Right. I still haven't done the palm trees, but I've got distracted down another side route. Scale.
I started off thinking that I was going to wrap this city around that nice little bay area just to the north west of the marker on Lorelei's main map:
[Image_8607]
Once I realised that it wasn't really going to be feasible to do a city map much larger than Merelan City (that's a square mile), I took the info distance tool to Lorelei's map, and discovered that a city would have to be the size of Tokyo to wrap around that nice 'little' cove area, and way beyond the scope of my little square mile.
As a result of this discovery I have chosen one of the tiny segments of the coastline right next to the mouth of the river (that segment being in itself 3 miles long), and decided to get a little creative with it - as long as on average it follows that general line on the big map.
Yes. There will always be details not visible on a map. The intention with every detail map made from another map is to add any detail you feel like that would be plausible. That little 3-mile coast line segment would probably be full of bays and beaches and cliffs and lagoons and whatnot. The city is also probably MUCH smaller than that city symbol, since symbols need to be a certain size to see them.
That's a similar but simplified version of the water around Merelan City. If you are interested in finding out how to do it, and when the FCW is ready for uploading, you will see there are only three effects on each of the three water sheets, and they aren't at all complicated to set up - but the order in which they are placed is absolutely critical
Thanks Remy
I have worked out that if the city symbol on the main map was to scale it would be the size of London, and each of those houses would cover an entire borough of the city.
This is a fairly major river, being one of only three (I think) that flow through the massive agricultural belt in the continent, so it might have quite a huge estuary with lots of mud flat islands. There would have to be a port, probably protected from the dangerous waters of the estuary by a low rocky headland of some kind, and a bay sweeping away from the estuary.
These are all very fleeting ideas at the moment. I might come up with something completely different yet
Any comments welcome. Sorry about the livid green notes. There is, somewhere on this map, a sample of the largest building in the thatched bitmap B range, just to give the scale of the city.
I know! The textures are horribly sick with redundancy, but this is only the rough sketch just yet. I haven't even finished making the trees, so the work in earnest will have to wait a bit for now.
I seem to have done something bad with the image. I will un-embed it.
I also realised there's farmland more than anything else around the city. No problem - I was a bit tired last night, and less forest means fewer symbols
Showing the whole thing is a habit I've picked up along the way. Unfortunately that does tend to mean my threads grow to extreme lengths, but I always hope they are worth reading
Here is another quandary I've got with this map and its symbols:
I've already made the ordinary and fruit tree symbols, but I'm having some trouble with the palm trees to complete the set.
I've had to resort to drawing them by hand, but I've never actually seen a real palm tree. Well... not since I was about 5, when the ones growing all the way along the sea front where I grew up died in one of the many storms and the council decided not to bother replanting them.
I've done one so far and here it is I a screen shot with a couple of the other trees. The question is, does it look even remotely half right, and is it too cartoonish to go with the rest?
[Image_8630]
Also - the tricky thing about shadows.
Palms are of a shape to warrant in-built shadows in maps where shadows are in use, but that means the symbol cannot be rotated or mirrored several times in the same map. That means the question is - to make an inbuilt shadow for it... or not?
I'm trying to keep the sheer size of this set down to a bare minimum, so its not a burden on people who want to download it from the Atlas.
Then there is the additional quandary of just how sharp those shadows should be - bearing in mind that most shadows in CC3 are at least slightly blurred.
And then - how long to make them....
And so on...
I could feasibly create a secondary symbol that is just the shadow, but that would mean people would need to place the shadow, and then the palm tree on top of it.
Hmmmm......
EDIT: Mind you - if all the shadows were placed first, after the lower trees were placed, then the palm trees were placed on the shadows... I think it might look quite good.
I think I may have solved this palm tree problem now. I've made three separate shadows to use with them so that the palm's themselves can be rotated or reflected at will
EDIT: In case anyone is wondering the oak tree (on which the rest of the large trees are modelled) grows to 50-100 feet tall, whereas palm trees can be nearly 200 feet tall - twice the height. There are also smaller palms, but that just means the shadow should be put down before the other trees, as well as the palms
These look nice, though I'm not sure how much detail you need for a city-scale map. Out of curiosity, why do you think "palms are of a shape to warrant in-built shadows?" At least, at the city-scale level?
