WIP - Palinor Castle

[landorl]

I'm working on a new castle in CC3. This will be a launching point for a small campaign. South of this castle are mountains and wilderness. The castle has a garrison of 240 troops. 110 are cavalry, and the rest are infantry. This is one of three main castles that guard the southern borders of the kingdom of Birian.

I want to do more work on the background, but haven't decided how I want to do it yet.

[jbgibson]

Nice work, Landorl. Hmmm - There's something odd going on with your castle shadows. I'm sure it's mathematical - something about adding instead of multiplying, or vice versa... it's like the towers and walls cast separate shadows, and the intersection is darker, as if two shadows were darker than one. Which would be true for a translucent shadowcaster, but those walls look like nice solid stone :-). Somebody who knows CC3 and PS would state it better than I.

By background, you mean the grass / etc? It's not bad, just needs some texture - enough variety to look a bit 3D. Like what I assume is a rock face S and W of the castle - it could use some sharpness to its texture. Zoomed in where you can see the blur easily, it loses its 'rockiness'.

I assume the dark lines around some farms are hedges? Maybe you could have them casting a bit of shadow too. They could be half as high as a farmhouse, but even just a few feet high they'd throw a hint of shade.

[Gidde]

I think adding and multiplying would both cause darker overlapping shadows ... try using the original shadows' layer as a layer mask for the layer that has the second set of shadows on it. Not quite sure how to do that in photoshop, though, as a gimp user

[Ascension]

Shadows are always a pain. They all have to be on one layer so as to not cause the overlapping darker shades. Then you need another layer for where they interact with different levels of the city (a layer for ground shadows, a layer for shadows that fall on flat planed roofs/walls - because they will not go as far out as those on land and since they are higher they are closer to the object thus they are a tad smaller, and a layer for angled planes, like slanted roofs, which will cause distorted shadows). Blah, way too much to think about so shadows are always a pain. Two suggestions: 1) put a copy of all of your shadow-casting objects on one layer, at the bottom of the layer stack, and use that to make the shadows - and 2) make all your shadows solid black, merge those layers together, move to the bottom of the layer stack, then reduce opacity to suit. Maybe I should do a tut on shadows.

[Gidde]

Maybe I should do a tut on shadows.

I, for one, would find that *incredibly* useful. I always have a really hard time with shadows.

[landorl]

I can't figure out how to fix the shadows in CC3. I can live with it as is though. I did notice the effect myself. If someone has some suggestions on how to make it one shadow, that would be great!

Anyway, here is an update. I think it is pretty much finished, but I still have a couple of tweaks before I post it as complete.

[landorl]

One problem that I have had from time to time, is with the houses. You will notice that the houses within the castle have some black spots on the roof, but the ones in the village don't. I used the house drawing tool for these, so I can't figure out why it happened to some, but not all.

[jtougas]

Very Nice

[Clercon]

I think that one of the most annoying things with cc3/cd3 is that it sometimes seems to do things in your map like your dots that can't be explained. Or at least I can't explain it However, I like the map.