I'm beginning to think that I might need to do a dungeon scale one as well as a city scale one - I think people liking it over on the FB page are perhaps envisaging a use for this in their dungeon maps... reading between the lines of the comments (dungeon scale is usually 2.5 times the resolution of city scale - for the same size of symbol). But that would mean I would need to do a whole load more stuff to go with it! :O LOL!
People will always want everything (applies to me and my cat too). My advice is to stay focused, you can't fulfill all wishes (at least not at once anyway). City symbols are usually detailed enough to use in dungeon maps anyway, it is only for the extremely deep zoom the difference in resolution is going to be a difference.
With me, its always "I wish this symbol set had more than 5 mountains", or some other such desire. But I do understand what you are saying - and agree
It seems to be that the human condition is to constantly want more than that which currently exists, whether we are talking about apples, pears, pieces of chocolate cake... or symbols in a set! LOL!
Here's another margin doodle (you can tell because its falling off the bottom of the map - hence the white strip).
I'm just pasting things next to each other in a very slapstick fashion - just trying to work out if I need to scale up the rocky outcrops to match the scale of other key symbols that will probably appear with it most frequently.
What do you reckon - bigger rocks to match the scale of the waterfall and bridge?
In the last image, the rocks in the stream/river have more of a 3D appearance than the ones in the image above it, Looks like you might have added a glow to them??
I've attached a pic of some rocks in a stream, they have differing heights and varying "roundness."
I've done 2 outcrop versions now. One as you see it above with boulders in the river, and one without any boulders at the bottom, so people can add their own rocks to taste
Apart from the background stone texture (which is completely flat) the rest is hand drawn with multiple layers of hand shading and one ink drawing (heavily smudged). I find that glows are too even and don't take account of the 3D form of a thing.
GIMP doesn't respond to my tablet properly, so I draw in Krita, where its like drawing on paper with the actual drawing tools if you use a tablet. In this shot you can see the enlarged thumbnail of the rock texture background I used, which is also the rock texture fill for the annual, so it should match up nicely if you have a flat rock plain that drops away over a cliff.
Here is a clue about something else I am working on. Its very draft, having only had a few hours dedicated to it so far, but I wonder if you can guess what very famous building these are based on.
(The map files need a lot of work, but the general shape is about right )
The blue and white one is 100% CC3, exported and married up with the map file in GIMP and reimported as a symbol. The green and cream coloured one is the same export with colour modifications and a distort filter applied (also in GIMP).
I really don't like the new version of GIMP. Not only is the colour palette all messed up with this weirdness that turns everything puce, but the blend modes have been altered quite considerably, so that Addition means something completely different. It caught me out for nearly a whole day. I couldn't work out why my map file was wrong, but then I discovered the legacy blend modes and how to get at them.
Seriously considering uninstalling this version and going back to the last one.
As for GIMP, I'm lucky in that I never remember to check for updates to the program, so I'm still with 2.8.22. However, I know colleagues on a papercrafting forum I frequent have had ghastly problems with 2.10.4, to the point of junking it in favour of 2.8. There've been comments about how updates to GIMP are - perhaps appropriately in this case - a little like playing Russian Roulette...
Thank you, and you are correct! It is indeed St Basil's
GIMP has done something really awful with their default colour palette settings. The way colours are presented in an app is part of the basic foundation - part of what the user expects to stay the same (bar a few very tiny tweaks), but this time the whole thing has completely changed. I don't understand it at all. It seems to consist of nothing but various shades of ghastly pink!
The filters have also been altered, so that even though they have exactly the same name as last time, they do something completely different.
For example, this is the basic map file I created for a conical roof. In the first image the layer is set to "Addition" mode the way it used to be, and in the second image its exactly the same layer but set to the new Addition mode. The red component of a CC3 map file dictates the direction that part of the roof is facing, so I was getting shadows on the light side of the roof as well as the shaded side because there was just too much red in the mix, and I just could not figure out why!
Unfortunately, I now have too many files created by the new version of GIMP, so I can't really get rid of it.
The other really annoying thing is the way the brushes are all messed up. I've marked the dropdown button you need to hit to get at the legacy filter modes with a solid round brush, but its all bitty and spattered everywhere.
