Sandpoint Garrison WIP

[Nevynxxx]

Another building from Sandpoint in progress. This time the garrison.

I'm posting this up now, as I'd like some opinions on a technique, but first a bit of background.

I see this building as being one that was first built as a wooden structure, with earthworks to defend it. As time has passed, and the town has grown, it has been fortified to it's current size, and structure.

It hasn't gotten all the way to crenellated battlements, yet.

So, I want to show the origional earthworks outside the walls...

Basically I just want a ring of raised earth, that now is covered in grass, that surrounds the walls, except the entrances etc.

I suspect this will be done somehow with a layer mask...But what would you do?

Garrison Ground Floor.png

[Nevynxxx]

So, I gave up on making tiles with shadows when I couldn't get the corners to work

I figure I make the tiles shadowless, and then do some selecting tricks and stroking the selection later.....

Still taking a while with all the nooks and crannies...So I made some cobbles as well. I'll weather them in later.

Garrison Ground Floor.png

[Nevynxxx]

First attempt on the "mound" around the fort. I've basically done the opposite of what I'd do with shadows. i.e. a layer with some graded white over the top of the grass, semi-transparent....

What do you think? how would you make this better?

Garrison Ground Floor.jpg

[torstan]

Hi there, looking good. Is the mound a separate structure from the walls, or is it a mound running up to the walls. Is the highest point on the grass at the wall, or separated from it by a dip?

[ravells]

I'm not sure why, but it doesn't look like a mound to me although the logic you mentioned is right.

I footled about in Photoshop (not sure if that's what you use), and got this.

What I did was make a border selection around the castle for the mound and saved the selection.
created a new layer, rendered some clouds and a lot of difference clouds for a marbled effect.
Used the pinch filter on the clouds
loaded selection and deleted the bits outside the mound, lowered the opacity and used a blend mode (I think it was overlay).
New layer, sampled the green of the grass, loaded selection and filled it.
Used a bevel and emboss layerstyle on that layer and played with the settings.

I'm sure you could get it to look much better with more work (this took about 10 mins), but basically the way I approached the problem was to try to get two effects:

The bevel on the mound,
The suggestion of erosion down the slope of the mound.

best

Ravs

[Nevynxxx]

Hi there, looking good. Is the mound a separate structure from the walls, or is it a mound running up to the walls. Is the highest point on the grass at the wall, or separated from it by a dip?

The highest point should be a few feet from the wall, roughly the middle of the "light" bit. Or in profile...

profile.png

Basically, there will eventually be a structure in the middle of here, now with a training ground around it, and the wall. The mound is what was built before there the people could afford to build a wall. When they built the wall, they did it inside the mound, leaving a gap, to make the walls higher, and the whole structure more defensible.....

I'm not sure why, but it doesn't look like a mound to me although the logic you mentioned is right.

That's why I'm posting To me it looks right in Thumbnails, but not up close.

[ravells]

I've edited my first post. Sounds like all you need to do is create your own bevel curve with a steep drop on one side.

[Nevynxxx]

Thanks Ravs, I'll have a play and see if I can translate all that to GIMP. That's a good effect though, pretty much what I'm looking for.

[someguy]

The dirtiest Roman Fortification trick in my book was to build a berm up that was set about 50 feet out from the actual wall. A 10 foot gap in the center of that berm was covered with moss over a branch lattes with the bottom filled with spikes.

Basically it was a spiked pit trap that ringed the battle field outside of the fortified camp. When the enemy would attempt to storm the walls, they would run up a berm, and most would fall into the pit and die on the spikes, the remainder was then picked off with arrows and javelins.

[Nevynxxx]

LMAO, that sounds like a damn cool idea. Although not for this. This building sits inside a small town, so although it's well built, and defendable, it doesn't need to be too extreme.