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Royal Scribe

Royal Scribe

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Royal Scribe
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Birthday
February 5, 1968
Location
San Francisco, California
Real Name
Kevin
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Mapmaker
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13

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  • [WIP] Hei Shan Si monastery

    I've been experimenting with three different approaches for adding cliff shadows.

    1. Wall Shadow on the sheets with Cliff Symbols: This is the most straightforward approach. However, the shadows render on both sides of the cliff, below it but also above. This can be mitigated by drawing in a terrain mask over the shadow above the cliff on a sheet that is lower in the list than the cliff symbols. In some cases, though, that terrain mask ended up covering up other things. I would have had to do a lot of reordering sheets, which I would have done if this was the nicest-looking approach, but there were other options.
    2. Draw in Shadows: This approach is similar to how the shadows on the cliff/riverbanks in Forest Trails are done. There were two ways I could do it: have the shadow layer behind the cliffs, or in front. If they were behind, it covers up any messiness in drawing the shadow, but it also means that the rubble at the base of the cliffs built into the cliff symbols end up "popping" out of the shadow. I could draw it on top of the cliffs but that would require careful work so it's not too messy.
    3. Wall Shadow on a Clifftop Terrain. This is the approach used with City Cliffs. That would still require either using a terrain mask, or having the terrain go all the way off the top part of the map, which would require putting those terrain sheets early in the rendering, with the cliffs themselves towards the end. But then I got the idea of trying a SOLID 10 fill instead of grass. Loved it! The Wall Shadow works on the terrain the same way whether it's a grassy fill or the SOLID 10. And the Wall Shadow still worked the same when I made the SOLID 10 only 5% opaque. But I ended up liking it without the transparency, because it made the valley seem more mysterious the higher you go in the mountains.

    So here's a screengrab of the types of sheets I set up for each level of the cliffs going higher into the mountains:

    There are Clouds sheets but I haven't started to experiment with Alyssa Faden's clouds yet.

    Here's a screen grab of what it looks like in CC3, with all of the SOLID 10 layers running off the screen:

    And here's how that looks as a JPG export:

    The shadows off the cliffs are 35 map units. I could make them longer if you think that's better.

    LoopysueMonsenroflo1
  • [WIP] Wizard's Tower - Interior

    Because I always have at least three mapping projects going on at once, I decided to work on the interior of my Wizard's Tower while I work through experimenting with three different approaches for cliff shadows for the Hei Shan Si monastery.

    I decided to start with the third floor, because that's where the main entrance is. Here, visitors can ring a bell at an outer gate to be admitted into an entry foyer, which has a wardrobe for storing cloaks and such, as well as access to a water closet (complete with a wash basin with water pumped up through an interior well). From there, guests can wait in a waiting room (complete with fireplace) until the wizard is ready to receive them in a more comfortable

    Arrow slits allow the wizard or other defenders to guard the tower. The arrow slit that is immediately counterclockwise to the entrance is about waist-high to people on the stairs. The next two counterclockwise would be above anyone on the stairs; the others clockwise would be below the stairs as they continue to ascend. Plenty of magical torches keep the interior bright. In D&D terms, they have been enchanted with a Continual Flame spell that produces a smokeless, heatless flame forever, or until dismissed. (Sure, you have to spend 50 gp in spell components for each, but you'll never have to replace them.) In addition to the exterior stairs, an interior spiral staircase provides interior access to both levels two and four.

    This uses Creepy Crypts as the base, with extensive use of Beaumaris Castle assets (plus vegetation from Japanese Temple and furnishings from DD3. And a few tidbits from Forest Trail.


    MonsenDon Anderson Jr.QuentenLoopysueseycyrusCalibreRicko
  • Ideas and Wishes for Monthly Dungeon Symbols

    I had another idea: Hunting Lodge Trophies.

    Taxidermied wall-mounted heads of typical hunting prey (deer, bears, boars, maybe mythological creatures)

    Bear-skinned rugs

    Weapons display rack

    Don Anderson Jr.Ryan Thomas
  • Adnati - Fractal Parchment Worlds

    The most time-consuming part was the rivers. It was easy enough to bring them in and use Change Like Draw Tool to convert them to the color cutout rivers. The problem is that when Fractal Terrains exports them, they don't quite run to the oceans properly. I had to move some nodes and draw in some river lines to adjust them (and with over 500 rivers, that took some time). They're still not perfect, but good enough at this scale.

    Don Anderson Jr.
  • Adnati - Fractal Parchment Worlds

    First pass at rendering my campaign world, Adnati, to the new Fractal Parchment Worlds format.

    I haven't tried to incorporate the mountain symbols yet. For now, I copied over a few contour layers and changed them to be darker contours in the new format -- except for the mountain peaks, which were converted into the TERRAIN DEFAULT, COLDER REGIONS tool.

    I will try the mountains next, but I rather like this as is.


    Don Anderson Jr.LoopysueKevin