I used to do a lot of drawing in GIMP, but I've moved almost entirely over to Krita for all bitmap work, and just use GIMP where I need to have a nice crisp mask edge, since that is the only thing that Krita is really weak on.
Fortunately, none of the map files for the Japanese Temples were generated in GIMP this way, or there would be serious problems with them. Those map files were all created in CC3 and rendered ready for use, using CC3's built in "Add" Blend Mode effect to add the red to the blue base (blue representing how steep the roof is). CC3's 'Add' does exactly the same thing as the legacy GIMP 'Addition'.
Your comments echo those of my paper modelling colleagues regarding GIMP 2.10, Sue. Reviewing the discussion that went on on that other forum, I have the impression that a great many things were changed in this version of GIMP which probably shouldn't have been, making them harder to access or change (in some cases, apparently to the point of impossibility, or at least excessive frustration leading to that same result). Presumably, this was done to streamline the programming in some way, but as one commentator said, it makes it now unusable for all previous users, so this seems to rather defeat the purpose!
And some folks complain that CC3 has a steep learning curve!
Wyvern - The nice thing about being a multi-media mapper, is that when one app goes completely nuts like this its not so hard to move across to another one. Your friends might benefit from trying a few other apps. I suppose its like the old saying about eggs and baskets. I have a few eggs in lots of different baskets, so I can afford to drop one and just carry on with the others.
Krita is quite different, but if what your friends do involves a lot of drawing it might be worth them having a look at it. Krita's only major weakness is the invisible 'haze' that usually results from erasing or masking the background by hand with a brush. Its not visible until you try using the symbol in CC3, and then you become painfully aware that the background is not as invisible as you thought you had made it. My workflow (once I figure out how to create CC3 type maps without using GIMP to generate all the smooth transition blue and red gradients for me) will be to use Krita for everything, and then just open the resulting png in GIMP to select alpha, sharpen the mask, invert and hit delete to get rid of that haze.
I will eventually drop GIMP from my workflow completely. I just need something else that can give me a nice sharp mask to cut clean edges around things, and I'm already looking for it...
Ok. I still have a problem with the map file, though its getting better than it was. The actual graphic has no shading at all, so every bit of the shading in the second screen shot is being produced by the map file.
I have to admit that I'm not terribly good with Wilbur, and that I tried an alternative method of making the map file - by modelling it in Blender as a true 3D object, and attempting to get the shader for the object as close as possible to the parameters of a map file (range of blue and red).
[Image_11520]
I also attempted to make it a varicolour symbol, with limited success.
[Image_11521]
I will continue to work on the shader, and believe I can get a better result than this for the shading, but I am completely at a loss as to why the paler colours in these varicolour impressions seem to lack any shading.
The problem is most noticeable where the varied colour is either very pale, or very dark. The petals of the underlying graphic are all pale grey. If I make the ones that are going to be varicolour a mid tone grey, will that improve the situation? (I'm asking rather than doing any active research and looking things up because I've been working on this non stop for most of the day, and I really need to step away from the laptop right now...)
I have managed to avoid Blender for the most part over the years, so I can't really offer you any specific technical advice on how to do what I'm about to recommend:
The lighting equation used in CC3+ for the map parts of symbols is pretty oversaturated, meaning that small details in the light map disappear entirely. Pushing the scaling factor for your normal higher to span a larger range of 0-255 for the map file. You can do this by scaling the Z (up) component of the normal before translating it to az/el angles, but make sure that you clamp the values into the range of 0 to 255 before writing them to the image.
An easy way to feed this sort of model into Wilbur (should you want to add yet another tool into the chain) is to write the Z value of your model to an image, which will create a heightfield image. I definitely do understand the desire to avoid adding yet more tools into the mix, though.
Thank you so much for helping me with this, Joe. I really wasn't expecting much help with the Blender side of things - so a double thank you.
The blue shading is achieved in a much less technical way than a blend (which I could not get to behave correctly). I'm afraid I'm actually using a parallel light source directly above the object, and adjusting the exact blue of the material and the intensity of the light.
The red shader isn't shown. I've had many more problems with that. It appears that when you use Add as a blend mode for an overlying texture (the red component), I have exactly the same problem as with the new GIMP blend mode - too much red too far around the cone.
Its going to take a lot of tweaking! LOL!
And I haven't even started to consider adding the final twist for the spiral fluting!
