Start of a small 2 level Dungeon

[NathanC]

So I'm taking a break from the Maure Castle and Dungeon map I've been working on to do some smaller maps for my game.

This map is one of 2 that I'm working on for a low level encounter with some bandits.

I think I might have over done it with the trees,and shadows for the lighting effects.

I'll be starting the underground level in a bit and I'll post it as I go.

As always pointers are welcome.

Forest Ruins Level-1 Post.jpg

[Korash]

Yeah, the shadows are a bit overdone but the trees look good. I would try to do something with the walls though. As it stands now, they look only and ince or two above the ground, and even at that. As you are showing the tree tops as well as opposed to just the lower trunks, I would suggest that you try to give the walls some hieght and rough up the top surface. They ARE ruins after all.

Looks like a great start to an invokative encounter map Looking forward to the lower level.

[wdmartin]

The shadows do need work. The position of the sun is unclear. The long trunk shadows suggest that the sun is low -- it's either very early in the day and the sun is just rising, or else it's very late in the afternoon and the sun is setting. But the drop shadows on the tree canopies are not equally long; they're offset only a little, and pool around the base of the trees, which suggests that the sun is high (say, 11 AM, or 1 PM). The sun can't be both high and low simultaneously. Err, unless there are two suns in this solar system. Or maybe some serious temporal instabilities. Or another very bright light source other than the sun.

The trunk shadows don't seem to match up with trunks, or if they do, I'm just not seeing it. The tree models look like they have fairly thin trunks, but the shadows are quite wide, and the spacing between trunks is very regular.

The black stroke around the walls is too sharp a division. Try using an outer glow, set to black, mode multiply, to represent the ambient occlusion.

If you keep the sun in a low position, the walls should have shadows on one side and highlights on the other.

I like your spiral stairs. Good sense of depth.

[NathanC]

Yeah, lighting is not my strong suit.

I took your advice wdmartin and tried the glow, I also tried another shadow on the south wall where the camp is.

Korash what about the depth now?

Forest Ruins Level-1 Post.jpg

[Malicious-Monkey]

The length of your wall shadows should give the viewer an indication of how high the walls are. Being ruins, I'd expect them to be of varying heights, so varying the shadow length might help to add a sense of height and depth.

[wdmartin]

Here's a map in a similar style, without any shadows or highlights (except the ones that are annoyingly built into the tree assets I used):

shadow-sample2.jpg

It almost totally lacks depth. Now here's the same thing with lighting:

shadow-sample1.jpg

I decided the sun was shining from the bottom right. There are a whole bunch of shadows involved:

1) As mentioned, the tree assets have some built in shadows.
2) I put a drop shadow on the trees, though it's largely invisible in the end.
3) The walls have a 6px black multiply outer glow, which is fairly subtle.
4) The bevel filter applied to the walls adds shadow (multiply, black) and highlights (white, overlay) to the wall edges.
5) There are two shadow layers and 2 highlight layers.

The shadow layers were filled with very dark blue and set to multiply, at 44% opacity for dark shadows and 22% for lighter shadows. Then I brushed in the shadows using a soft, round brush. The trees canopies all cast large shadows; and that was logically "above" the walls, because trees are tall, so the dark shadow layer is the top-most. You can see at the bottom right corner the wall shadows and the tree shadow merge into one indistinguishable shadow.

The highlight layers were roughly the same, only filled with light and just used to pick out some high points, such as the tops of the walls, banks of overgrowth across the open path from the light source, a few leaves in the crowns of each tree, and and a beam passing through between the two trees at right and onto the floor of the ruin.

It's not a perfect lighting job by any means; the angles at which the light falls are not always entirely the same, and the walls have jagged shadows but actually look kinds of regular and smooth. But hey, it'll do for an example.

So that you can poke around the layers and such, here is the full PSD (20 MB).

Hope this helps.

[NathanC]

My world is about 2 seconds away from not having a sun and it being night all the time.

I tried what you said wdmartin at least as far as the shadow layers go, I haven't touched the "sunlight" layer yet.

If my sun is coming from the upper left of the map, everything should cast a shadow to the lower right correct?

Forest Ruins Level-1 Post.jpg

[NathanC]

In the mean while here's level 2, where there is thankfully no pesky sun.

Forest Ruins Level-2.jpg

[Bogie]

Good start here on the 2nd level.
2 things:
Since there is no sun, why is there grass? The floor tile you are using is cobblestones with grass in between the stones.
Did you get it from cgtextures or DundJinni? Instead of that try something like this: BrickOld-0149_CG_bg.png or this 0-BrickOldMixedSize0093-po.png or BrickRound0046_2_BG.jpg

I never cared for that particular stair shadow, and the stairs are different in the 2 maps, they should be the same. see how it looks if you use the same graphic.
stairs_round_mod_4_ae.png

[wdmartin]

The shadows are looking much better in the latest revision of the topside map. I might darken the tree shadows a bit. Just increase the opacity of the layer a bit.