Custom Brushes

[icedsnake]

Hello Guys , im new around here ! So i want to introduce myself and tell you about my little concern ;0)

My name is Ian , been around rpg for as long as i can remember.

And lately i was into mapping and found this site so i used some

toturial to see how ya guys do your thing and found pretty useful stuff !

Since im a pretty good photoshop user i did pretty much all the tutorial

i cheked around here and elsewhere . But i came to a point were what i need

to put does not fit quite right togheter since the brush are made by many different user...

Plus me and my friend got a little rpg compagny so if i want to sell those map someday ,

i need to make my own brush and thing ! Im a pretty avid Drawer and got around 20 mountains

and 20 something hills + some tree ( in the work ) So ! The question here is , Whats the best

Way to make my brush with my artwork , now they are pencil work hand-draw with shade.

Do i need to Ink them first then scan them ? or redone them in Ps or in Illustrator ? And oh

i almost forgot , how do i make a Brush palette when everything is in , so i can make a Brush File

with them ;0) Here i join one of my map done with some brush took here and there. All of them free

to use of course. Some i cant remember the user name but for the most part Raven Brush did the job.

Hope you can help me with my little question ;0)

Later guys

[icedsnake]

the virtue , yep the one you know ;0)

[Ascension]

Relax dude. There's a lot to read here every day and we can't get to em all quickly. For the first question, scan in the pencil drawing and then adjust the contrast, or levels, or curves to darken it up to make a proper brush (grayscale brushes function with black being solid, white being transparent, and grays being in between). So use the above three methods (contrast, curves, or levels) until you get something that you are happy with. To make a brush set, open the Preset Manager, then ctrl+click on the brushes that you want to put into a set, then click "save set", and give the set a name.

As for the map, I think it looks fine except the rips are too straight and too many. I'd make some of them smaller and more wiggly or irregular. I'm not sure that the StarRaven trees fit with the Ramah mountains, but that's just an opinion and it's not too bad really. Pretty good job, though.

[Coyotemax]

Or maybe just no one's had a chance to respond, things are usually slow near the weekends [edit - see? whiile I was typing, ascension replied too, hah!]

Making brushes from your own art is pretty simple, wether you ink them or not is up to you - I might suggest scanning them both before and after inking, then turn both into brushes to experiment, or deciding which one you want to keep. Once scanned, you can run them through sharpening or blurring filters, or adjust the contrast, so that's worth a go before you decide on what you want to keep.

As to creating the brush palette, it sounds like you're familiar with creating the brushes in the first place, so you seem like you're wanting to figure out how just set it up so the brushes you want are in their own file?

Assuming that's the case, it's pretty easy, the key is that you need to go to the Edit> Preset manager
Switch that to Brushes (i think that's the default anyhow) and you can manage your brushes from there.

The easiest way is to highlight the brushes you want to save as a set (select individual brushes by clicking on them, ctrl-click to add individual brushes to the selection, shift-click to add a range between the first clicked and the shift-clicked one) and then tell it Save Set.

Then you can store them or distribute as you see fit. You can also sort your brushes by rearranging - click and drag.

As to the map you uploaded, it's a good map. the only issue that jumps out at me is the style of trees is not consistent with the other symbols on the map. Other than that it looks great!

[icedsnake]

hehe sorry my bad i had a ps3 issue and was kinda cheking the thread every 5min lol Thanks for the Great info guys ! and yeah the biggest issue i got was the tree fitting with the rest . Thats the main reason im starting a brush palette ;0) the rips of the map is something to get better at, i should chek out more map to see the style since im not really use to it , thanks for pointing it out so i can improve my eye candy looking map . Im woundering how much mountain / hills / tree do i need to get a decent random in the making , i figure i could make a infinite number if i want but , is there anny reference as to how much of one version of a props is require to get a good palette ? And for the whole style id like to stick with the old hand draw thing , makes for a better Adventurer bag smash old paper ;0)

[Coyotemax]

As to how many brushes, that's a relative thing. You could make a darn fine map using a single symbol for the mountains, but if you're getting into variation, I find that having 30 mountains feels a tad limiting to me at times, 45 to 60 would make me very happy

Trees don't need as much variation, I find, I'm happy with 20 or less. They're usually at a size where you can only make them look so different after so many tries.

[Ascension]

If arranged really well you could get by with 5 different types of mountain but for most of us we'll need at least a dozen.