I was a bit worried since the pictures online were all about as large and clear as my own 45 yr old memory. Not worried about giving people a laugh, but worried about having to draw them all over again
Dogtag - While the way that CC3 does shadows is excellent for most purposes, and drop shadow might have done just as well at city scale (where I know they will be little more than a splash of colour here and there), I don't think there's a way to do the trunk of the tree like this (below), for when people zoom in to the finished FCW and want to grab themselves a close up shot.
As I've mentioned before, city maps (full cities that is) are not generally intended for very close zooms or to be used as battle maps. In fact, I expect that, once you've made the city map, other mappers may want to map specific districts or areas of the city in more detail. Yet, even then, I personally think a decent drop shadow conveys the nature and shape of the palm trees sufficiently, but that's just my own opinion.
I've done far more with dungeon scale fills than anything - which is showing rather badly in the first few attempts I made with the city fills. They were all too detailed to start with, but I've sorted them out now
I know I'm also trying to put too much detail into everything with these new city symbols I'm making, but then I enjoy zooming into an FCW city and seeing that the trees look like real trees (within the bounds of the resolution of the symbols), every bit as much as the CC3 rooftops look like real rooftops
I might have put fruit on the varicolour fruit trees, and might also be in the process of making a couple of varicolour flowering bushes, but I'm going to have to draw a line under this symbol set somewhere
Posted By: Loopysuebut then I enjoy zooming into an FCW city and seeing that the trees look like real trees (within the bounds of the resolution of the symbols), every bit as much as the CC3 rooftops look like real rooftops
Loopysue explained:... I enjoy zooming into an FCW city and seeing that the trees look like real trees (within the bounds of the resolution of the symbols), every bit as much as the CC3 rooftops look like real rooftops
Sure, who doesn't? But there are limits to any map. For example, I don't think anyone reasonably expects to zoom in on a dungeon map to read the book or formulae on the alchemist's table. That would be hella-cool, of course, but it's generally understood that there's only so much detail in a map of a given scale. That's all I'm saying.
Again, personally, I think a drop shadow gives a good-enough impression of the nature — and shape, frankly — of the palm trees even when zoomed in quite a bit. And I think it's a far better and more flexible solution/compromise than trying to make symbols with built-in shadows, which I think limits you even more, and which places extra constraints on you (or whoever's mapping). As you pointed out, you'd either have to make shadows for multiple directions (and mappers would have to choose them during mapping) or you take away the flexibility of how where they place their lighting. Also, the shadows are fixed in length, so the sun must be presumed to not only be at a certain angle but also at a certain zenith. *shrug*
You're a far more talented and prolific mapper than I am, so this is just my 2 cents.
I'm genuinely certain that whatever you end up doing will look amazing.
I was already thinking ahead of you along the same lines regarding built-in shadows. That's why I did them separately in the end. The files, unfortunately, are 1200 px so I can't upload them here. That means if you don't like the shadows you can delete the sheet that they are on and add your own shadow effects to the sheet the palm trees are on. I may just do it that way myself. I don't know yet, but the shadows are there for people who want them.
Nearly finished making all the pngs for the symbol set. So far I have 4 ordinary oak-type trees that will double for general 'tropical forest', 3 palms to dot around, and 3 varicolour fruit trees for orchards or gardens.
There are also four new fills, all at 1000 px so they aren't too great a burden as far as downloads go (I usually work with 2000 or 3000 px). These are sand, dirt, grass, and cobbles - all of which are previewed earlier in this thread as the background for the trees I showed.
I'm currently working on rounding off the symbol set with 3 ordinary shrubs as undergrowth for the woodland/forest, and 3 varicolour flowering shrubs - again for gardens in the city, and you are more than welcome to call me nuts. I probably am
Have to admit I'm with Dogtag here in preferring just the standard drop-shadows. Y'see, some folks (mentioning no names, but I am typing this...) might want smaller/lower palm trees as well. And then they might look at the tree and think, "That would work for a low-growing cycad" - or even a fern, or a giant fern - depending on the type and scale of the map.
I currently have my city set at 5000 units square. I render this at 10,000 px and reduce it to 5,000 px to antialias it. Unfortunately this means that the map is way too big to upload here. It also means that the houses are absolutely tiny.
What I've decided to do is make a city that is in fact only 2,500 units square, and render it at 5000 px square with 50% antialiasing.
Confused? Hmmm. Don't worry its taken me several hours to work this out.
