City rooftops project - part I

Loopysue

Is it ok to use the same fills and frills as a PF style, and to mimic everything - even down to the roof ridges and the black outline?

I don't know.

I guess it wouldn't matter if I was only going to use these for myself, but when I started drawing these little houses I was going to use them in Sanctuary and upload them to the Atlas.

Hmmm...

I've abandoned this project for now, since I don't think its right.

Sorry everyone! I know I said I would make a set. The trouble is that for Sanctuary I really needed that set to match the existing styles. I will carry on using shaded poly constructions instead. You can still have those when I've finished the city and uploaded it :)

Loopysue

Ok, I don't feel right copying the existing styles, so I'm trying to make a new one altogether.

One of the problems I've been having with Sanctuary is that its kind of southern Mediterranean/north African latitude, and there aren't any roof textures like Spanish barrel tiles. So I tried to make one.

I don't think it really goes with any of the other textures I'm using in Sanctuary, but I'd like to know if anyone else would be interested in a new set done with this texture.

(The roof ridge is terrible, by the way. That's not how its going to look when I'm done with it)

Lorelei

Personally i'd LOVE a barrel tiled roof fill.

Loopysue

Its not quite perfect yet, Lorelei. For some reason I can't quite fathom at the moment its a little bit blurry compared to the fills of the standard sets I'm going to be trying to mix these with. I also need to do a darker and lighter version as well for variety between the houses of the set. These tiles weather all different shades, so having only one texture is going to look a bit false.

I don't know what stage the plans for a community art collection are at, but I'm kind of hoping that everything will come together in such a way that by the time I finish making the full set I might be able to upload it to the collection and use the actual buildings in Sanctuary - where they are badly needed.

JimP

Yes, its not perfect. I think I can barely see one or two pixels slightly off. Not being sarcastic. I'm astounded you think its 'off'. I think its fantastic !

And it doesn't matter if it goes with the other textures or not, I would use it at the drop of a hat.

ScottA

I think the difference I notice is that the tile roof looks photographic while the others are all obviously drawn. That's easy enough to rectify by running it through the cartoon filter in GIMP which will turn it into more of a drawing than a photograph.

Loopysue

I'm spending a day trying various different methods producing lots of variations of the fill. I do tend towards photorealism, but I can see that's not doing me any favours right now ;)

Loopysue

Wow that last one was bright!

I hadn't realised just how bright it was.

Ok. I've toned it down a lot, and sorted out the ridge and a chimney. Any comments/suggestions?

Lorelei

That does make it look a lot more like the CC3+ city set

Loopysue

There's something else I hadn't thought of. I haven't put any swatches of the other City roof fills down around it to see if this one will go with all the shaded poly buildings I've got in Sanctuary.

Its still oddly fuzzy. If you look at the wooden building above it - how clean the lines around the tiles are?

JoeyD473

I really like this rooftop.

I agree it looks a little fuzzy

Loopysue

Thanks Joey :)

There's still some work to do on the texture to make it work properly. I think the problem is the amount of texturing I've put on the tiles. Its kind of drowning the more delicate lines defining them.

That's the theory anyway ;)

JimP

As long as it isn't growing mold, I don't see the fuzzy bits on the roof.

Loopysue

Believe me, Jim. Its fuzzy.

That's a 1500 pixel texture, and its crystal clear. For some reason, though, its breaking down when applied to a shaded polygon. I must have some rather pale/dark pixels in it that are causing problems. Its either that or the texturing of the tiles.

I'll try applying a levels node to the texture to trim either end of the colour range, so that nothing is too close to either white or black.

Levels nodes have a tendency to muck up the colour in strange and unexpected ways, though, so I may have to play around with it quite a bit more.

ScottA

I like the toned down version much better. Yes, a bit fuzzy, but you should be able to correct that with a sharpen filter.

Loopysue

I think the lines are too thin, Scott. They're disappearing into a load of fuzzy pixels.

An interesting effect here - the original has really dark roof flanks(?), but the moment I converted it and its map file into a symbol it turned really pale.

