Making Campaign Maps

[JVisgaitis]

OK so I'll do FunkBGR's map in the Photoshop style and terrainmonkey's map in the Lord of the Rings style. I just landed a huge freelance job, so we'll take this a bit at a time (hopefully one step every day or two). I'm going to start with FunkBGR's map first, since that one will be the quickest to do.

I'll start with a list of what I use and my first step. Currently I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS3 (I'm beta testing it) and Painter X (I downloaded the trial version). One thing you definitely need when doing this is a graphics tablet. I'm currently using a wireless Wacom Graphire tablet. As far as graphic programs, I'm sure you can replace Photoshop with something like GIMP or Corel Draw. I've never used either, but I hear good things.

Once I have everything together, I take the original map that the author drew and scale that up to 150 DPI and I make the file 8 inches tall and let the Photoshop tell me how wide it should be by keeping the proportions. Over top of this, I create a new layer and start drawing the land in all black.

Now there are a hundred different ways you can do this. You can do this with a bezier pen as a vector shape, a pencil brush, the lasso selection tool, or another of other ways. However, I would steer away from using the magic wand as you'll only get really pixelated looking edges and you need a solid foundation to work on.

For this example, I used a small pencil to draw the outline of the land masses and filled them in with the paint bucket. Once you have that finished, you need to create an inverse of that on a new layer for the water. This is easy. I create a new layer in Photoshop. I put my mouse over the thumbnail of the land mass and hold down the Command Key (I'm on a Mac, so sorry if these short cut keys don't translate well) and click the layer. That creates a selection of everything on that layer. I then go to Select > Inverse and it selects all the water. I choose the layer I've made for the water and fill in white with the paint bucket. When your done, you end up with this:

This step took me about 5 minutes. Next time we'll start adding in some details.

Cool thread. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

Well, I'm going to do this a step at a time. As I go through the steps if you do something differently, chime in and let us know how you do it. There are hundreds of ways to do a map, and the more breadth we show the better.

 

[jgbrowning]

I'll start with a list of what I use and my first step. Currently I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS3 (I'm beta testing it) and Painter X (I downloaded the trial version). One thing you definitely need when doing this is a graphics tablet. I'm currently using a wireless Wacom Graphire tablet. As far as graphic programs, I'm sure you can replace Photoshop with something like GIMP or Corel Draw. I've never used either, but I hear good things.

Jeff, I've just purchased a tablet and I'm finding it to be very nice. However, I only have illustrator and photoshop and not Painter or Draw. Would you consider those softwares to be essential? I've made one map so far and it was pretty good, but I'm having texture issues and think that I may have to spring for a real painter program to get what I want.

Anyway, sorry to hijack a bit, but I also want to say thanks for step-by-steps. They're tremendously helpful.

joe b.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Jeff, I've just purchased a tablet and I'm finding it to be very nice. However, I only have illustrator and photoshop and not Painter or Draw. Would you consider those softwares to be essential?

Joe, you're always free to highjack. You can do textures in Photoshop and a lot of people that do digital work strictly use Photoshop. The way you have to do them in Photoshop doesn't work very well for me, so I just use Painter. When I get home, I'll post some texture brushes for Photoshop that should help you out. As to Draw, I've never used it so I can't speak on it at all. Maybe helium3 can chime in as I think he uses it. For digital work all you need is Photoshop and Painter. Any other program is just a waste of money IMO.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Joe, here's a copy of those Photoshop Brushes I promised. I didn't realize how massive this download is. Its about 14 MB. Here's a link: http://www.icirclegames.com/external_images/ps_brushes.zip

So on to step 2. So I'm presenting this in a step by step basis, but I really don't have a set way to do any piece of artwork. I pretty much do whatever tickles my fancy and you should feel the same and be free flowing as you work. Basically this is the fun stage when your block in your color tones and texture.

I'm using some custom brushes for Painter which can be downloaded here: http://www.icirclegames.com/external_images/painter_brushes.zip As an aside, Painter is awesome in that this download is a paltry 300K compared to Photoshop's retardedly large file.

