WIP: Nesh, City of Terraces (World of Lhem)

[pjrush]

As part of my major worldbuilding project/novel the world-continent of Lhem, I wanted to map the city where most of the action takes place. This is Nesh, a city built around the slopes of a monolithic limestone anomaly. Nesh is carved up into a series of terraces (natural and artificial) that divide the city into distinct districts. It gets even stranger from there, but that's enough info to make the existing map clear.

First the topography of the peninsula...
New Nesh 2 topo.jpg

And the city as I envision it so far. I've given the buildings a bit of texture and colour to help me picture them as I continue to lay the city plan out. That probably won't survive to the final version.
New Nesh 2.jpg

More work to be done. Comments and criticism welcome!

[pjrush]

I had the day off, so I kept going. I've decided on a Victorian-style etching for this one. Still lots of icons to add, and I'll probably make some more changes, but I'm quite pleased with the effect.

Let me know what you think.

New Nesh 2 BW 2.jpg

[J.Edward]

That is really cool PJ.
Very impressive and, to my knowledge, a quite unique approach to city construction.
I like all three images - the color fade you used for the roofs on the second image really appeals to me.
The black and white version is really cool too.
It has the look of an old etching, so you achieved your desired effect quite well.
How did you go about that? and what program were you working in?
This stuff if rep worthy, for sure.

[pjrush]

Thanks J.

I created the terrain in World Machine. Everything else is Photoshop. I tried a couple of third-party scripts but didn't like the results. In the end I was able to do everything with the built-in PS effects and filters. The etching lines are pattern overlays with each direction and thickness given its own layer. The walls and buildings are embossed with extremely sharp settings. Then a couple of layers of noise effects over the whole thing.

[Josiah VE]

Wow! That looks awesome! Good job!

[pjrush]

It's been a long time coming, but I think I've more-or-less finished. I had to completely re-do the engraving lines in order to make them reproducible in future work.

Nesh Map B&W Reduced.jpg

I've also done an experimental coloured rendering with a torn paper texture. It's not perfect, since the district colours are from an older version and don't exactly match the legend of the current version, but I like the style and will probably return to it to fix it up at some point.

Nesh Map BW Textured Reduced.jpg

[snodsy]

This is really original feel to it, I like the softness to the contours, nice job!

[Steel General]

This is quite good!

My only little nitpick is that the shoreline is very smooth... overall a minor thing.

[Grymmly]

Utterly blown away by how you've done the topography for the terraces. I can understand, to a degree, how it was done with bevels, but I don't think I could ever do something as impressive as that.

[Wingshaw]

This is a cool looking city, PJ. I like the overall layout and the various districts and points of interest.

I think the bevelled technique often looks very digital, but the texture you've given the map helps to alleviate that a lot.

Wingshaw