[Mapping Competition] WIP: Areneae Keep
Monsen
Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
This is the beginning of my outside map for Areneae Keep for Lorelei's mapping competition. Thanks for creating the competition with these great prizes.
I've started with the outside, but the plan, if I have the time, is to make interior maps as well.
Right now, the map isn't anything to look at. I need to get the structure in place first before I decorate it.
My map shows the main keep from the area map. Since the area map shows multiple buildings here, I decided that the main building is a single fortified building, and not a full castle with walls and multiple buildings inside the walls, I am thinking it is a bit more spread out because of how the buildings are placed on the map. Perhaps there once was a main wall blocking the pass that gives access to the keep?
One of my main challenges here is to give this a ruined look. Perspectives itself doesn't really offer much in the area of broken walls, so I need to draw this myself. Getting the perspective right on these things is quite tricky. Getting parts to fit, like the floor that wraps around the tower and is partially in front of it and partially behind it is also an interesting challenge.
Just getting this far required a lot of construction lines, some maths, and a good understanding of the various coordinate systems in CC3+.
I've started with the outside, but the plan, if I have the time, is to make interior maps as well.
Right now, the map isn't anything to look at. I need to get the structure in place first before I decorate it.
My map shows the main keep from the area map. Since the area map shows multiple buildings here, I decided that the main building is a single fortified building, and not a full castle with walls and multiple buildings inside the walls, I am thinking it is a bit more spread out because of how the buildings are placed on the map. Perhaps there once was a main wall blocking the pass that gives access to the keep?
One of my main challenges here is to give this a ruined look. Perspectives itself doesn't really offer much in the area of broken walls, so I need to draw this myself. Getting the perspective right on these things is quite tricky. Getting parts to fit, like the floor that wraps around the tower and is partially in front of it and partially behind it is also an interesting challenge.
Just getting this far required a lot of construction lines, some maths, and a good understanding of the various coordinate systems in CC3+.
Comments
Looking forward to this
When working with the battlements, I did figure out something new. You can actually store relative coordinates in a variable. They'll have to be stored in a string variable, and not a point variable, but that doesn't really matter. Storing "<330,10" in a variable saved me from a bunch of typing.
Working with this have been quite tricky, because I often have the need for an entity top be behind another entity at one location, and in front of it in another, such as the floor wrapping around the tower. This is one of the things that sounds so easy on paper, but is really difficult to get right in practice. Due to this, this small progress did take a considerable amount of time to pull off.
Still just working on the structure of the drawing, decoration is still way off.
Doesn't look like much progress, but there is a lot of detail work here, taking a lot of hours to complete.
I'm very impressed. Having messed with Per3 only a couple of times I know just about enough to understand how much work that really was!
That must have taken such a lot of patience!
This latest iteration use light sources for some of the effects. These are nice, but they are extremely tricky in a perspectives map. Everything about perspectives is made to trick our minds that this flat 2D drawing is actually three-dimensional. So our brains starts to thing about the walls as shape we can "go around", and that can have things behind them. And as such, it is easy to think that I could just place a light source behind a wall and let it shine out from behind it. Unfortunately, this isn't possible. No matter ho much our brains are fooled, it is still a 2D-drawing, and CC3+ aren't fooled. Where we see the top of the wall meeting the side of the wall at a 90 degree angle, CC3+ only sees two polygons side by side, and what we perceive as rectangles with 90-degree corners, CC3+ sees as a Rhombus with 60 degree and 120 degree corners. Thus, there isn't a "wall" to hide the light behind, it is only a flat polygon that would just completely block it. The geometric designs of such a map also means that the walls won't block light the same way as we would expect either, so relying on entities to block the light is much more problematic than in a standard top down dungeon map.
Otherwise a brilliant model/map
I trust the coloring much more on my primary and secondary monitors though, as they are expensive Eizo monitors designed for graphical work.
You'll find a high-resolution version of the map here.
Below are a couple of images from the map.
1. The full map
[Image_14723]
2. The keep
[Image_14724]
3. Closeup of the keep entrance
[Image_14725]
For the broken wall pieces I used a darker texture that fits the wall better. It kind of hides all my hard work in making those holes, but it makes the hole itself look much better, and that's the entire point.
For the battlements, I experimented with a bunch of different textures, but I found that it looked rather horrible once it became too busy, so I went with a simpler cracked texture rather than more elaborate stones that I have used for the rest of the walls.
Also added some fallen roof beams to the collapsed insides.
This may also be a bit difficult to pick up because of the perspective, but the keep is 4 floors tall (towers are about 6), the two bottom floors are intact, the collapsed section is the two topmost floors. And of course, there is a basement below the thing, hiding all kinds of nice horrors (and treasure, if the GM feels particularly generous).
Nicely done!
Click image for high resolution version
[Image_14755]
I actually used the keep in my game this weekend, having it inhabited by a powerful Aranea (spider/humanoid shapeshifter). She has been extorting tribute from a nearby village in return for protecting them from the dangers of the land. Of course, the threats she protect them from are real, but they are left at the very edge of existence, with minimal food and resources. Something especially the Paladin of the party don't care much for. Ended the session with a cliffhanger, they are in her throne room (in the dungeon below the keep), and after talking with her, things are just about to go to combat.