I think it will be at least another day before I get this to a point where I can feel happy with the shading.
As for the varicolour problem... I just don't know what to do about that.
There isn't any way to set multiple colors for varicolor symbols because there isn't any place to store that information in the drawing entities. Adding this feature would be a significant modification across the whole system and likely won't happen. I do agree that it would be fun to have, though.
If you want varicolor and roof shading at the same time, try using the green channel of your map file as the indicator for varicolor rather than a separate varicolor file. Check "CD3 roof entities are varicolor" in your symbol definition to use this mode.
The image resulting from a light source directly above the model (that is, looking down the Z axis) should be giving you the Z component of the normal. Putting a light on the X axis will give you the X component of the normal, and one on the Y axis will give you the Y component. The angle (red channel) is a scaled variation atan2(y, x).
It should be possible to pull apart the normal map directly in Blender, but you'd need to do a custom shader for that.
Comments
I'm beginning to think that I might need to do a dungeon scale one as well as a city scale one - I think people liking it over on the FB page are perhaps envisaging a use for this in their dungeon maps... reading between the lines of the comments (dungeon scale is usually 2.5 times the resolution of city scale - for the same size of symbol). But that would mean I would need to do a whole load more stuff to go with it! :O LOL!
With me, its always "I wish this symbol set had more than 5 mountains", or some other such desire. But I do understand what you are saying - and agree
It seems to be that the human condition is to constantly want more than that which currently exists, whether we are talking about apples, pears, pieces of chocolate cake... or symbols in a set! LOL!
I'm just pasting things next to each other in a very slapstick fashion - just trying to work out if I need to scale up the rocky outcrops to match the scale of other key symbols that will probably appear with it most frequently.
What do you reckon - bigger rocks to match the scale of the waterfall and bridge?
Thanks
picky." :-)
When you say 'flat', do you mean the ones at the bottom of the cliff, or the cliff itself?
Not sure what you meant about the rocks being a bit flat - unless its that they are generally rounded rather than spiky
I can do spiky rocks another time. There's just so much water in this theme I decided rounded rocks and boulders were more the ticket.
I've attached a pic of some rocks in a stream, they have differing heights and varying "roundness."
I've done 2 outcrop versions now. One as you see it above with boulders in the river, and one without any boulders at the bottom, so people can add their own rocks to taste
Apart from the background stone texture (which is completely flat) the rest is hand drawn with multiple layers of hand shading and one ink drawing (heavily smudged). I find that glows are too even and don't take account of the 3D form of a thing.
GIMP doesn't respond to my tablet properly, so I draw in Krita, where its like drawing on paper with the actual drawing tools if you use a tablet. In this shot you can see the enlarged thumbnail of the rock texture background I used, which is also the rock texture fill for the annual, so it should match up nicely if you have a flat rock plain that drops away over a cliff.
(The map files need a lot of work, but the general shape is about right
The blue and white one is 100% CC3, exported and married up with the map file in GIMP and reimported as a symbol. The green and cream coloured one is the same export with colour modifications and a distort filter applied (also in GIMP).
I really don't like the new version of GIMP. Not only is the colour palette all messed up with this weirdness that turns everything puce, but the blend modes have been altered quite considerably, so that Addition means something completely different. It caught me out for nearly a whole day. I couldn't work out why my map file was wrong, but then I discovered the legacy blend modes and how to get at them.
Seriously considering uninstalling this version and going back to the last one.
Very impressive!
As for GIMP, I'm lucky in that I never remember to check for updates to the program, so I'm still with 2.8.22. However, I know colleagues on a papercrafting forum I frequent have had ghastly problems with 2.10.4, to the point of junking it in favour of 2.8. There've been comments about how updates to GIMP are - perhaps appropriately in this case - a little like playing Russian Roulette...
GIMP has done something really awful with their default colour palette settings. The way colours are presented in an app is part of the basic foundation - part of what the user expects to stay the same (bar a few very tiny tweaks), but this time the whole thing has completely changed. I don't understand it at all. It seems to consist of nothing but various shades of ghastly pink!
The filters have also been altered, so that even though they have exactly the same name as last time, they do something completely different.
