terrainmonkey map showcase

Join Peter Bradley and other artists in discussions on art and presentation.
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Omote
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Post by Omote »

I do like the technique of the deeper shading as you get farther from the land mass; especially when the island is surrounded by a small darker shading. It clearly draws the eye into the island.

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Post by terrainmonkey »

here's a campaign world map i've been working on in my spare time. it has been in existence for about 20+ years, and i'm just now getting to the updated map of the whole thing. it's been on graph paper for the longest time, some hex paper, legal pads, etc. comments and suggestions are welcome here. also, this is only the eastern half. the west is in the works, but don't expect it any time soon. i'm trying to write an adventure, and create maps for the ilsharra website at the moment. this is still a WIP.

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Post by Treebore »

What is the hex scale?
Since its 20,000 I suggest "Captain Nemo" as his title. Beyond the obvious connection, he is one who sails on his own terms and ignores those he doesn't agree with...confident in his journey and goals.
Sounds obvious to me! -Gm Michael

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Post by terrainmonkey »

1 hex is 25 miles give or take. the area is about 1000 miles across on the east west axis.

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Post by Treebore »

Did you see a relatively recent thread about hexes or no hexes? I just decided hexes all the way!!
Since its 20,000 I suggest "Captain Nemo" as his title. Beyond the obvious connection, he is one who sails on his own terms and ignores those he doesn't agree with...confident in his journey and goals.
Sounds obvious to me! -Gm Michael

Grand Knight Commander of the Society.

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Post by terrainmonkey »

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f127/ ... ardall.jpg

here is the latest update, finished map of Drakkengard. The next is going to be the Western realms of Merceddia, and the lands of the Lourganni Nomads, the Vostland Provinces, and the City States of Merceddia.[/img]

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Post by terrainmonkey »

this is both halves of the map now. finished over the last week, and finally back in town to put them on the net.

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Post by Treebore »

So the bottom map lays to the left of the top map, right ? I mean I don't see how they could fit any other way, but I figured I could ask a stupid question.
Since its 20,000 I suggest "Captain Nemo" as his title. Beyond the obvious connection, he is one who sails on his own terms and ignores those he doesn't agree with...confident in his journey and goals.
Sounds obvious to me! -Gm Michael

Grand Knight Commander of the Society.

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Post by Omote »

Very, very nice TM! I've got to ask, how did you create such nice maps? What programs, method, etc. Beautiful! 8)

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Post by Tadhg »

The map turned out great, TM. Nice work!
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Post by terrainmonkey »

okay, here's how i did it.

the main landscape was a hand drawn map scanned as a high res jpg image. this was then imported into the map as a black and white picture. i actually scanned the original by about 1.5 times it's original size and then shrunk it to fit so the resolution would be better on the map.

Then i just chose a color pallet for everything. i drew polygons around varous areas, art effects, and lines, then painted everything the color i wanted. when this was done all of the colors were changed to bitmaps and then blurred to a 50 pixel resolution. this still made the areas a little thick and obscured the mountains, hills, and darker areas on the map.

then it was a simple matter of making everything transparent, in a uniform 20% lens transparency. this made the colors a bit pastel like, and actually came out sort of the way i wanted.

the seas were actually done the same way. i used a blue line around the coastline, blurred and transparencied, and then added the darker blue to the exterior parts and did the same thing.

when i got the technique down, it only took a few minutes with each layer to do. basically that's how it's done. layers. every color is on a separate layer, which i have labelled by it's corresponding terrain feature, such as Mountains, Forests, Swamps, etc.

then, it was a simple matter of putting in the roads and towns. then naming everything.

on some of the text you can see that it is slightly floating above the terrain feature it is listed as. this is simply a matter of doing the following.

type your word, choose the font and style, etc. season for looks. then copy/paste it. at this point you should have 2 of the same text. then, change the bottom one into a bitmap and gaussian blur it by 2 pixels. This will make it look like the same words only a little shadowed. then move it to a point where it looks like it is floating just underneath the main word.

look at the example following.

the roads are just simple lines. the towns are just one dot copied multiple times. the squares represent walled towns or keeps, and then the dots with stars are all centers of government, major cities, capitals, etc.

anyone wants information about this world, let me know.

thanks for the feedback.

also, yes, the two do go together. the mountains in the center, called the Easternedge mountains were called that because up until that point they were the eastern edge of the empire of Patagonia during the founding of that nation after the War of Tribes.

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Post by Omote »

TM, good stuff. Thanks for your description of the technique. This should give me and other map designers a good idea how to go about this.

Fantastic work.

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Post by terrainmonkey »

okay here's a work in progress of a group of caves inhabited by a hill giant barbarian and his orc minions. this is for an upcoming adventure in the next week. thoughts? ideas? opinions?

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Post by Arioch »

looks good so far, and sounds like a tough encounter too

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Post by terrainmonkey »

borrowing from the ideas in castle ravenloft for encounter areas, i've put together this in the last hour or so just to play with some ideas for doing the same thing. i'm working on linking some of these, maybe changing the map style ro something different, and doing a few outdoor maps. comments are always welcome, and i can design these encounters for c&c as well. if someone wants to give me ideas for the cultists and the vampire, go ahead and i'll incorporate them into the text for the encounter map.

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Post by Omote »

So this map details and "area" of encounters, not individual encounters? Maybe I'm not understanding. Regardless, the maps are very nice with the physical locations for the actually baddies.

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Post by terrainmonkey »

okay, so here's another i've been working on off and on. this is a map using the new dungeon tiles from WOTC. please note: this is not an advertisment for this product. i just received a bunch of them as a gift and decided to put them together to see what i could come up with. this is the result. basically what i did was put them together, then drew the dungeon on a piece of graph paper and then put that into corel and worked with it until i felt i had something cool. i'm still tweaking here and there.
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f127/ ... 1164030903

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Post by Tadhg »

From what I can see the map looks good. It's a bit small so hard to see detail.

I like the dungeon tiles and had some of the same thoughts to put them together with some of the others that I've got to create some mini-dungeon encounters. I plan to order the next set of tiles as well.
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"Enjoy a 'world' where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!" ~ Gary Gygax

"By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes:" - Macbeth
Lord Tadhg - Lejendary Keeper of Castle Ardmore

"Enjoy a 'world' where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!" ~ Gary Gygax

"By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes:" - Macbeth

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Post by Barrataria »

terrainmonkey wrote:
thanks

first off, dunjinni isn't that great, i've found. i have the software, but didn't really like it too much as the symbol catalog is so limited. cc3 is on my list of things to buy but right now there are other things more important than that. i have cc2, and still use that from time to time, but coreldraw is the main program i use right now, simply because i wanted to make maps that didn't have the CC2 style to them. if you go to porfantasy, there are quite a few maps there and all of them seem to have the same style after a while. i wanted to get away from that and creat my own look to the maps i designed. also, i'm waiting for the cc3 package to come otu with the cities and dungeon software before i actually go ahead and buy it.

I think part of the problem with CC2 is that people just use the default settings for their maps and use boring fonts. I have most of the symbol sets (including the user-created ones) and that helps a lot. The maps all do look a bit "computery" which I know some don't like, but I'm an artistic incompetent so I love having a tool like CC2 to work with.

I too am awaiting the other releases before taking the plunge to CC3, although I also want to see them work the bugs out before I get it.

BB

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Post by SirClarence »

Barrataria wrote:
I think part of the problem with CC2 is that people just use the default settings for their maps and use boring fonts.

Amen to that. And with CC3, new and wonderful dimensions open up. Great program that!

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