Re-Introduction

[ArtbyV]

Hey all,

My last intro on here was like 8 years ago (man, time flies) and was under a different user name so I figured I should start from scratch. I ran a d20 company, The Inner Circle, back during the 3.0 era. We stuck around and dabbled a bit with 4e, but I decided to drop it all to go back to school to learn 3d modeling. I do all sorts of 3d and graphics design work now which you can see on my website at the following URLs (cartography is under 2d):

http://artbyv.com
http://www.artbyv.com/2d

Admittedly, it's probably too much and I should focus my efforts. Anyhoo, what brings me back here is I've had a lot of people asking me about cartography. Primarily for video games, but the occasional board game illustration query has come up. Just looking to sharpen up my skills and get better at doing all of this as I always had fun working on maps. I've been lurking the past few days and I'm amazed at all of the awesome tutorials and great artwork that is on here. Hopefully, I'll be able to contribute a bit.

I'm currently working on a map for a strategy RPG like Fire Emblem or Shining Force. I'm going to be hand drawing the maps in Photoshop, but I'm looking at ways to give the map depth through either normal mapping or tessellation once in engine. I haven't seen much on here covering the 3d side of things. Are there any posts or tutorials on 3d stuff like that or is that just something that really isn't covered?