The futzing has commenced! A very basic inner fade that works to set the idea of shade, with some additional work I can do for the other edges. Only now I'm getting a light glow coming from all the buildings. If this were a nighttime scene, I'd be all about it, but in the day it just sorta ruins the effect. The shade sheet is basically right under my text sheets in the hierarchy, so it should be covering all the buildings with no problem. Any thoughts?
That kind of interference is most often between two effects on different sheets. In this case it looks very much as if the sheet those houses are on has a glow effect that happens to be exactly the same colour as the shadow effect, and most likely both are black? Try changing the glow to dark brown.
Edge fade inner, black, edge width 50 units and 20% central opacity. I tried changing the buildings inner glow to dark brown with limited effect. Okay, 0 effect. Changing the color of the shade itself to the darkest brown of the premade options did the trick though. Strange that it's no longer conflicting with the brown of the glow now that the buildings have had that change, too. I changed the inner opacity to about 25% to compensate for the drop in darkness overall from going brown.
There, no more glow, and it even gives a teeny hint of a smog effect.
The shadow effect looks good, but I don't know if it looks yet like the mountain is casting the shadow. Should I just accept that there's literally no perfect way to make a 2-D object look 3-D, and that this isn't bad for a first time attempt, or do you have any ideas for things I should look at to give it that extra sense of depth?
You could overlay the Mountain with a dark Polygon on a separate sheet with an edge fade, inner effect on it and an inner oppacity of 0% and an outer oppacity of 20-30.
That could give the Mountain the illusion of being darker at groundlevel and thus seeming to be 3d
You've got it mostly ok already, but just imagine that you have laid the mountain down on its side like a gigantic fallen chess piece. the shape of it represents the shadow it might cast. You might see that there are more jagged bits at the top of the shadow.
I am pretty much officially done fiddling with this. I could add a couple more things, but for the most part I feel like I've made a pretty good city, esp. for a first time. (Also, I've been done with it for a couple weeks and just forgot to update, oops.)
Comments
The futzing has commenced! A very basic inner fade that works to set the idea of shade, with some additional work I can do for the other edges. Only now I'm getting a light glow coming from all the buildings. If this were a nighttime scene, I'd be all about it, but in the day it just sorta ruins the effect. The shade sheet is basically right under my text sheets in the hierarchy, so it should be covering all the buildings with no problem. Any thoughts?
How are you doing the shadow?
That kind of interference is most often between two effects on different sheets. In this case it looks very much as if the sheet those houses are on has a glow effect that happens to be exactly the same colour as the shadow effect, and most likely both are black? Try changing the glow to dark brown.
Edge fade inner, black, edge width 50 units and 20% central opacity. I tried changing the buildings inner glow to dark brown with limited effect. Okay, 0 effect. Changing the color of the shade itself to the darkest brown of the premade options did the trick though. Strange that it's no longer conflicting with the brown of the glow now that the buildings have had that change, too. I changed the inner opacity to about 25% to compensate for the drop in darkness overall from going brown.
There, no more glow, and it even gives a teeny hint of a smog effect.
Most things can be sorted out by tweaking the effect a bit.
Looks good :)
The shadow effect looks good, but I don't know if it looks yet like the mountain is casting the shadow. Should I just accept that there's literally no perfect way to make a 2-D object look 3-D, and that this isn't bad for a first time attempt, or do you have any ideas for things I should look at to give it that extra sense of depth?
You could overlay the Mountain with a dark Polygon on a separate sheet with an edge fade, inner effect on it and an inner oppacity of 0% and an outer oppacity of 20-30.
That could give the Mountain the illusion of being darker at groundlevel and thus seeming to be 3d
Increasing the strength of the shadow?
You've got it mostly ok already, but just imagine that you have laid the mountain down on its side like a gigantic fallen chess piece. the shape of it represents the shadow it might cast. You might see that there are more jagged bits at the top of the shadow.
I am pretty much officially done fiddling with this. I could add a couple more things, but for the most part I feel like I've made a pretty good city, esp. for a first time. (Also, I've been done with it for a couple weeks and just forgot to update, oops.)
A great city. Could it be included in the Atlas somewhere?
I would probably say yes if I knew what the Atlas was.
Have a look - over 525 maps.
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