Seeking Advice: Creating a Handrawn Map Handout
LordEntrails
Traveler
So I'm looking to make some player handouts that represent the maps that other adventurer's may have made while exploring a dungeon (Undermountain). So I need to come up with a border that looks like torn/ripped/crude parchment, leather, or papyrus (any one would be fine). And then I need a fill and a symbol style that would go with this.
I've been trying to find something both in my install and on the forums here, but no luck. If someone knows of a tutorials or has any suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated. (I have CC3+, CD, DD, SS1-4, TUM)
I've been trying to find something both in my install and on the forums here, but no luck. If someone knows of a tutorials or has any suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated. (I have CC3+, CD, DD, SS1-4, TUM)
Comments
Note that when starting a new map, the filled symbols are loaded by default, but for handdrawn maps, I prefer the hollow ones. You should be able to switch to these by pressing the symbol style toggle button twice.
For better parchment options, I recommend the June 2007 annual.
When you start a new project in CC3+, you will want to have a good idea of the ratio/scale for the parchment paper. Creating a map with the same scale will ensure that the paper fits inside your project though you can certainly stretch it as needed - it is just easier to make it work from the start. So know the the dimensions of the paper and scale the source to match - if it were 1000 x 750, you might do 100x75 or 200x150 - just keep the scale accurate.
Once the project is up, create a layer just above the BACKGROUND layer (I named mine PARCHMENT). Make sure the parchment layer is active, then click on DRAW --> INSERT FILE. Browse-up your parchment paper (having it in a final resource folder is a good idea here) and insert it, dragging it around to scale it. You will probably need to tweak it a bit, but once it aligns, you are ready to start mapping. Once you have this, hide the BACKGROUND layer/sheet.
From here, you are likely to be a bit disappointed with the CC3+ assets available. The problem is that B&W sets actually incorporate WHITE into the symbols - very few symbol sets are just black with transparent bits. Anyhow, you can use the various line tools to hand-draw the map - and you will get an appropriately hand-drawn appearance by doing this. Here you will want to pay attention to line thickness and probably be a bit heavy handed.
You might also want to look at the TREASURE MAP set. It might have a lot of what you want (it actually starts on parchment paper, though it is not torn). It does fill to match the default paper, so no point in changing the background if you use this set.
Tim
I had read in another thread about the B&W symbols having a white background so that was one of my concerns. I don't need to many symbols, maybe those in SS2 will be sufficient.
I'll share any parchments I create and an example or two or what I come up with. Thanks
Unfortunately, they do have white in them, but that since they are vector symbols, it is easy to remove. Simply explode the symbols, then use the erase tool, select the entire symbol, combine it with And (Both) and select by color and pick white. This allows you to erase just the white part. And you can do this on all the symbols at once, once you are done placing them.
So I ended up making my own parchments. I put together a tutorial and a bunch of images that I've released into the public domain. Couldn't get them to upload in a new post here, so started a thread on the Cartographer's Guild; https://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=38383&p=344481#post344481
Here's the first map, I did not add any effects. This would be a handout in the best of shape/condition. Suggestions for good effects welcome, critiques welcome.
My only suggestion - fade the paper quite a bit as it seems a bit too dark for me. Paper should be nearer the tone of the content area of this board IMHO.
But, as Sue says, it's easy to adjust how light/dark the paper is once you have it. Not only can you do it in Gimp, but you should be able to do it in CC3+ with sheet effects without too much trouble. (A little transparency I suspect?)
Here's another one I did last night (after burning one of my paper samples) a bit. I added some blur and transparency to the lines/text to see how I like that. Again, this paper was still wet, so it's pretty dark too. (Burning wet paper gave me lots of the smokey black and allowed the burn to be controlled easier than the dry paper I burned.)
After replying yesterday, I genned up several sheets of 'parchment' paper. No work done on the edges or overt stains added. I created them - anyone can use them without crediting me or worrying about copyright issues. What's 75 minutes of goofing off with a graphics package compared to good karma?
Tim
The tutorial I linked above is really easy (plus it has 8 examples that are free to use commercially). It probably took me an hour to create three samples, and several variants using each sample. All from one grocery bag. Since then I have made nearly a dozen more images using those three samples by doing various distressing (folding like a letter, sitting on it for a few hours, crumbling one up like a ball, creatively burning two of them...)
I have a scanner, but if I can work digitally, I am gonna do it though at some point, it is probably more time effective to scan.
Tim
The seamless ones are about 3000 px, which is 3 x the size of normal CC3 textures, so be aware that they may fractionally slow down the reaction time of the texture picker. Some of the non seamless ones are quite large, files, so be aware of that before you start to download any of them.
You can use any of these textures for private or commercial work without credit, but if you redistribute them in any way as textures in their original form they are free textures and not for sale.
You're still going to have to work on the edges with these, but there are plenty of ways of doing that in GIMP, and also in CC3
EDIT: oh yes - all those files are jpg files, which you can convert in a millisecond by opening them in GIMP and exporting as a png. (CC3 textures are always png files)
Background completely white.
Draw a raggedy outline on a sheet above the background with the freehand pencil tool, and turn it into a poly by right clicking the fractalize tool and picking Path to Poly. Change the attributes to fill the poly with a paper texture of your choice. Use inner glow with deep brown for burned effect.
If you want an uneven burned effect duplicate the poly you have just drawn onto the sheet above it, and have no inner glow effect, but add a slight edge fade inner effect. Then adjust the shape of the uppermost unburned piece of paper inside the outline of the first bit until you have variously covered (or not covered) the full extent of the glow on the sheet below it.
You can use blur to shade things, with several overlaid sheets with different blurs on them, but different thickness lines is something I've not seen as yet.
[Image_8946]
I guess that you can have a much better results if you create your own displacement texture...
Sorry Joe - I'm interviewing today and haven't got time to try it out!
Hadrian, can you recommend HSV values? I can't find anything that appears to make any change to the parchment image.
Small features (high frequency detail) in the input image will result in small features in the final result. The noise image that I posted is full of high-frequency detail (well, detail at all scales, which is what makes it a fractal) and those small details in the input cause small details in the output. The ball image that Gathar used is very low frequency detail, which results in smooth displacements in the output.
The displace filter works by loading the displacement map and then using the red and green channels or each pixel in that image to control how far away and in what direction the final pixel will be fetched. A red pixel value from 0 to 127 fetches to the left; one from 128 to 255 fetches to the right of the current position. The green channel has the same rules, but vertically. If the bump map checkbox is set, the input image is converted to a height map and then the normal map for that surface is used as the displacement map. The attached image shows the difference between the bump map checkbox on and off.
There are some serious practical limitations to the displace filter what mostly stem from the use of nearest-neighbor sampling of the inputs. A better sampling technique would give less noise when things are scaled, but it would be many times slower.
That has explained so much. Now at least when I get down to trying it out I will have a good idea of which textures to try out first
Please don't stop! I'm learning lots, even if I don't understand it all!!
You and me both, LE
Simply increase the Lightness value and click Apply to see how much it has affected your paper. Once you get it a bit paler you can alter how grey or colourful it is by playing with the Saturation value (you can go negative as well as positive with the values). I assume you already have it the colour you want it, but adjusting the Hue value will slide it along the spectrum away from the colour it is in either direction.
Hope that helps