Anyhoo, in Painter I work on the land layer first and click preserve transparency so I don't need to worry about messing up the lines. I block in a tan color for the land using the Avadnu Brush. Switching to the water, I choose a nice blue that complements the land and block that in. Now we need some texture. I first lay in some darker and lighter colors using the Sponge brush. I do this on both the land and water using darker variants of the initial colors. Once I'm satisfied with the look, I switch to Dons and use Variable SplatterSkin. Again I choose lighter and darker blues and tans on the land and water respectively.

I save the file as a PSD and switch to Photoshop. I switch to the land layer and choose Layer Effects. Here I add a Stroke at 5 pixels in black. I also add an Outer Glow and change the Blend Mode to Normal, set the Spread to 36%, and the Size to 24 Pixels. You just have to play with the settings and get it the way you want so it looks good.

This step took me about 10-15 minutes. Next time we'll get some features on the map.

 

[JVisgaitis]

I did this rough sketch two years ago as part of a website to give players an idea of relative geography.

You have to help me out on the geography features of your map. Are those two rivers that run east to west on your map or some kind of dividing line? Are those palm trees on the south end? Lastly, in the middle of the mountains, is that supposed to be a desert? Thanks!

 

[FunkBGR]

It looks like you got it all completely right. There's a large forest in the middle that cuts this part of the continent in half. To the north and south of the forest, running horizontal to it, is indeed a river! To the south of it, is supposed to be jungle, with a more marshy terrain to the east of the jungle. And the mountains on the right do indeed surround a desert. The circles with the stars in them are supposed to be the largest cities on this part of the continent.

It's meant to represent a much larger area than it looks, but since anything looks better than what I have. I'll be happy to identify any other features too!

 

[kensanata]

It looks awesome. I'll have to try and reproduce something like it using Gimp...

 

[terrainmonkey]

OK so I'll do FunkBGR's map in the Photoshop style and terrainmonkey's map in the Lord of the Rings style. I just landed a huge freelance job, so we'll take this a bit at a time (hopefully one step every day or two). I'm going to start with FunkBGR's map first, since that one will be the quickest to do.

the map of mindath was done in coreldraw 12. if you need the file, i can send it to you, or at least the bitmaps. i'm not sure how the files would transfer from corel to photoshop, having never used it before. what you're doing here is great though! keep up the good work.

 

[jgbrowning]

Joe, here's a copy of those Photoshop Brushes I promised. I didn't realize how massive this download is. Its about 14 MB.

Thank ye!

joe b.

 

[kensanata]

For all the Gimp Headz out there...

I'm working on it!

(Flickr Page)

Using the Gimp, I had trouble importing the Photoshop brushes. I've read on various web pages that you can either convert old brushes using a command-line tool, or you can just use the brushes as-is if you have a new Gimp. I'm using 2.2.13 and haven't managed. If anybody knows how to do it, let me know.

You absolutely need the Layer Effects plugin!

So I drew the land and the ocean and filled both layers with colors, and then, since I had no brushes, I added noise instead. I used one transparent layer with noise at about 67% opacity and "substraction" mode, gaussian blur with radius 5, and another transparent layer with green noise at about 90% opacity in "addition"mode, gaussian blur with radius 3, just to give the land-mass and the oceans a slighly different "feel".

I then used the layer effects plugin as suggested, using "Add Border (stroke)" and "Outer Glow", experimenting with the parameters and the layer opacity to get the desired effect.

I can provide the XCF file on demand.

As you can see, the colors are still too regular on a large scale. I'll have to experiment a bit. Not knowing what JVisgaitis is going to do next, I did some experiments resulting in some rather dark patches, because I liked the looks of it. Might be inappropriate when we start placing mountains, however:

Create a new layer, render plasma cloud with turbulence around 4, desaturate it (resulting in a black and white layer), duplicate it (resulting in a cloud layer #1 and #2). Move to the ocean layer, choose alpha to selection from the transparency menu, move to cloud layer #1 and cut (leaving a cloud landmass), move back to the ocean layer, choose alpha to selection again, invert it, move to cloud layer #2 and cut. Now you have two cloud layers, one applying to the ocean, and one applying to the landmass. I set the ocean clouds to subtract mode at opacity 40 (if subtracting too much, the ocean turns black), and the landmass clouds to subtract mode at opacity 70...

Yikes, I'm learning more Gimp in half an hour than I wanted to know in years!