How to easily make parallel walls and divide space (Photoshop, mostly) ?

[Blacky]

Hi, I'm trying to find a right style of fast mapmaking for a rpg campaign I have. I have something somewhat decent (not too slow, readable, not too ugly) for lands and city, but as for building I'm stuck and I don't know where to look.

Let's try it with an example (WIP, there's no refinements here at all), done with Photoshop:

Ok so this was done with path/stroke and line tools, copy/cut + selection flip + manual move (like for the south half of the transepts) plus various little things. It's a bitch to keep everything straight (as you can see ) and it takes way too much time. This is something I would have to be able to do in, somewhere around 15 minutes maybe.

So, does anyone have an idea on how to proceed or which tools to use to be able to keep walls straight, angular connections neat, and maybe be able to divide evenly or smartly space (to put column where they should be, and aligned)?

[ravells]

I tend to do room maps in vector. I just grab a bunch of shapes (usually rectangles) you can resize them, and when you have what you want, merge them together and stroke them. Not sure if you know, but in photoshop you can use a hard square brush and hold down the shift key to draw straight lines. If you hold down the left mouse button (PC) and the shift key together and move the mouse it will draw a straight horizontal or vertical line depending on the direction you move the mouse in. That might save you a bunch of time! Enabling the grid helps to keep things straight too.

As for alignment, if you draw your pillars as quick shapes, you can select and align them all using the alignment function.

Hope this helps!

[Blacky]

I tend to do room maps in vector. I just grab a bunch of shapes (usually rectangles) you can resize them, and when you have what you want, merge them together and stroke them.

Gosh, of course. Should have thought of that. Thanks for smacking my neuron with the obvious, it certainly needed it

Not sure if you know, but in photoshop you can use a hard square brush and hold down the shift key to draw straight lines. If you hold down the left mouse button (PC) and the shift key together and move the mouse it will draw a straight horizontal or vertical line depending on the direction you move the mouse in. That might save you a bunch of time!

I absolutely didn't knew that. It can even connect things, like a quick&dirty vector tool. Very nice indeed, thanks a lot I'll use this way beyond my little mapmaking.

As for alignment, if you draw your pillars as quick shapes, you can select and align them all using the alignment function.

I didn't know about the alignment function. I just read the Adobe Help page about it, I think it does what I was looking for as for alignment and distribution. I'll check it some more.

Thanks a lot for everything.

[Midgardsormr]

Also, holding down the shift key while using the Pen tool will constrain your path to perfect verticals or horizontals.

I like to use the rectangular marquee tool to create a selection that I then stroke to get my walls. You can switch it between add and subtract mode to create more complex shapes. But yes, vector tools work best for this sort of thing.

[Blacky]

Another tip, thanks!

[Wordman]

So, does anyone have an idea on how to proceed or which tools to use to be able to keep walls straight, angular connections neat, and maybe be able to divide evenly or smartly space (to put column where they should be, and aligned)?

Yes. Stop using raster editors like Photoshop for this sort of task. From your description, you want to treat the walls sort of like objects that you can resize, move around, connect and so on. Trying to do this just by flipping pixels on a grid is madness. Use a tool that works the way you are thinking: a vector editor.

Illustrator is the 800-pound gorilla of vector editors. There are others. I like VectorDesigner, for example.