'more or less acne free' version before I saw your comment there. (I'm posting it anyway because its an improvement on the last version, but at least I get a chance to respond at the same time)
The shadows have been a bane on this map right from the outset. I think its because we are looking at it out of the sun. Technically speaking there shouldn't be any shadows whatsoever, but from an artistic perspective it still needs them. That's why there are only very pale shadows around things.
I was hoping that the darkness around the edges of the picture would disguise the fact that there are no real shadows cast by the mesa, but evidently it isn't working well enough! LOL
I wonder if you would be kind enough to be a little more specific about the mesa shadow. Is it that you would expect to be able to see nothing beyond the northern extent of it - that part being totally in the shade?
Here is the current version. I won't call the final one! LOL!
btw - I've noticed that having a glow on anything at all (a glow on any sheet I mean) can cause transparency acne with other sheets that have complicated transparency effects on them (like the relief sheet in this case). I've half remedied this by changing all the black glows I have to the darkest brown, but there's still something not quite right with the transparency as a whole.
Changing the suspension wires from black to the darkest grey cured that area of acne entirely. There's just something about black, or black glows that seems to disrupt the overlying transparency sheets.
I'm running late for something so please forgive my brevity.
- Shading at the corners of the map seem fine and, to my eye, are caused by the limited light shining down through a small opening (grate).
- In order to see anything, light must be filtering from above down through the grate.
- Shading on the rooftops indicate light from the "southwest"
- Given a direction for the light, I'd expect something as relatively massive (to other objects in the map) as the mesa to cast a shadow to the north/northeast
- Angle of the light is tricky but, given restrictions by the area of the grate, I'd still expect at least a much darker outline along the north/northeast edges of the mesa, deeper/darker if not necessarily longer (again, the height angle of light is ambiguous so shadow length isn't as obvious to me as depth)
- Nothing else seems to be casting shadows so it all might be moot in the end, anyway
Beautiful and, as I said before, haunting, nonetheless. This is a noteworthy piece of art.Cheers,
~Dogtag
This is more of an explanation than anything:
Restricting the dungeon lighting to the centre of the map was a conscious decision, even though the buildings can't respond to it and shade themselves accordingly. I did consider using mirror image buildings for the lower quarter of the map, but thought that might look worse than just carrying on with them the same across the map. I almost didn't put any buildings on the lower level because I was aware that it wouldn't look right to the discerning eye.
Short of having the sun directly overhead, which immediately makes all the buildings seem flat, there isn't really a lot I can do about the way they are shaded... though I will experiment and see if flattened buildings make the rest of the map look more natural.
I will also experiment with a transparent sheet - see what I can do with that mesa shadow
It looks great to me.
Not having any real problem with the shadows at all now; it all seems to make sense as it is to me, variant height levels, etc.
However, I recall right at the start, you mentioned the Inferosians "stole" electricity for their streetlights from the surface-world, and while liable to add far more work for you, maybe a few such lights and their shadows might be interesting additions (assuming you haven't decided against them entirely by now), perhaps even lights from a door or window or two.
Like the new fields and river section, and the suspension bridge, and, and, and...
One thought - somehow missed this before, not sure how - maybe the northeast mesa-let roadway needs a bit of bridge edging to it?
And sorry to see the blind white sea serpent twisting in the ocean depths didn't make the cut after all
The electric street lights went pretty early on, when I was already having enough trouble just trying to get the main dungeon lights to play nice with the three transparent relief sheets. Now that you've reminded me I might have another look at it - now I know that pure black glows and objects are what's really causing the problem
Bridge? What bridge....Oh - THAT bridge...
Hmmmn... That's weird - I could have sworn I put a bridge in there!!! Thanks for spotting it
As for the coiling white sea serpent - well... lets just say I sometimes get a bit carried away and imagine I can draw a whole lot better than I really can... but again - I might give it another go.