That took an awful lot of messing around! LOL!

I'm wondering if I did something wrong that it went so pale?

Loopysue

I have a problem.

Well, in fact I have several problems relating to the drawing and how to make the roof ridge stand out more etc, but this particular problem you can see below is one I can't solve by myself.

When I reflect my newly made symbol the shading also flips over and is the wrong way around. I've obviously done something wrong, because none of my other symbols have this problem. I just don't know what.

Loopysue

Where is the sun? Why, of course - its in the middle!

OldGuy

I agree with your reservations over releasing images that are modifications of someone else's work. But before completely abandoning that project, you might look into securing rights from the original artist(s) to create a derivative work. You do such beautiful work, it would be a shame to lose the work you did there without at least checking to see if maybe the original artist would be ok with it.

That said, your new creations are quite beautiful as well. I hope you'll keep adding to them.

One last comment. More of a question, really. Would someone with a hay roof (or similar) have a chimney? I honestly don't know, but it seems dangerous to me? Please don't take it as a criticism. I was just curious.

Loopysue

Thanks OldGuy :)

The first image I showed included unaltered houses from the main CD3 styles dotted around the ones I was working on, and which I carefully cut in half so that they could not be used. The building in the rectangle is the one I drew from scratch using the fills available in CD3. Initially I was deliberately trying to make them look like the PF styles because I wanted to mix and match them in a map without them looking odd, but a couple of hours after I started I realised it wasn't a great thing to do if I wanted to share them. So I stopped.

Can I take it as a compliment that I managed to make my wooden skillet and lean to house look so similar to the CD3 wooden building that it might have been mistaken as a modified symbol? :)

There isn't a set of buildings done in the reed style. I drew that one from scratch as well, and extrapolated what it might look like based on the existing thatched style immediately above it. But again - I was using the PF fills to make it.

That's why I abandoned them (they are now deleted), and moved onto creating my own style with my own fills, which will hopefully be compatible with the PF styles to increase the variety. I just need to sort out a few things, like this strange problem with the mirroring not working properly, and the uncomfortable way the roof ridge just doesn't look right, and the way the lines defining the edges of the tiles are disintegrating somewhere between a perfectly good texture and the render.

I hadn't really thought about the straw and chimney issue before now. Maybe if a house had a roof made of loose straw it would be quite a risk to have a fire without a stone chimney to insulate the thatch from the sparks and cinders, though I've learned quite recently that stone age roundhouses had no chimney at all - not even a hole in the roof in most cases. The smoke just filtered out through the thatch. I guess the weather must have been much worse back then, and the thatch almost permanently damp from the rain. I do remember it being explained to me that there was a lot more rain in the UK a couple of thousand years ago. That's why most stone age settlements are located much higher up the slope, or on the tops of hills, whereas we tend to build our modern towns in the valleys by the rivers these days.

OldGuy

Posted By: LoopysueCan I take it as a compliment that I managed to make my wooden skillet and lean to house look so similar to the CD3 wooden building that it might have been mistaken as a modified symbol?

Most definitely!

Posted By: LoopysueI hadn't really thought about the straw and chimney issue before now. Maybe if a house had a roof made of loose straw it would be quite a risk to have a fire without a stone chimney to insulate the thatch from the sparks and cinders

Actually, it was the fire itself that was my concern. I guess I wasn't very clear. Sorry. It was seeing the chimney, that implied a fire, that piqued my curiosity.

Posted By: Loopysue[...] though I've learned quite recently that stone age roundhouses had no chimney at all - not even a hole in the roof in most cases. The smoke just filtered out through the thatch. I guess the weather must have been much worse back then, and the thatch almost permanently damp from the rain. I do remember it being explained to me that there was a lot more rain in the UK a couple of thousand years ago. That's why most stone age settlements are located much higher up the slope, or on the tops of hills, whereas we tend to build our modern towns in the valleys by the rivers these days.

I did not know that. Always fun to learn something. Thanks!

