@Pixelkitteh: Thanks I've been practicing a lot. Now I just have to make a symbol set out of them. And of course, I need more. You can never have enough variety in buildings.
@Lorelei: Thanks. Now I just have to figure out how to do different shapes for temples and castles, as well as compounds for Samurai or Kung Fu schools.
@Quenten: Thanks Quenten, I appreciate that. I still want to make a video on how to make the more advanced buildings but they take quite a while to make and I don't want to make the video so long that people just get bored watching it.
Maybe I need to just make a few buildings or something. Or maybe very short videos. One for each building type. Not sure yet how to approach this one.
I used a wall section in my video about Perspectives 3 to teach people how to do advanced buildings. After a while it grew on me a little more but I wanted different colored roofs so I re made it and finally got it to the point where it is a castle. Hope you enjoy
I can heartily recommend your videos on Perspectives buildings. I have now created a few perspective buildings myself, thanks to you. And this castle is magnificent. Perhaps Mad Ludwig's Schwanestein next?!
I've been working on another castle, this one in the Tudor style. I still need to change the background and put more buildings in it but this is the outer wall so far. I may change up the entrance as well as I am not sure if I will be able to find a drawbridge and portcullis that I like to put there.
@Quenten: Lol, not until I can figure out how to get that unicorn picture they have on their castle into perspectives 3 :P
Thank you ScottA. Before my computer died, I used to make my houses into symbols pretty easily by importing them into photoshop and setting the background to transparent and then re-loading them back into CC3+. But I can't afford Photoshop anymore. I've tried it with Krita, and with Gimp but the end result always seems to have a little bit of something left over after it is done so the background isn't transparent. Unfortunately, this means I haven't been able to make symbols out of them anymore
The most important thing is to ensure the original drawing has nice sharp edges - no blur or edge fade inner effects that smudge the outline. Then export the house extremely large (as large as possible, really) and *without any antialiasing or textured background at all*. A clean image.
Then use the little wand select tool to select similar by value, and click on the blank white background.
Make sure the image has an alpha channel by right clicking the layer in the layer column and checking/making an alpha channel
Hit DEL on the keyboard.
Remove the mask
Reduce the size of the image to the scale you want for the symbol.
The effect of reducing the scale will automatically antialias the image for you, and get rid of any tiny imperfections in the transparency extent. The imperfections should be extremely small in the first place because you were dealing with an image that had nice sharp edges.
If that doesn't work, you can grow and feather the selection mask before deleting the background by a couple of pixels.
So, what exactly do you mean when you say "Then export the house extremely large (as large as possible, really)"
The reason I'm wondering is because I know I've exported large things in the past...like 10,000 x 10,000 and it took hours to render. So do you have a set size in mind when you say this?
Whatever size you want the VH res version to be in your catalogue, make it twice as large. (I would be tempted to go for 4x as large if I was minimizing fringe artefacts, but I'm pretty obsessive and I know it). Then when you've dealt with the background reduce it to 50% - back to the size that you wanted it to be in the first place.
That will in effect give you 50% antialiasing (which you will need if you exported it without any antialiasing at all, as recommended) - including on the edge of the image where the house meets the transparency.
I do basically the same thing in GIMP to make my own symbols, as well. It's only difficult if there's any sort of textured background to get rid of, and then you have to use the eraser to clean up edges and floating bits. If you are on a solid background its simple.
Sue, I have one REALLY big problem. It is that I SUCK at anything to do with numbers. So when people start trying to describe anything to do with numbers to me my brain starts feeling like it took a vacation in Antarctica in Bermuda shorts :P In other words. I freeze up!
Anyway, I got it kind of sorted, except I can't figure out why the symbol of my castle is still pixelated but my houses are fine when all of them are made into symbols. Also, I must have done something with the size wrong because the houses come out HUGE and the castle doesn't.
If you look at other ISO symbols from the Profantasy range - ones designed for Perspectives 3. Look at them literally. Go to the actual folder with your file explorer and hover the mouse over one of the VH files for a house of about the same size and shape as the one you want to create. See how many pixels wide and tall that image is.
(I'm looking after sick relatives at the moment and too dog tired to look for you right now)
So lets just say, for the sake of argument and easy numbers that you decide from the comparison that you need to make the new symbol 1000 x 1000 pi square.
I would recommend exporting your render at 2000 x 2000 pi square, without any antialiasing at all, deleting the background by selecting the white with the magic wand tool, and then reducing the resulting image back down to 1000 x 1000 pi square (the size you want it to end up being).
This is twice the linear scale, but 4 x the area.
Is that what you meant?
(I'll be back later, but I've only had a couple of hours sleep before the phone went this morning)
And of course you need to export bigger things much bigger than smaller things, or you won't end up with the same resolution.
Maybe a better way of doing it is to decide how many pixels are going to represent a map unit (the length of a grid square), and then count up the gird squares and work it out that way?
Ok, so I decided to move this one over to my main thread here for my perspectives symbols. This is what I have so far on the Tudor Theatre. I still have to fix the bitmap fill on the inside wall but at least I was able to get a half way decent looking roof put on the place.
That roof was a SERIOUS pain. I'm not sure if I want to tackle it again. I was just happy to get it to this stage. Since perspectives is mainly for isometric views, this was incredibly hard to get the roofs to work like they did. As you can see they thinned out for some reason near the bottom. I think it has something to do with the math at those angles when you get to the bottom of a map but I'm not completely certain.
It also automatically shades some of the roofs when you make them a certain angle too. That is why some of them are darker than others. The only way I know of to get a roof on something is to build a house and then add the roof.
