Building brushes and other stuff

[Ascension]

Here are the brushes I've made so far that I have used in some of my maps. In Photoshop you can play around with the brush dynamics to spin em around or scatter em and all that kind of stuff, so I'll leave that up to you to play around with. There are a few that are brush style and not pencil style (in that they have transparency so underlying layers show through). These are the tents and a couple of trees, to make em solid, merge them onto a solid white layer then crop out the white, then apply layer styles n whatnot. Of course this is not an end all be all set but something to get you started thinking and imagining.

[Steel General]

and again I thank you...

[Ascension]

Crappiola, my pc spontaneously rebooted today while I was at work...power must have gone out. Since I had PS open and was working on a town map (I let it sit idle until I come home) I lost all of my brushes...and I had some really cool ones too. Sigh. Well, good thing I had this posted here It did give me a chance to post the new things that I've been working on:

Trees

1. make a new 100 x 100 image
2. grab the pencil, set the tip to the 100 hard round tip
3. make a dot on a new layer in the very middle
4. filter - brush strokes - spatter = set the sliders to your liking (I went with 12 and 6)
5. edit - define brush preset
6. on your map, open the brush editor and play with the spacing, scatter, roundness jitter, and size jitter
7. if your trees are too pointy on the edges then filter - noise -median and play with that to get something that you like
8. add other filters (I like filter - distort - glass the most) or layer styles to your heart's content

Houses on a path:

1. new image 100 x 50 (it's very important to be 100 wide because of the way that path-stroking works...if you want to experiment with this you will see what I mean but know that the bottom of the image that we use to define a brush will become the part that faces the outside of the line that we stroke, like in a circle, and the top of the image will face the inside of the line)
2. fill with black
3. edit - define brush preset
4. on your map open the brush editor and set the spacing to 300, set the size jitter to 50%, set the angle jitter to 2%, set the control for angle jitter to "direction"
5. make some paths (I magic-wanded the spaces between my roads and then on the path tab click on "make work path from selection")
6. stroke the path with the brush
7. this gives us a bunch of rectilinear shapes that follows our roads (due to the angle control of direction) and looks slightly slapdash (due to the angle jitter of 2%)
8. you can now layer style these things up

Optional steps for thatching:

9. new image 50 x 1
10. fill with black
11. edit - define brush preset
12. on your map open the brush editor window and set the spacing to 200%, set the angle jitter to 2%, set the control for angle jitter to "direction", click the box for "wet edges", and add a dual brush of this same brush...you can also play with size jitter and roundness jitter for something more varied and random
13. ctrl+click on the houses layer in the layer stack
14. on the path tab click on "make work path from selection"
15. stroke the path with this new brush 5 times (this can take some time so zoom in to 1600% to save time)
16. on the path tab click on "load path as a selection"
17. click on the layer tab
18. select - inverse
19. hit the delete key and then deselect
20. you now have thatched roofs so add some color to make it looks brown or whatever

Chimneys

21. new image 6 x 4
22. fill with black
23. edit - define brush preset
24. on your map open the brush editor and set the spacing to 800%, set the control for angle jitter to "direction" but leave the angle jitter at 0%
25. ctrl+click on the house layer
26. on the path tab click on "make work path from selection"
27. stroke the path with this brush
28. our houses now have a few chimneys on them, the bigger the house = the longer the path = more chimneys
29. grab the eraser tool, set it to pencil mode and erase the chimneys that you don't want
30. add a gray color overlay and a black inner glow set to center (set the choke at 100%) and a stroke if you like

Caveat

31. the process that I have outlined here is only good on a small scale (like 1 pixel = 6 inches or 1 foot) so if you want bigger houses then you will need to make the other brushes (thatching and chimneys) bigger as well...if you just simply up the scaling on the brush there will artifacts like rounded corners, improper spacing, etc. but for thatching huts and shacks rounded corners look good


At any rate, I have posted an image of what these new brushes look like in action (according to my style but don't let that discourage you though ) along with a zip file containing the ABR file for Photoshop brushes. Oh, don't pay any attention to the drop shadows on my buildings, those are just place-holders until I put in the real shadows later.

