Hey, I've been trying to figure out good ways to make maps for towns or cities instead of larger regions. Any tutorial recommendations?
City Map Tutorials?
Hey, I've been trying to figure out good ways to make maps for towns or cities instead of larger regions. Any tutorial recommendations?
Hello Suplex,
I think it would be helpful to know what kind of tools you have at your disposal to map cities or towns. Campaign Cartographer has a City Designer which is quite powerful if you can conquer the steep learning curve. I recently saw a decent automated town creation website (https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator) which pretty much does all the work for you. Though you can't tweak anything you just have to take what you're given and manually hack the image apart if you want to modify it. Or are you just looking for a guide on what resources should be available in a town such as shops, amenities, fortifications, civil structures? Or how the terrain affects the civic building/planning process?
Best wishes, niekell.
Last edited by niekell; 08-20-2018 at 02:52 AM.
Do not stare too long into the Abyss, lest the Abyss stare back into you.
In which case I'd recommend checking this out for fantasy/historical cities: Medieval Demographics Made Easy by S. John RossOriginally Posted by niekell
By the way, it doesn't exist there anymore, but he made a pdf and I found it here (I found an article on his site that said to use google to find it): https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/ima...9684960897.pdf
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That's not actually a very good source to use, though I do like his calculations on settlement area. Part one and two for a better source can be found here:
http://ravenswing59.blogspot.com/201...one-right.html
http://ravenswing59.blogspot.com/201...ght-pt-ii.html
i looked at those and instantly had to think of the "cities" and "towns" of oblivion and skyrim, which would be much better, if the creative heads in the studio had read those blog posts or had done some reasearch on actual medieval settlements.
i started checking this against data from germany, by inserting it into his website ( https://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/ ) and it just doesnt fit at all.
although the amount of settlements isn't too much off for 11th century, many numbers are way off still, like the blog mentioned: universities - every bigger city in germany had one and a few centuries later, some even had two.
my best guess is that these numbers best apply to small baronies etc.
also such numbers should be represented as float, whereas every number smaller than 1 would describe the likelyness of there being a university etc. and give a hint that should be regarded combined with other factors.
also many don't understand that 1800 is not medieval at all.
"In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages (or medieval period) lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages
Last edited by Finrod Cuthalion; 12-21-2019 at 06:57 AM.
It depends on which program you use.
The tutorial sub-forum has some award-winning city tutorials for Photoshop and GIMP.
I'd suggest looking at those. One of them should work for you.
Edit: ninja'd by niekell
Last edited by bkh1914; 08-19-2018 at 10:51 PM.
Thank you so much! I'm using Photoshop CS5. I actually found that same city generator, and I've been basing my map off of a good one I found (below). I guess what I really want to know is if there's some tips or tricks to drawing individual buildings other than "just draw the buildings good." Also, just general advice on things to spice up town maps so its less flat and boring.
Hual-Laq-ToHelp.png
I think the only good city tutorial is this one : https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=10421
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There is several mini-tutorials on http://www.fantasticmaps.com/ about towns :
- How to Design a Town Map
- A Quick City Map Tutorial
- Drawing Buildings with Dynamic Brushes
- How to Draw Roads on a Map (with the Stroke Tool)
Maybe they can help
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