In this case each one of those roofs is actually a house but I did not extend the walls upwards. I just left them completely flat and then made the roof part. The problem is, you can't make round houses with the house tool. Only sharp edged houses. So it was a real trick. But Thanks for letting me know because I may just tackle it eventually anyway. I'm glad to see you sort of approve of the place :P
Thanks ScottA, I've thought about doing a church but I'm still struggling to find a good looking fill for one. I haven't really seen a church with any tudor style wood paneling on it yet but if I do then I will probably try to make one of those. I may go for a cathedral again, only this time more detailed. When I did those other churches, those were just to get a basic shape down to see if the concept was even possible.
EDIT: Oh good, I found one. An Anglican church in the UK has some Tudor style to it. This is great because now I can set to work on a church with Tudor style paneling.
Thanks JimP, I hope this one actually works out. I'm still not really sure if it will work because I have to try to figure out a way to make the inside look like three or four floors of wood balconies where people might sit during a play. Not an easy thing to do on a rounded surface in Perspectives 3, though I do have some ideas for something, it's just a matter of seeing if it will work. Hopefully my next update will be soon.
Comments
@Lorelei: Thanks.
@JimP: Thanks
@Dogtag: Lol, yep. And you would not believe how many times I have had to start over when I think I have a building built right.
@Quenten: Thanks Quenten, I appreciate that. I still want to make a video on how to make the more advanced buildings but they take quite a while to make and I don't want to make the video so long that people just get bored watching it.
Maybe I need to just make a few buildings or something. Or maybe very short videos. One for each building type. Not sure yet how to approach this one.
These are gorgeous, Tony
This must have been a ton of work.
@HadrianVI: Thanks Hadrian VI, it does take a while for the first ones but once you get used to Perspectives everything seems to speed up.
And this castle is magnificent. Perhaps Mad Ludwig's Schwanestein next?!
I've been working on another castle, this one in the Tudor style. I still need to change the background and put more buildings in it but this is the outer wall so far. I may change up the entrance as well as I am not sure if I will be able to find a drawbridge and portcullis that I like to put there.
@Quenten: Lol, not until I can figure out how to get that unicorn picture they have on their castle into perspectives 3 :P
Great work, Tony
The most important thing is to ensure the original drawing has nice sharp edges - no blur or edge fade inner effects that smudge the outline. Then export the house extremely large (as large as possible, really) and *without any antialiasing or textured background at all*. A clean image.
Then use the little wand select tool to select similar by value, and click on the blank white background.
Make sure the image has an alpha channel by right clicking the layer in the layer column and checking/making an alpha channel
Hit DEL on the keyboard.
Remove the mask
Reduce the size of the image to the scale you want for the symbol.
The effect of reducing the scale will automatically antialias the image for you, and get rid of any tiny imperfections in the transparency extent. The imperfections should be extremely small in the first place because you were dealing with an image that had nice sharp edges.
If that doesn't work, you can grow and feather the selection mask before deleting the background by a couple of pixels.
The reason I'm wondering is because I know I've exported large things in the past...like 10,000 x 10,000 and it took hours to render. So do you have a set size in mind when you say this?
That will in effect give you 50% antialiasing (which you will need if you exported it without any antialiasing at all, as recommended) - including on the edge of the image where the house meets the transparency.
Anyway, I got it kind of sorted, except I can't figure out why the symbol of my castle is still pixelated but my houses are fine when all of them are made into symbols. Also, I must have done something with the size wrong because the houses come out HUGE and the castle doesn't.
If you look at other ISO symbols from the Profantasy range - ones designed for Perspectives 3. Look at them literally. Go to the actual folder with your file explorer and hover the mouse over one of the VH files for a house of about the same size and shape as the one you want to create. See how many pixels wide and tall that image is.
(I'm looking after sick relatives at the moment and too dog tired to look for you right now)
So lets just say, for the sake of argument and easy numbers that you decide from the comparison that you need to make the new symbol 1000 x 1000 pi square.
I would recommend exporting your render at 2000 x 2000 pi square, without any antialiasing at all, deleting the background by selecting the white with the magic wand tool, and then reducing the resulting image back down to 1000 x 1000 pi square (the size you want it to end up being).
This is twice the linear scale, but 4 x the area.
Is that what you meant?
(I'll be back later, but I've only had a couple of hours sleep before the phone went this morning)
Maybe a better way of doing it is to decide how many pixels are going to represent a map unit (the length of a grid square), and then count up the gird squares and work it out that way?
@ScottA: Sorry, I didn't see your post earlier. Thanks for the suggestion about cleaning up the edges.
It also automatically shades some of the roofs when you make them a certain angle too. That is why some of them are darker than others. The only way I know of to get a roof on something is to build a house and then add the roof.
In this case each one of those roofs is actually a house but I did not extend the walls upwards. I just left them completely flat and then made the roof part. The problem is, you can't make round houses with the house tool. Only sharp edged houses. So it was a real trick. But Thanks for letting me know because I may just tackle it eventually anyway. I'm glad to see you sort of approve of the place :P
EDIT: Oh good, I found one. An Anglican church in the UK has some Tudor style to it. This is great because now I can set to work on a church with Tudor style paneling.
Thanks JimP, I hope this one actually works out. I'm still not really sure if it will work because I have to try to figure out a way to make the inside look like three or four floors of wood balconies where people might sit during a play. Not an easy thing to do on a rounded surface in Perspectives 3, though I do have some ideas for something, it's just a matter of seeing if it will work. Hopefully my next update will be soon.