Even then I still get a map that's about 2.5 x too big in both dimensions to upload here. For the main part, then, I will further reduce the map to 1024 px square when I want to show the whole thing, and show extracts when I want to show details.
This is what the detail will look like in the extracts I show you (another little test piece randomly slapped down in the middle of nowhere to test contrast and colour between tree symbols):
Now with new and improved varicolour flowering shrubs...
[Image_8638]
I think, in the interest of keeping the size down I'm going to stick with just the three palms, even though they are all the same tree in different colours. I've got what I wanted - a set of trees and flowering/fruiting shrubs to make a map of an exotic sub-tropical city with a hanging garden.
And this is what it looks like when you zoom into the FCW
Posted By: DogtagFor example, I don't think anyone reasonably expects to zoom in on a dungeon map to read the book or formulae on the alchemist's table. That would be hella-cool, of course, but it's generally understood that there's only so much detail in a map of a given scale. That's all I'm saying.
I'm probably quite non reasonable, but I think it would be really cool to zoom on the book, see it contains a map of the planet, zoom on it until you get to the actual region, zoom again to find the dungeon, then zoom once more until you see in the dungeon the book that contains a map, then start zooming on it...
Comments
That makes it all worth all the trouble
I started off thinking that I was going to wrap this city around that nice little bay area just to the north west of the marker on Lorelei's main map:
[Image_8607]
Once I realised that it wasn't really going to be feasible to do a city map much larger than Merelan City (that's a square mile), I took the info distance tool to Lorelei's map, and discovered that a city would have to be the size of Tokyo to wrap around that nice 'little' cove area, and way beyond the scope of my little square mile.
As a result of this discovery I have chosen one of the tiny segments of the coastline right next to the mouth of the river (that segment being in itself 3 miles long), and decided to get a little creative with it - as long as on average it follows that general line on the big map.
Is that ok?
The city is also probably MUCH smaller than that city symbol, since symbols need to be a certain size to see them.
That's a similar but simplified version of the water around Merelan City. If you are interested in finding out how to do it, and when the FCW is ready for uploading, you will see there are only three effects on each of the three water sheets, and they aren't at all complicated to set up - but the order in which they are placed is absolutely critical
Thanks Remy
I have worked out that if the city symbol on the main map was to scale it would be the size of London, and each of those houses would cover an entire borough of the city.
This is a fairly major river, being one of only three (I think) that flow through the massive agricultural belt in the continent, so it might have quite a huge estuary with lots of mud flat islands. There would have to be a port, probably protected from the dangerous waters of the estuary by a low rocky headland of some kind, and a bay sweeping away from the estuary.
These are all very fleeting ideas at the moment. I might come up with something completely different yet
Any comments welcome. Sorry about the livid green notes. There is, somewhere on this map, a sample of the largest building in the thatched bitmap B range, just to give the scale of the city.
I know! The textures are horribly sick with redundancy, but this is only the rough sketch just yet. I haven't even finished making the trees, so the work in earnest will have to wait a bit for now.
I seem to have done something bad with the image. I will un-embed it.
I also realised there's farmland more than anything else around the city. No problem - I was a bit tired last night, and less forest means fewer symbols
Cal
Showing the whole thing is a habit I've picked up along the way. Unfortunately that does tend to mean my threads grow to extreme lengths, but I always hope they are worth reading
Here is another quandary I've got with this map and its symbols:
I've already made the ordinary and fruit tree symbols, but I'm having some trouble with the palm trees to complete the set.
I've had to resort to drawing them by hand, but I've never actually seen a real palm tree. Well... not since I was about 5, when the ones growing all the way along the sea front where I grew up died in one of the many storms and the council decided not to bother replanting them.
I've done one so far and here it is I a screen shot with a couple of the other trees. The question is, does it look even remotely half right, and is it too cartoonish to go with the rest?
[Image_8630]
Also - the tricky thing about shadows.
Palms are of a shape to warrant in-built shadows in maps where shadows are in use, but that means the symbol cannot be rotated or mirrored several times in the same map. That means the question is - to make an inbuilt shadow for it... or not?
I'm trying to keep the sheer size of this set down to a bare minimum, so its not a burden on people who want to download it from the Atlas.
Then there is the additional quandary of just how sharp those shadows should be - bearing in mind that most shadows in CC3 are at least slightly blurred.