AndrewPFreeman

Not mapping related, but since we are talking about it ....I believe experimental archaeology with reconstruction of roundhouses shows that a hole in the roof causes a "forced draft effect" which fans the fire and ignites the thatch. Without a hole, if built correctly, the smoke collects in the roof apex above head height as it filters out. It has the added benefit of reducing insect infestation in the thatch and prolongs the life of the building. I am not sure if this holds true for an apex roof but certainly early medieval halls in England had a central hearth, with no chimney, possibly a louvre arrangement in a tiled roof. Apologies for the digression. And settlement location is a whole big topic by itself. Mapping matters will now resume.

Loopysue

Oh is THAT how it works!

No. Don't apologise - I've learned something new and interesting today.

Thank you :)

ScottA

As I continue to work on my Celtic village symbol set I am learning more and more about such matters, and they are fascinating. I have also run across the idea that a hole in the roof creates updrafts which could ignite the thatch. And the idea that the smoke was also an inhibitor to pests and fungi. Fascinating stuff, this history thing! LOL!

Loopysue

The more I learn, the more I realise just how ignorant I am! LOL!

I'm still having a problem with reflecting house symbols. But I've just discovered that it may be a glitch.

This is my test symbol reflected, alongside one of the Bitmap A thatch cottages, also reflected.

As you can see the PF symbol is also reversed. Has it always been this way? I mean, has it always been the case that if you reflect a shaded symbol the shading is also reflected? I don't remember if I had this problem before and just got used to it being that way (therefore remembering never to reflect them), or if this is a new thing.

[Image_11106]

The ok ones are on the right, as you can tell by the roof shading matching the shadow.

ScottA

Hm... now I'm just taking an uneducated, non-techie guess, but since the buildings are made up of two symbols, basically, perhaps the second one with the shade code (the _map one) doesn't flip when you mirror the symbol. But then... wouldn't there be errant shading on the ground where the house indent is? I'm likely wrong, but that's my first thought.

jslayton

All of the fills look to be mirrored when this geometry is mirrored. The shading fills probably shouldn't be, because that's flipping all of the normals.

Loopysue

Thank you Jo :)

I'm a bit confused, but that sounds like its not the done thing to reflect a building.

Ok, I can live with that. I just need to make sure I don't design this set with a bias towards one side or the other - favouring more detail on the right or left, or having a subconscious feeling about which way round things 'should be', but draw them all equally. Maybe I will just draw them and flip every other drawing over to make sure there's no bias.

I've finally figured out how to resolve all the little issues I was having with the actual drawing, and while the texture is still a little hard and a bit dark (I'll work on it some more), I've created the first draft symbol to the kind of quality I was aiming for.

ScottA

It looks good. I'd say you've pretty much nailed it.

Loopysue

Thanks, Scott :)

Now I've just got to perfect that fill so its not so contrasty and over-sharp, do the other 40 symbols... and the extras... and a windmill, watermill, several variations of tower, and a few ruins... and then all the varicolour symbols...

Shouldn't take more than a couple of days :)

Seriously, though, I've learned a lot about making symbols today that breaks all the rules I've always taken for granted in general digital art. The biggest one of those is that antialiasing anything is bad, because any semi-transparent pixels around the edge of a shaded symbol turn white!

Yes - I take back all the things I usually say about rendering things at twice the final size and reducing them to reduce the blemishes and errors. The best way seems to be to draw the things in CC3 exactly to the final scale, render them out at 40 pixels per foot... without any antialiasing at all... delete the background with a nice pin sharp mask that doesn't use any antialiasing either, then put the image and map file together and that's it.

I'm making the map files in CC3 and rendering them ready-made. That's what the boxes are for in the earlier images - to define the exact extent of the render area for each one. All I do is duplicate the image drawing and turn the relevant bits of it the right colour for the map file. Then I don't have to mess around for hours in GIMP.

Loopysue

I've been working on the glowing red to tone it down, and a tower that took far longer to get right than it should.

[Image_11111]

[Image_11112]