[Nomadic]

Crappiola, my pc spontaneously rebooted today while I was at work...power must have gone out. Since I had PS open and was working on a town map (I let it sit idle until I come home) I lost all of my brushes...and I had some really cool ones too. Sigh. Well, good thing I had this posted here It did give me a chance to post the new things that I've been working on:

Trees

1. make a new 100 x 100 image
2. grab the pencil, set the tip to the 100 hard round tip
3. make a dot on a new layer in the very middle
4. filter - brush strokes - spatter = set the sliders to your liking (I went with 12 and 6)
5. edit - define brush preset
6. on your map, open the brush editor and play with the spacing, scatter, roundness jitter, and size jitter
7. if your trees are too pointy on the edges then filter - noise -median and play with that to get something that you like
8. add other filters (I like filter - distort - glass the most) or layer styles to your heart's content

Houses on a path:

1. new image 100 x 50 (it's very important to be 100 wide because of the way that path-stroking works...if you want to experiment with this you will see what I mean but know that the bottom of the image that we use to define a brush will become the part that faces the outside of the line that we stroke, like in a circle, and the top of the image will face the inside of the line)
2. fill with black
3. edit - define brush preset
4. on your map open the brush editor and set the spacing to 300, set the size jitter to 50%, set the angle jitter to 2%, set the control for angle jitter to "direction"
5. make some paths (I magic-wanded the spaces between my roads and then on the path tab click on "make work path from selection")
6. stroke the path with the brush
7. this gives us a bunch of rectilinear shapes that follows our roads (due to the angle control of direction) and looks slightly slapdash (due to the angle jitter of 2%)
8. you can now layer style these things up

Optional steps for thatching:

9. new image 50 x 1
10. fill with black
11. edit - define brush preset
12. on your map open the brush editor window and set the spacing to 200%, set the angle jitter to 2%, set the control for angle jitter to "direction", click the box for "wet edges", and add a dual brush of this same brush...you can also play with size jitter and roundness jitter for something more varied and random
13. ctrl+click on the houses layer in the layer stack
14. on the path tab click on "make work path from selection"
15. stroke the path with this new brush 5 times (this can take some time so zoom in to 1600% to save time)
16. on the path tab click on "load path as a selection"
17. click on the layer tab
18. select - inverse
19. hit the delete key and then deselect
20. you now have thatched roofs so add some color to make it looks brown or whatever

Chimneys

21. new image 6 x 4
22. fill with black
23. edit - define brush preset
24. on your map open the brush editor and set the spacing to 800%, set the control for angle jitter to "direction" but leave the angle jitter at 0%
25. ctrl+click on the house layer
26. on the path tab click on "make work path from selection"
27. stroke the path with this brush
28. our houses now have a few chimneys on them, the bigger the house = the longer the path = more chimneys
29. grab the eraser tool, set it to pencil mode and erase the chimneys that you don't want
30. add a gray color overlay and a black inner glow set to center (set the choke at 100%) and a stroke if you like

Caveat

31. the process that I have outlined here is only good on a small scale (like 1 pixel = 6 inches or 1 foot) so if you want bigger houses then you will need to make the other brushes (thatching and chimneys) bigger as well...if you just simply up the scaling on the brush there will artifacts like rounded corners, improper spacing, etc. but for thatching huts and shacks rounded corners look good


At any rate, I have posted an image of what these new brushes look like in action (according to my style but don't let that discourage you though ) along with a zip file containing the ABR file for Photoshop brushes. Oh, don't pay any attention to the drop shadows on my buildings, those are just place-holders until I put in the real shadows later.

About time someone posted something on making city mapping in photoshop easier... *bonk* enjoy your rep...

[StarRaven]

Thanks for pointing me here! This technique should come in handy.

Optional steps for thatching:

9. new image 50 x 1
10. fill with black
11. edit - define brush preset
12. on your map open the brush editor window and set the spacing to 200%, set the angle jitter to 2%, set the control for angle jitter to "direction", click the box for "wet edges", and add a dual brush of this same brush...you can also play with size jitter and roundness jitter for something more varied and random
13. ctrl+click on the houses layer in the layer stack
14. on the path tab click on "make work path from selection"
15. stroke the path with this new brush 5 times (this can take some time so zoom in to 1600% to save time)
16. on the path tab click on "load path as a selection"
17. click on the layer tab
18. select - inverse
19. hit the delete key and then deselect
20. you now have thatched roofs so add some color to make it looks brown or whatever

After making a work path from your selection (14), you can then ctrl+click the houses layer to select it again before stroking the path. That way you won't have to delete later (16-19).

[Ascension]

Here are the brush icons that I made for my Elosha map - in Photoshop abr format so they might be used in Gimp as well.

[Ramah]

Great stuff. But shouldn't there be a pyramid icon too?

[Coyotemax]

Hahah, while I was looking at that, I was trying to use the sliders in the screenshot to see more

Seriously though, I like the path stroke idea. All this time working on photoshop and I'm only now getting involved in paths. Looking back at some of the town maps I'm starting to see how it could be done quicker, here I was thinking each building was placed individually

[Gandwarf]

That map looks pretty interesting Ascension... are you going to post it?

[Steel General]

Neat stuff... though I think the shadows for the trees on your example are just a bit overstated.