And then - how long to make them....
And so on...
I could feasibly create a secondary symbol that is just the shadow, but that would mean people would need to place the shadow, and then the palm tree on top of it.
Hmmmm......
EDIT: Mind you - if all the shadows were placed first, after the lower trees were placed, then the palm trees were placed on the shadows... I think it might look quite good.
I'll make a few shadows and see what people think
EDIT: In case anyone is wondering the oak tree (on which the rest of the large trees are modelled) grows to 50-100 feet tall, whereas palm trees can be nearly 200 feet tall - twice the height. There are also smaller palms, but that just means the shadow should be put down before the other trees, as well as the palms
I was a bit worried since the pictures online were all about as large and clear as my own 45 yr old memory. Not worried about giving people a laugh, but worried about having to draw them all over again
Dogtag - While the way that CC3 does shadows is excellent for most purposes, and drop shadow might have done just as well at city scale (where I know they will be little more than a splash of colour here and there), I don't think there's a way to do the trunk of the tree like this (below), for when people zoom in to the finished FCW and want to grab themselves a close up shot.
Cheers,
~Dogtag
I know I'm also trying to put too much detail into everything with these new city symbols I'm making, but then I enjoy zooming into an FCW city and seeing that the trees look like real trees (within the bounds of the resolution of the symbols), every bit as much as the CC3 rooftops look like real rooftops
I might have put fruit on the varicolour fruit trees, and might also be in the process of making a couple of varicolour flowering bushes, but I'm going to have to draw a line under this symbol set somewhere
Besides - they might not be coconut palms
Darn! I forgot to do a banana tree!
Again, personally, I think a drop shadow gives a good-enough impression of the nature — and shape, frankly — of the palm trees even when zoomed in quite a bit. And I think it's a far better and more flexible solution/compromise than trying to make symbols with built-in shadows, which I think limits you even more, and which places extra constraints on you (or whoever's mapping). As you pointed out, you'd either have to make shadows for multiple directions (and mappers would have to choose them during mapping) or you take away the flexibility of how where they place their lighting. Also, the shadows are fixed in length, so the sun must be presumed to not only be at a certain angle but also at a certain zenith. *shrug*
You're a far more talented and prolific mapper than I am, so this is just my 2 cents.
I'm genuinely certain that whatever you end up doing will look amazing.
Cheers,
~Dogtag
I was already thinking ahead of you along the same lines regarding built-in shadows. That's why I did them separately in the end. The files, unfortunately, are 1200 px so I can't upload them here. That means if you don't like the shadows you can delete the sheet that they are on and add your own shadow effects to the sheet the palm trees are on. I may just do it that way myself. I don't know yet, but the shadows are there for people who want them.
Nearly finished making all the pngs for the symbol set. So far I have 4 ordinary oak-type trees that will double for general 'tropical forest', 3 palms to dot around, and 3 varicolour fruit trees for orchards or gardens.
There are also four new fills, all at 1000 px so they aren't too great a burden as far as downloads go (I usually work with 2000 or 3000 px). These are sand, dirt, grass, and cobbles - all of which are previewed earlier in this thread as the background for the trees I showed.
I'm currently working on rounding off the symbol set with 3 ordinary shrubs as undergrowth for the woodland/forest, and 3 varicolour flowering shrubs - again for gardens in the city, and you are more than welcome to call me nuts. I probably am
I just enjoy doing it
Looking forward to the date palm variants too ;D!
The shadows are adjustable, and no one has to use them if they don't want to
Right at this moment. I'm going bananas :P
What I've decided to do is make a city that is in fact only 2,500 units square, and render it at 5000 px square with 50% antialiasing.
Confused? Hmmm. Don't worry its taken me several hours to work this out.
Even then I still get a map that's about 2.5 x too big in both dimensions to upload here. For the main part, then, I will further reduce the map to 1024 px square when I want to show the whole thing, and show extracts when I want to show details.
This is what the detail will look like in the extracts I show you (another little test piece randomly slapped down in the middle of nowhere to test contrast and colour between tree symbols):
[Image_8638]
I think, in the interest of keeping the size down I'm going to stick with just the three palms, even though they are all the same tree in different colours. I've got what I wanted - a set of trees and flowering/fruiting shrubs to make a map of an exotic sub-tropical city with a hanging garden.
And this is what it looks like when you zoom into the FCW