Post by whipstache on Aug 14, 2015 21:03:56 GMT
Since I'm sure dmmadmaxi was tired of us hijacking his thread to talk about mapmaking techniques, I decided to start my own thread.
friartook said he wanted to see some of my maps, along with an explanation of the techniques used in making them.
Here are two examples of maps with pretty different styles.
This first map is a pretty fantasy-heavy style that I made for a homebrew world (that I haven't run yet). It's not very much like a real world would be, but it fits with the style most people think of when they imagine fantasy maps. I've left off the names of places. If you want to use this map for your own nefarious plans, you have my blessing. I used a couple of photoshop brushes that I found on deviantart. Here's one, because I think crediting artists is important.
This second map is much more of a real-world atlas style map that I'm working on for the guys who run the Dungeon Mastered podcast. I think this kind of map lends itself immediately to a more immersive world, because it feels like it could be a real place. I've also left of the cities and names of places for spoiler reasons. If you want to use this map, you should probably ask the Dungeon Mastered guys first.
Techniques:
The first map has a lot more "hand drawn" elements. Almost everything on the map was created by me, rather than generated by photoshop. And, as such, I like it less. Stylistically, it works, I think. But, it feels too fake; it creates a hurdle to immersion into the world, rather than working towards that goal. I used my a large brush to draw out the shape of the continent and islands, then a much smaller eraser to give it more contour. This method did allow me to include some interesting features that could be utilized in-game, but all-in-all it's not my favorite.
The second map implements a technique I picked up a while back (I'm not sure where; I think it was on a cartographers guild website...? Anyhow, I've seen it used in several places since.) where you get photoshop to render clouds (Filter > Render > Clouds), then add a layer over top that's filled with gray the blend mode of which gets set to hard mix. Take your brush tool and set the flow to 10%, then paint out your land (white) and oceans (black). This technique gives much more realistic coastlines, which are one of the hardest things to do by hand.
Once you have a continent and ocean(s), it just becomes a matter of painting it in, adding layer styles like bevel and emboss to make the ocean shelf, and adding different textures using lighting filters.
This takes a lot of the "drawing" work out. I know I have a good eye (I'm a communications director by trade, which involves a fair amount of graphic design), but with ink and paper I never could get my hand to make what I saw in my head. With digital tools, I can manipulate things in much different ways to get the results that I'm looking for.
edit: I found the Cartographer's Guild tutorial. This isn't what I used to make this map, but I think this is where I got the technique of rendering clouds to make a coastline a while back. They've since updated with a Youtube version of the tutorial too, if you want to check that out.
friartook said he wanted to see some of my maps, along with an explanation of the techniques used in making them.
Here are two examples of maps with pretty different styles.
This first map is a pretty fantasy-heavy style that I made for a homebrew world (that I haven't run yet). It's not very much like a real world would be, but it fits with the style most people think of when they imagine fantasy maps. I've left off the names of places. If you want to use this map for your own nefarious plans, you have my blessing. I used a couple of photoshop brushes that I found on deviantart. Here's one, because I think crediting artists is important.
This second map is much more of a real-world atlas style map that I'm working on for the guys who run the Dungeon Mastered podcast. I think this kind of map lends itself immediately to a more immersive world, because it feels like it could be a real place. I've also left of the cities and names of places for spoiler reasons. If you want to use this map, you should probably ask the Dungeon Mastered guys first.
Techniques:
The first map has a lot more "hand drawn" elements. Almost everything on the map was created by me, rather than generated by photoshop. And, as such, I like it less. Stylistically, it works, I think. But, it feels too fake; it creates a hurdle to immersion into the world, rather than working towards that goal. I used my a large brush to draw out the shape of the continent and islands, then a much smaller eraser to give it more contour. This method did allow me to include some interesting features that could be utilized in-game, but all-in-all it's not my favorite.
The second map implements a technique I picked up a while back (I'm not sure where; I think it was on a cartographers guild website...? Anyhow, I've seen it used in several places since.) where you get photoshop to render clouds (Filter > Render > Clouds), then add a layer over top that's filled with gray the blend mode of which gets set to hard mix. Take your brush tool and set the flow to 10%, then paint out your land (white) and oceans (black). This technique gives much more realistic coastlines, which are one of the hardest things to do by hand.
Once you have a continent and ocean(s), it just becomes a matter of painting it in, adding layer styles like bevel and emboss to make the ocean shelf, and adding different textures using lighting filters.
This takes a lot of the "drawing" work out. I know I have a good eye (I'm a communications director by trade, which involves a fair amount of graphic design), but with ink and paper I never could get my hand to make what I saw in my head. With digital tools, I can manipulate things in much different ways to get the results that I'm looking for.
edit: I found the Cartographer's Guild tutorial. This isn't what I used to make this map, but I think this is where I got the technique of rendering clouds to make a coastline a while back. They've since updated with a Youtube version of the tutorial too, if you want to check that out.