For example, this is the basic map file I created for a conical roof. In the first image the layer is set to "Addition" mode the way it used to be, and in the second image its exactly the same layer but set to the new Addition mode. The red component of a CC3 map file dictates the direction that part of the roof is facing, so I was getting shadows on the light side of the roof as well as the shaded side because there was just too much red in the mix, and I just could not figure out why!
Unfortunately, I now have too many files created by the new version of GIMP, so I can't really get rid of it.
The other really annoying thing is the way the brushes are all messed up. I've marked the dropdown button you need to hit to get at the legacy filter modes with a solid round brush, but its all bitty and spattered everywhere.
I used to do a lot of drawing in GIMP, but I've moved almost entirely over to Krita for all bitmap work, and just use GIMP where I need to have a nice crisp mask edge, since that is the only thing that Krita is really weak on.
And some folks complain that CC3 has a steep learning curve!
Krita is quite different, but if what your friends do involves a lot of drawing it might be worth them having a look at it. Krita's only major weakness is the invisible 'haze' that usually results from erasing or masking the background by hand with a brush. Its not visible until you try using the symbol in CC3, and then you become painfully aware that the background is not as invisible as you thought you had made it. My workflow (once I figure out how to create CC3 type maps without using GIMP to generate all the smooth transition blue and red gradients for me) will be to use Krita for everything, and then just open the resulting png in GIMP to select alpha, sharpen the mask, invert and hit delete to get rid of that haze.
I will eventually drop GIMP from my workflow completely. I just need something else that can give me a nice sharp mask to cut clean edges around things, and I'm already looking for it...
I have to admit that I'm not terribly good with Wilbur, and that I tried an alternative method of making the map file - by modelling it in Blender as a true 3D object, and attempting to get the shader for the object as close as possible to the parameters of a map file (range of blue and red).
[Image_11520]
I also attempted to make it a varicolour symbol, with limited success.
[Image_11521]
I will continue to work on the shader, and believe I can get a better result than this for the shading, but I am completely at a loss as to why the paler colours in these varicolour impressions seem to lack any shading.
The problem is most noticeable where the varied colour is either very pale, or very dark. The petals of the underlying graphic are all pale grey. If I make the ones that are going to be varicolour a mid tone grey, will that improve the situation? (I'm asking rather than doing any active research and looking things up because I've been working on this non stop for most of the day, and I really need to step away from the laptop right now...)
One thing I wouldn't mind, although it may be impossible, is a vari-color symbol that lets me set 2 vari-colors. Vari-color 1 and vari-color 2.
I don't think that's possible, unfortunately.
I also don't think its possible to control the shading effects in the varicolour part of a varicolour roof symbol, but I had to ask.
Maybe we will both be wrong
The lighting equation used in CC3+ for the map parts of symbols is pretty oversaturated, meaning that small details in the light map disappear entirely. Pushing the scaling factor for your normal higher to span a larger range of 0-255 for the map file. You can do this by scaling the Z (up) component of the normal before translating it to az/el angles, but make sure that you clamp the values into the range of 0 to 255 before writing them to the image.
An easy way to feed this sort of model into Wilbur (should you want to add yet another tool into the chain) is to write the Z value of your model to an image, which will create a heightfield image. I definitely do understand the desire to avoid adding yet more tools into the mix, though.
The blue shading is achieved in a much less technical way than a blend (which I could not get to behave correctly). I'm afraid I'm actually using a parallel light source directly above the object, and adjusting the exact blue of the material and the intensity of the light.
The red shader isn't shown. I've had many more problems with that. It appears that when you use Add as a blend mode for an overlying texture (the red component), I have exactly the same problem as with the new GIMP blend mode - too much red too far around the cone.
Its going to take a lot of tweaking! LOL!
And I haven't even started to consider adding the final twist for the spiral fluting!
I think it will be at least another day before I get this to a point where I can feel happy with the shading.
As for the varicolour problem... I just don't know what to do about that.
If you want varicolor and roof shading at the same time, try using the green channel of your map file as the indicator for varicolor rather than a separate varicolor file. Check "CD3 roof entities are varicolor" in your symbol definition to use this mode.
It should be possible to pull apart the normal map directly in Blender, but you'd need to do a custom shader for that.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1161/how-to-make-a-displacement-map-from-existing-3d-geometry describes a technique that will get you a heightmap from your model that Wilbur can process into a normal map.