Isometric town symbols - further developments

Loopysue · February 2019

Hi Everyone

This is an extract of the current rendering from the Corvallen map, which is the sample map contained in the February issue of Profantasy's 2019 Cartographer's Annual.

[Image_12208]

While I am generally pleased with the overall effect, there are a few things I wish to redress - even though the annual is about to be published even as I write this.

I will be working on some of the symbols and sheet effects to make everything look better, with the aim of producing some kind of update package for Profantasy to issue not too long into the future.

I welcome any comments/suggestions/requests while I am still working on the improvements.

Loopysue · February 2019

First I'd like to have yet another go at the sheet effects.

The first thing that I want to tweak is the shadows. There is already a Wall shadow, Directional effect on the building symbols in the town, but the direction of the global sun means that the chimneys are casting shadows on the roads behind them, which doesn't look right if you are zoomed into the map.

To cure this I have replaced that effect with a drop shadow set to 270 degrees (meaning the light is coming from due north and casting the shadows due south).

I then had to hide the ROADS Town sheet which added detail to the streets in the town, because the new shadow effect and the details were starting to get confused.

I have copied and pasted both the drop shadow and the glow effect onto both the wall sheets as well, even though doing this has caused my hand drawn shadows to vanish and the walls and towers to look comparatively flat. I have a memory of trying this before in the early stages and rejecting the idea in favour of hand drawn shadows, but now I'm not so sure. I think maybe I should have adjusted the actual wall and tower symbols to make them work better with the same shadow effects as the rest of the town.

What do you think?

Loopysue · February 2019

I could alternatively do the shadows in the opposite direction - casting them northwards away from the viewer, but I rather like the shadow at the base of the front wall the way it is.

suntzu · February 2019

only one slight problem with your map sue , your castle walls symbols need to be placed in the correct order with isometric stuff otherwise the wall and tower symbols overlap the wrong way , i copied and replaced them to get them to align better , generally you need to work from the top of the map down or you have to force some symbols behind others to make it look right , here is a pic or your walls at the top and my fixed walls lower down

Rob

Loopysue · February 2019

This is very true, Rob

In the Corvallen map I believe I grouped each section of wall once I got the ordering right using the bring to front and send to back operations.

If that is copied from the Corvallen map the grouping must have been broken somehow. Try grouping them where they are on the map and then copy and pasting them?

Loopysue · February 2019

If the actual alignment is slightly out I do apologise to everyone - I drew Corvallen by eye without any kind of snapping grid or alignment tools, before Ralf did his magic with the set.

Loopysue · February 2019

Where the walls alone are concerned, if they are out of order the Sort Symbols in Map tool will put them in the right order.

Unfortunately this doesn't work very well if you also include the towers, since the towers are much taller than the walls and are invariably sent to the back!

I remember now that I sorted the walls and grouped them into their respective lengths, then used the bring to front and send to back buttons to arrange the sections relative to the towers.

JimP · February 2019

Yeah, I had to learn lots of things about moving things around in the Isometric dungeons when placing symbols.

Some of it wasn't obvious to me.

Loopysue · February 2019

I think it takes practice to 'see' properly in isometric view, because to start with the brain wants it to have vanishing points - which it does not

JimP · February 2019

Oh, that would explain the early on headaches. I can somewhat visualize a scene with vanishing points, and we drew them in high school.

Loopysue · February 2019

I used to get that peculiar 'impossible triangle' feeling about it :P

In fact I really didn't like isometric view at all for many years - being a landscape painter and all. Its just far too useful where mapping is concerned.

Grimmric · February 2019

I know its the wrong forum, Loopysue.
But do you have any landscape paintings to show?
Maybe a link to a homepage or such?

JimP · February 2019

I fiddled a bit with CA146. Placement is easy.

Loopysue · February 2019

Grimmric - I'm sorry to say that most of my paintings are long gone (most sold but some were actually stolen by an ex 12 years ago), and I don't have anything left these days except a couple of faded prints that didn't sell when they were still fresh. I haven't painted for many years, since painting in the confines of a very small flat is definitely not good for the health with all the fumes that entails.

Jim - I'm glad to hear it

Wyvern · February 2019

Not sure the shadows issue will be fully resolvable Sue, given the way the program "sees" symbols, as compared to how the eye does. To be fair, I'm not sure there's that great a problem with your first image solution anyway. There are various roof elements that can't cast shadows on the ground (dormers and some extended gable ends), but which ordinarily should, so if the chimneys are casting shadows to break up the ridge line shadows, whose to say it isn't "really" the true roofline shadow after all? I think the first example image looks "right" in this respect.

Plus, I don't think it'll be possible to get the chimney shadows to look perfect under any circumstances, given some should be casting shadows on the roof of the building they're on (so a few look maybe a little flat, though the colour contrast in most cases helps in this).

If you're looking for ideas for extra symbols still, maybe some city gates and/or gateway buildings? And perhaps a water-wheel for the mill?

Loopysue · February 2019

Oh I realise the shadows can never be totally perfect. Its just that I know they can look better than they do right now if I make a few subtle changes to the tower and the walls.

As far as I know, although Ralf has kindly agreed to help us here by allowing an update to the annual once I've sorted out those walls and whatever else people report not working all that well, I don't think that offer included adding any new symbols to the existing February issue.

