Its definitely an improvement. You certainly can't mistake the shadow now
You had me fooled for a moment. I was looking for the new version uploaded with your new comment. Its perfectly all right to upload newer versions along with the comment that goes with them, you know. It gets a bit confusing, especially for old ones like me, if we have to keep going back to the beginning of the thread to see the latest map
Thanks ! And thanks for the funicular idea, that I exploited... The resolution is not very good, but I think now, we can't make the confusion with a road..
On the cartographer's guild, we can put map with much higher resolution (and I'll put this one on that forum too)
What a gorgeous map. I am afraid I just tinker and putz around and am not an artist like some of the members of the community. Thanks for sharing. You have inspired me to play with the program more and see what I can do.
Indeed, the program opens a lot of way to express your ideas... I've been using it (on and off) for two years now, and I'm still learning and discovering new possibilities !
Very beautiful indeed, great work! One thing: the ships do seem a little large in comparison to the rest of the city. Is this on purpose, i.e. have you paid close attention to their scale?
I think you're right... I just check : if the fishing boats on the upper left of the harbour are more or less at the right scale, the others seems too big (I wanted to change the size to avoid too many boats looking just the same). And since I put the big ships after, I might have taken the fishing boats as a landmark for their scale.
To help sell the idea of the cliff, you might consider adding a shadow. Judging from some other objects, it appears the sun is shining from the left or upper-left. You might want to play with adding a shadow over the left side of the upper half of the city (and the cliffside itself), as if cast from the mountain. That said, you'd probably want the shadow to be faint enough so that it does not obscure the marvelous detail of the city, but I think that might help people visualize the height/depth of the mountain and cliff.
I've been looking at your new cliff shadow and thinking that I might be able to get away with only a tenth of the layers I have in Merelan City right now (I'm up to 83), if only I could draw shadow patches like that to cover everything the way you do. How do you decide the shape its going to make as it falls across the city?
Actually I'm not sure I understood completly your question, but I can describe the way I did :
For the shadows, I have 3 layers (and I could have 2) : one for most of the shadows : I make patches where I think there is a shadow, and if I want stronger shadow, I make a second patch over the first one, or I take a stronger patch (less opacity). The second is just to allow me to work on certain shadow more easily (if two shadows are next one another, it's more easy to isolate only one layer, hide all the others, so you can work on the patch you want without touching another patch). The third layer is especially for the drop shadow of the mountain : I took a piece of paper and cut it in the shape of the mountain (a simple peak actually) I made it stand on a table, took a flashlight and played god (well... only the sun...). I looked the shape of the shadow, and I draw a patch on the map. Then I was not happy with the reality, so I erased that shadow and draw a new patch in the way I thought it would give a good impression (so, in the real life, the shadow of the peak would never be like that). Then, in the layer's menu, I put that layer all the way down (I stopped just before the TEXT and the BORDER), so the shadow is over the buildings and the symbols and cover everything.
To know where to put shadows, I looked a lot at topography maps (survey maps ? --- I'm not sure of the words) : they use shadow to give the 3D impression. In Switzerland (in France too, I think) they choose to put the sun on the North West (strange... it would never be there in real life) and then the more the face of the hill, mountain, etc. is facing south east, the more dark is the shadow... (it's a bit short, for an explanation...)
Does it answer your question ?
Sorry if I didn't understand it... Try again : I understand very quick, when the explanation is very long...
Well no. LOL. but what you said was FAR more interesting. I could just imagine you with your model and your flashlight!
Thank you for that image
I think I may be able to explain why a major decision was made way back in time about the standard position of the sun when drawing a relief map. It was discovered by scientists researching how our brains work out the 3D shape from what is only a 2D image. They tried a range of different relief shading styles on a bunch of test subjects and discovered that without any reference points, like shore lines, forests and ice caps the brain sometimes gets confused and turns the shading inside out so that mountains become valleys, and valleys massive mountain ranges. I am particularly prone to this problem it seems. I have a very hard time interpreting relief shading, unless its done to OS standards, and even then I can't 'see' it properly without the contour shading to tell me where the high spots are.
Going back to the research...
This inside-out problem most often happened if the sun was in the south (as you might expect it to be, here in the northern hemisphere). Although no one ever managed to completely explain this peculiarity, the most popular theory is that we interpret a relief map a bit like a picture on a wall, where you might expect most of the light to be coming from above - from the north.
