New Building Styles -Build Posts-

After some of the feedback I received from my Village of Lonburg post I decided to start to work on putting together a new building style build. The build when complete will be posted here for everyone to use. The structures and other goodies will be posted here and as we build this up we can collect the symbols and build them into a new style for the community. Feedback and suggestions are wanted. I was looking at the Herwin style and thought it would be awesome to build a dark gothic CD3 build. So here is my first building I have made tonight for this project. Please give feedback and if you want to contribute discuss your ideas and either make them. If you are not proficient a sketch or idea and we will take it on to make your idea come to life.

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Thanks,

Tony

Here is the Village of Lonburg build I did.
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Comments

  • Here is my second addition, any thoughts?

    image

    Thanks!
  • Oh i like this edition much better! Nice work on these!
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    Oh these look interesting :)

    Will you be generating them as full-blown house symbols with all the trimmings? (I mean map files to shade the rooftops according to the global sun and so on)
  • That is the plan. I am hoping to make it a community effort. So we can all share the build. I finished a keep last night I will be posting later today. I have the trees, bushes, hills, and mountains. Anyone that wants to participate is welcome.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    Sorry ahawk - I'm already half way through doing a style of my own, which is in turn being delayed by real life.

    However, I wish you the best of luck with it. If you haven't already got it the Tome is dead handy for all those little questions about how to do things ;)
  • Keep idea, what do you think?

    image

    Thanks!
  • These are some nice looking top down symbols ahawk1972. I really like the keep. Nice job on everything.
  • Thanks! Always looking for ideas or contributions.
  • Well, certainly more walls and towers for cities is always appreciated. We don't have enough of those. I know we can make them with the City Designer tool but they don't quite look like the keep you made here. Also, gatehouses, temples, bridges and docks are always needed as well. Something of particular interest to me is Asian styled houses. I've been concentrating on Perspectives 3 more than top down so I haven't had a chance to experiment with making my own for that yet. I'm also not proficient in Photoshop or Gimp at all. The only program I'm somewhat proficient in is CC3+.
  • Definitely agree on top view of ancient buildings outside of Europe.
  • I am definitely interested in doing some of those other building styles.

    So on walls would you rather have symbol pieces you can arrange or a style that builds the walls as you draw? like the walls, I did in the Vinhiem post?
  • I personally like symbols because for whatever reason I've never been able to get the walls that build as you draw to look right. Whenever I lay them down in maps and then zoom out or in, I can always see a break in the walls somewhere that ruins the look of the map for me. So I always try to use symbols. I usually overlap them just a bit so that the line between them does not show.

    One thing that I've always wanted but are hard to come by are curved walls. I understand that most walls are straight and it is hard to get curves so that they line up straight but curved walls are something that I'm beginning to see in more and more maps from people that use photoshop. But we don't seem to have any in CC3+.
  • I have used connecting SMC. walls but I like the freedom of using symbols. Easier to put towers gatehouse etc where I want them. I put in roads before city or castle walls.
  • Do you have any screenshots of what you would like to see?
  • Another Keep, what do you think?

    image

    Thanks!
  • Sure. I had to manually place one or two of the square towers as these SMC connecting symbols didn't put towers at the corners.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    Those are quite nice. And especially keeps are always appreciated, because those are a bit underrepresented in CC3+. What I would enjoy to see is also a collection of gatehouses (both for keeps and city walls)
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    As you know from Sue's thread, we are starting to collect various art assets into a common community pack, so I am hoping to include your buildings and such as well. I'd really like to see them getting the full CD3-style building treatment too, making them support roof shading, demographic coloring, and all the other features available, thus making them into proper building symbols.
  • Do you have a tutorial on how to make them into full building treatment? I have many more I have been working on as well as natural features like hills, mountains, and etc..
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    edited March 2018
    Do you have the Tome of Ultimate Mapping (we usually just call it the Tome), ahawk?

    If you do its all explained in full detail in there in the CD3 section under city symbols, starting on page 314.

    I'm not sure how to help you if you don't have the Tome. One step at a time, I suppose :)
  • No I don't have the tome. I guess I should look into getting it. One of my wishes is an exhaustive video tutorial collection. I have yet to find one!
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    edited March 2018
    There are lots of tutorials - most of them very good. Its just that there is so much to cover that most series never get as far as making proper house symbols. That's why the Tome is so huge (619 pages). Its a huge reference book that covers absolutely everything a person will ever need to know about CC3 and its add ons.

    I would strongly recommend getting a copy of the Tome, since explaining all the things you have to do to make a building behave like a typical CD3 building with all its trimmings is quite a drawn out description, and I am not the worlds greatest expert. I can help you with the first step, but I've never gone beyond that myself.

    CD3 buildings consist of two files. The first is the main image file - the visible one, and the second is a shading map which remains invisible, but which affects the shading on the angled rooftops according the angle and direction of the global sun.

    This second file is similar to a normal map, but the colour channels are not used the same way, so that is where the similarity ends. Information about roof slope angle is stored as a blue value in the range 128 to 255 (vertical to flat), while information about the direction the roof is facing is stored as a red value between 0 and 255. East = 0 or 255, North = 64,
    West = 128, South = 192.

    That's the basic concept of a map file very briefly explained (and possibly not very well). Rather than try to describe the process of making a map file I've uploaded a very simple 'lego brick' construction part I made, along with its map file. Since you are clearly an experienced PS user it shouldn't be too hard (I hope) for you to determine answers for some of the immediate questions you may have just by examining the files. Things like: Yes they do have to be absolutely the same size, and yes, only the sloping parts of the roof are coloured according to the facing angle and slope.

    [Image_10529]

    [Image_10530]
  • ScottAScottA Surveyor
    There isn't an "exhaustive" video tutorial collection. There are a number of great videos made by a handful of different people, but taken together they're sort of a hodgepodge in as much as they all focus on different aspects of CC3+. They are all mostly really good and very helpful, but it's not like a class on how to use every aspect of CC3+ step-by-step. The Tome is really the closest thing you'll get to that, with all the videos as great supplementary tutorials on their particular topics.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    edited March 2018
    Here is a slightly more complicated building as an example - a spire with very steep sides.

    [Image_10531]

    The map file in this case includes shading information for the ridges because they slope. The ball at the top of the spire I have also shaded to make it look round.

    [Image_10532]
  • ScottAScottA Surveyor
    I'm tinkering with making CD3 building symbols, so we'll see what I come up with... I'm hoping to do a Celtic village as well as various medieval village buildings.
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