Arvaandor

[Steel General]

OK here we go with another Elven city. Again this is more of an experiment to try things and see how they work.

Background - Arvaandor is the capital city of the Taydarin (Gray) Elves in my homebrew. It is intentionally designed to be circular as it is supposed to be the epitomy of elven architecture. From my Wiki site;

"Arvaandor is a city of beautiful crystal towers that seem to almost have been grown from the earth rather than built. The city lies on a designed island in the middle of the eri' Llaseen river. The area around the city is covered by beautifully kept farmland, and fenced in grazing areas. Most of the major noble houses maintain homes in the city, though many have villas located across the island.

Arvaandor is laid out in a series of concentric circles, with the royal palace located precisely in the center of the city. It is surrounded by various governmental offices and temples to Elvaara and the lost Seldarine. The city is surrounded by 30' walls of gleaming white-blue marble. Immense glassteel gates are set into cunningly designed gate houses on the north, east, and west sides. Beautiful parks and gardens occupy a sizeable ring within the city walls. There are also smaller parks and gardens amidst the temples and other larger buildings. A retractable dock/pier is located on the southern side."


Things I am happy with:
1) Terrain

2) Water

Things that need work/input:
1) Wall texture - I'd like "gleaming white/blue marble", just not quite sure to do it. So ideas/suggestions please.

2) General shape of roads - they are supposed to be concentric circles, I kept selecting the existing circle and contracting it. This does not work 100% correctly, though I'm not sure at this point whether its worth re-doing them. Next time I'll try something different.

3) The circle in the center is supposed to be a crytal tower/palace. Not quite sure how to get the effect I want from a top-down approach. So ideas/suggestions on this too please.

4) I could use some ideas/suggestions/examples for the bridges, so far I am drawing a blank on what to do for them.

As always C&C is appreciated.

SEE LATER POSTS FOR UPDATED IMAGES

[Sigurd]

Town's got to be happy they exist in the age before the bomber! I'd be uneasy if I were the tower


SIgurd

[Steel General]

*chuckles* Well they do have aerial troops, could give a whole new meaning to "crap shoot"

[Ascension]

When I want my circles to be perfect I don't use selections, I use a brush. Start with something big and change the size accordingly then I just drop the brush size down and change color to black, drop down in size again and change to white...keep repeating until too small, I guess it has something to do with the way these programs handle the math behind the function that a circle ends up as a hexagon. Then I just delete the black. As for the bridges, it's kinda hard to get creative from top-down so just go pattern searching. The shadow is where you can give some hint of shape to your bridge, like arches and what not. This goes for the central tower as well, draw out a black shape that represents the side view of the object. Then skew, distort, blur etc.

[Steel General]

When I want my circles to be perfect I don't use selections, I use a brush. Start with something big and change the size accordingly then I just drop the brush size down and change color to black, drop down in size again and change to white...keep repeating until too small, I guess it has something to do with the way these programs handle the math behind the function that a circle ends up as a hexagon. Then I just delete the black. As for the bridges, it's kinda hard to get creative from top-down so just go pattern searching. The shadow is where you can give some hint of shape to your bridge, like arches and what not. This goes for the central tower as well, draw out a black shape that represents the side view of the object. Then skew, distort, blur etc.

You know I thought of something similar...after the fact. Oh well, chalk it up to a learning experience.

I had some ideas for the bridges... putting them on a layer below the roads, but it's on my PC @ work and I didn't bring the file home.

Thanks for the suggestion about the shadows, I'll have to give that a try.

[RobA]

When I want my circles to be perfect I don't use selections, I use a brush. Start with something big and change the size accordingly then I just drop the brush size down and change color to black, drop down in size again and change to white...keep repeating until too small, I guess it has something to do with the way these programs handle the math behind the function that a circle ends up as a hexagon. Then I just delete the black. A

Or use a vector program (like inkscape)

-Rob A>

[Redrobes]

For marble and in fact all my textures I would try

http://www.cgtextures.com/

they have 241 free marble textures to pick from - indexed by color no less.

For the tower I would try a 3D app and create something real rough. Export to 2D and touch up / add effects. Some sparkle might do the trick.

[Steel General]

Thanks, I bookmarked that site. I'll take a look tomorrow.

Unfortunately I don't have an 3D apps, though I suppose I could give Sketch-Up a try.

[Ascension]

Sketch Up is pretty cool, Ive done about 4 towers in it just playing around and 2 farmsteads and a stonehenge. It really gives ya an idea as to how shadows appear if ya play around on the lil calendar thing (can't remember what it's actually called but it sets the sun according to month and time of day). Just one thing to keep in mind though is that when making curved surfaces, like a round tower, it really chews up memory and file size. I have one tower at 40 megs and a whole farmstead at 12.

[landorl]

The roads also seem to get wider as they get closer to the palace. Also, I don't know how you planned on laying out the houses, but as close together as the roads are, you will only get one good size house between them (Assuming that they will have some sort of a garden area).

If you were to make the roads narrower, then you could increase the scale of the map, and still be able to get a lot more homes between the roads.

Of course, if you planning it that way, then disregard.