Watery Cave Lighting

[Green-Pilgrim]

25c23308f86e6f0d3fdc22cf819800dd.jpg

I found this map through a web search (Brian Patterson - D20Monkey) and needed a simple cave map for a campaign. It was perfect for a quick bit of exploration.

I like this map style with its clean lines, simple details and very user-friendly format and I thought it would make a great way to work on my lighting through gimp. So I yanked the title out (the name didn't make sense for the campaign) and added numbers so I could do a quick exploration of it. I even cut things up so that as the players explored the cave they gained more and more knowledge about its layout.

Water-cave-01.pngWater-cave-02.pngWater-cave-03.pngWater-cave-04.png

* Does anyone else do things like this for their maps or do they just drop the whole cave tunnel into the campaign and then use paper or something to cover up the unexplored sections?

I'm still learning how to properly light maps like this to show the various depths within the cave complex but this map was easily cut up into roughly three layers with some depths to the waters to play with.

Water-cave-00.png Water-cave-00a.png

By adding a few layers of black and white and then varying their opacity, I tried to show just how dark and deep you were going into the tunnel and how deep the pool would be in comparison.

For those who are more experienced in map making, do you add lighting like this? Does this look right?

Comments welcome.
-Green Pilgrim

[eepjr24]

* Does anyone else do things like this for their maps or do they just drop the whole cave tunnel into the campaign and then use paper or something to cover up the unexplored sections?

Generally, I use the "fog of war" feature for whichever VTT I am using (right now that is Roll20) or if we are playing in person I have blown up pics of the places I think encounters will occur. If they occur elsewhere I just put down some marks on the erasable plastic and show them a piece of the map for the area if more detail is needed.

I'm still learning how to properly light maps like this to show the various depths within the cave complex but this map was easily cut up into roughly three layers with some depths to the waters to play with.

Water-cave-00.png Water-cave-00a.png

By adding a few layers of black and white and then varying their opacity, I tried to show just how dark and deep you were going into the tunnel and how deep the pool would be in comparison.

For those who are more experienced in map making, do you add lighting like this? Does this look right?

Comments welcome.
-Green Pilgrim

I'll let people who are more experienced than me talk about this in more detail, but I am generally a fan of either even lights (so no directional shadows) or actually placing light sources and assuming they are brighter than whatever the party might be using.

You did not say which software you use, but here is an example from Photoshop that covers shadows in battlemaps: https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=27077