Scaling Bitmap Fills
jmabbott
🖼️ 39 images Mapmaker
Hi All,
I'm trying to draw a ruined, multi-level keep tower. My plan is to have 3 floors sheets; FLOORS GF, FLOORS L1 & FLOORS L2 using the same bitmaps at slightly different scales on each sheet. There will be a COLOR KEY effect on Floors L2 & L1 with the larger COLOR KEY effect on L2.
I can't figure out how to have the same bitmap fill at different scales (smallest to largest in sheet order) on the various sheets, is that even possible?
Comments
You need to make three copies of the fill. Just select the fill you want to duplicate in the fill style dialog, and hit New and give it a name. This will give you two different fills, but still pointing to the same file on disk, and you can then adjust each individually. Just repeat for the third one.
Here's what I've got so far. It's getting late here, so I'll attack it again tomorrow.
Looks good, but you've got a touch of transparency acne on those topmost wall sections. You can cure that by copying them onto a new sheet directly below and changing the fill of the copies to solid and any colour that isn't in that fill. 227 is a good one.
Already fixed before I went to bed...
Changed the fill style for the crenellations to be the same as the base wall. Copied them to new sheets directly below and above. The below sheet was coloured solid red with no sheet effects; the sheet above very light grey with an Overlay blend mode at 25% to lighten them a tad.
The jury is out on whether I'll bother with the floor fill styles, it looks OK and at print size most of the detail will be lost anyhow...
Still to add the remaining walls, primary residence and outbuildings as ruins. Then I've got a complicated city map to do by the end of next week! Thanks heavens there's not a lot on TV! Though the weekend is pretty full with family and other stuff...
Debris on the lower floors looks a little flat; as if it's part of the floor itself, not sitting on it.
Also, if the structure is stone, the fractured edges look odd. Generally, if damaged, you'd expect entire stones to drop out, or parts of individual stones, as well as leaving surface damage to those that survive. The very fiddly raggy edges that cut slightly into neighbouring stones and wander across others look very unnatural. Right now it looks very like the floors are made of thin sheets of acetone-melted expanded polystyrene.
That impression is also reinforced by the lack of stone debris on the floors below; it just seems to have vanished.
You might want to tweak the shadows on the upstanding parts of the battlements; it's strange to have the same length of shadows from them on the ground as on the roof, as if the roof's floor is actually level with the grassy surface, and the tower's interior is really below ground.
A bit of an update...need to tweak a couple of things but this is essentially done. One more map to go and that's a city map...