I have plans to treble the size of the set at some point, but still need to work out how to do that, since 3 x the symbols would definitely be way too large for an annual. Its something to be discussed.

Loopysue · February 2019

Ok. I've adjusted the tower and the walls so that they have what I call 'dungeon shading' - darker at the bottom and lighter at the top.

Even though this style has nothing at all to do with dungeons, it seems to have worked!

I'll let you all be the judge of it though

Wyvern · February 2019

Sorry; I thought from the comments overall you were looking at all the shadows, not primarily those for the towers and walls. The latest version certainly looks more like they "belong" to the rest of the scene now.

As for extra symbols, well, you know us mappers are never satisfied with less than an infinity of symbols to work from ;D

Loopysue · February 2019

Oh I WAS looking at the shadows - solved that one by making the light direction north-south, so none of the chimneys cast a shadow on the road behind the house

Having sorted the shadows out I wanted to add shadows to the walls the same way and do away with the need to draw them on by hand. That was when the real trouble started :P

I'm more or less happy with the new dungeon shading on the towers and walls. Just a few more adjustments to do to them so there's a bit more definition between wall and tower...

Loopysue · February 2019

Well... you might not immediately see a difference in the wall and towers between this one and the last one, but all the symbols have been completely remade from scratch to remove a very subtle shading in the Sketchup renders that was affecting the post processing and messing up the modifications I was trying to achieve. But these are entirely new symbols here. In fact, I will paste the old one first, and then the new one, so that you can actually see that they are different (and hopefully that the newer one is better than the older one)

This is the previous WIP image...

[Image_12220]

And this is the new one...

[Image_12221]

Loopysue · February 2019

I haven't re-pasted the wall on the map. It looks identical because I was careful to match the new symbols with the old ones so that they were exactly the same size and in exactly the same position, so the update won't hurt any of your maps

Loopysue · February 2019

Many thanks to Profantasy, who have just updated the February issue of the 2019 annual with the new and improved wall and tower symbols, and an updated FCW of Corvallen.

Profantasy - you are the best!

If you purchased and downloaded the February issue before this morning, to get hold of the update you will need to download the February issue again (sorry - my fault for not getting it right first time!) and run the installer.

That will bring your walls up to scratch

JimP · February 2019

You make fantastic annuals ! Thanks !

Loopysue · February 2019

Thank you, Jim!

MichaelTenery · January 2020

Hi. I have been using campaign cartographer for years and recently purchased the bundle of holding cities to expand the portfolio of mapping styles. I found that there appears to be an error in the Isometric town drawing symbol set as follows: the C walls are missing, thus you can't show the northwestern wall of the town. The A, B and D walls are included but C is missing. The walls are unusable without the C set included. Please rectify. Thank you for your time.

Monsen · January 2020

There isn't a C-set. The letter C was skipped intentionally because the letter C followed by a number have a special significance in CC3+ symbol names.

If you look at both the two example drawings for this style, you'll see that they do make a complete city wall using only the included walls.

MichaelTenery · January 2020

I don't want to break any rules here by posting any symbols but the one that *seems* to be missing would be the north western internal wall with the parapet on the inside. There doesn't appear to be any with the parapet on the inside. There are some that run slant wise from top right to bottom left but the parapet is on the other side which would be the outside of the wall. I hope that makes sense. Thank you.

MichaelTenery · January 2020

Maybe I can be clearer. The B and D wall sets are identical instead of different in the download. I think one of the two was supposed to be the opposite direction with the parapet showing on the inside when going bottom left to top right.

Loopysue · January 2020

Hello Michael

Yes, there *are* a lot of walls in this set aren't there

That is why I only included the absolute bare minimum number, which unfortunately means that you have to mirror the symbols to get the opposite partner each time.

The A set is for long straight walls.

The A and B sets used together form a regular ring where the B set has Inwardly chamfered ends to 'turn' the direction of the wall between each of the A directions and the next.

There are no C walls. The D walls were originally called C walls, but I discovered that calling any symbol "symbol name C" did something really strange to CC3, which then treated the symbol differently to the way it was meant to be treated and wouldn't even show the symbol, never mind allow anyone to use it. So, the C walls became the D walls, and the alphabet as far as the Isometric Town issue is concerned goes "A,B,D..."

The D set has ends that are chamfered the opposite way to the B set. The D set is to allow people to have wiggly walls that follow a contour, or dodge around immovable objects, such as ravines or world trees.

Here is a picture showing the arrangement of A, B walls, and the use of D walls.

I hope that explains everything. Please tell if it doesn't. I have all the original artwork on my PC, so I'm not sure I would really know if the annual issue was lacking a few of the walls or not.

Monsen · January 2020

Remember you can mirror symbols. North-West and North-East direction can utilize the exact same symbols, just mirrored. Same goes for South-East vs South-West. You don't need anything but the A set to complete a full wall around a city.

The B and D sets may look similar, but they are not identical. If you look closer, the angles at the end are different allowing you to create wall angles in both directions.

As for posting symbols, while you can't post just the symbol (would be a breach of the EULA), posting example drawings containing the symbols are absolutely fine, the only thing that isn't allowed is the distribution of the actual "raw" symbols themselves.

Edit: Ninjaed by a little mouse sneaking out from the shadows.....

Loopysue · January 2020

Hehehe!

I have at long last managed to ninja the great Master himself :P

Ahem....

Sorry Master!

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Isometric town symbols - further developments

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