In the Merelan City map I have created a really big relief shading problem, because the sun is coming from the south, in order to show the cliff below the observatory in dramatic shade, so if I was ever going to start drawing false shadows on that map the way that you do, it will be doubly difficult for me to work out where and what shape!
Comments
Did I ?
You had me fooled for a moment. I was looking for the new version uploaded with your new comment. Its perfectly all right to upload newer versions along with the comment that goes with them, you know. It gets a bit confusing, especially for old ones like me, if we have to keep going back to the beginning of the thread to see the latest map
And thanks for the funicular idea, that I exploited...
The resolution is not very good, but I think now, we can't make the confusion with a road..
On the cartographer's guild, we can put map with much higher resolution (and I'll put this one on that forum too)
Have a nice day !
Indeed, the program opens a lot of way to express your ideas... I've been using it (on and off) for two years now, and I'm still learning and discovering new possibilities !
Have fun !
I think you're right... I just check : if the fishing boats on the upper left of the harbour are more or less at the right scale, the others seems too big (I wanted to change the size to avoid too many boats looking just the same). And since I put the big ships after, I might have taken the fishing boats as a landmark for their scale.
I will dial down those ships a little bit !
Thanks for your sharp eye !!!!
Cheers,
~Dogtag
I'll trim down the boat et try the shadow this week-end (a typical cartographer sentence, don't you think ?)
Bye
Ships trimmed down, and I tried to do something with a shadow. Not sure it was successful... Let me know what you think about it...
I've been looking at your new cliff shadow and thinking that I might be able to get away with only a tenth of the layers I have in Merelan City right now (I'm up to 83), if only I could draw shadow patches like that to cover everything the way you do. How do you decide the shape its going to make as it falls across the city?
For the shadows, I have 3 layers (and I could have 2) : one for most of the shadows : I make patches where I think there is a shadow, and if I want stronger shadow, I make a second patch over the first one, or I take a stronger patch (less opacity). The second is just to allow me to work on certain shadow more easily (if two shadows are next one another, it's more easy to isolate only one layer, hide all the others, so you can work on the patch you want without touching another patch). The third layer is especially for the drop shadow of the mountain : I took a piece of paper and cut it in the shape of the mountain (a simple peak actually) I made it stand on a table, took a flashlight and played god (well... only the sun...). I looked the shape of the shadow, and I draw a patch on the map. Then I was not happy with the reality, so I erased that shadow and draw a new patch in the way I thought it would give a good impression (so, in the real life, the shadow of the peak would never be like that). Then, in the layer's menu, I put that layer all the way down (I stopped just before the TEXT and the BORDER), so the shadow is over the buildings and the symbols and cover everything.
To know where to put shadows, I looked a lot at topography maps (survey maps ? --- I'm not sure of the words) : they use shadow to give the 3D impression. In Switzerland (in France too, I think) they choose to put the sun on the North West (strange... it would never be there in real life) and then the more the face of the hill, mountain, etc. is facing south east, the more dark is the shadow... (it's a bit short, for an explanation...)
Does it answer your question ?
Sorry if I didn't understand it... Try again : I understand very quick, when the explanation is very long...
Thank you for that image
I think I may be able to explain why a major decision was made way back in time about the standard position of the sun when drawing a relief map. It was discovered by scientists researching how our brains work out the 3D shape from what is only a 2D image. They tried a range of different relief shading styles on a bunch of test subjects and discovered that without any reference points, like shore lines, forests and ice caps the brain sometimes gets confused and turns the shading inside out so that mountains become valleys, and valleys massive mountain ranges. I am particularly prone to this problem it seems. I have a very hard time interpreting relief shading, unless its done to OS standards, and even then I can't 'see' it properly without the contour shading to tell me where the high spots are.
Going back to the research...
This inside-out problem most often happened if the sun was in the south (as you might expect it to be, here in the northern hemisphere). Although no one ever managed to completely explain this peculiarity, the most popular theory is that we interpret a relief map a bit like a picture on a wall, where you might expect most of the light to be coming from above - from the north.
In the Merelan City map I have created a really big relief shading problem, because the sun is coming from the south, in order to show the cliff below the observatory in dramatic shade, so if I was ever going to start drawing false shadows on that map the way that you do, it will be doubly difficult for me to work out where and what shape!