Help with cutaway views on realistic battlemaps...

[torstan]

For VTTs I'd suggest a resolution of 100px per grid. That's what I provide my map packs at, and people seem to be happy with that. Best to leave off the labels and grid for vtt use - as vtts pretty much all have their own grid in the program, and labels shouldn't be visible to the players in general.

[greytale]

@torstan Wow. 100px. I tend to scale in 200px = 5ft (came from Dundjinni). Aren't you losing a lot of the detail work at 100px? I know I lose a ton of it using the Dundjinni scale.

I know people have used my objects for the Battlegrounds, Maptools and also for mapping through CC. So at 200px am I scaling too large for some of the VTTs or even CCs default?

[Gamerprinter]

Graytale: most VT apps rely on 50 ppi, 100 ppi, 122 ppi. While some people like 200 ppi for map tool, it makes for rather large files, especially if the program is sharing them online with players. Most GM/Players using VT prefer maps under 1 MB in size, which completely dismisses anything larger than 100 ppi, unless it is a heavily compressed JPG file. Files bigger than 1 MB are problematic for sharing online. You have to figure some people have slow internet connections and big files just does not work for sharing online.

I pretty much work exclusively with vector apps, rather than paint or most map applications, as resolution is only something done in export. Working in its native format/resolution vector apps aren't the same as image editors. I can create any map and export it to 50 ppi, 100 ppi, 200 ppi, 600 ppi and never require rescaling anything, since resolution is independant of the vector app itself.

For the free maps and map objects in my Free RPG maps site, I almost never create 200 ppi objects/maps because its impractical for most VT apps.

GP

[torstan]

100 pixels per grid means that on a screen it'll look perfectly good at 1 inch per square - as most screens are around 100ppi or lower. If you zoom in so that in my experience people don't play zoomed in that much. If anything they zoom out to see more of the battlefield.

As GP says the issue with many vtts is filesize. If I have a 40 square by 40 square map at 200 pixels per grid thats an 8000px by 8000px image, which is going to have a respectably large filesize. Now for download speeds that's not bad at all. However many vtt programs serve the image from one computer that's hosting the session. So that computer (let's call it the GMs) is uploading that image to each of the players simultaneously. Add to this that upload speeds are still much lower in general than download speeds and that large image is going to choke your bandwidth pretty quickly.

The same goes for the items dropped on the map. They will rarely be seen at more than 100ppi so all that you're doing with these is adding to the memory overhead, both whilst running the session, and whist transferring the assets.

Print of course is a different matter, and it's fair to say 200dpi is the minimum you should shoot for with a high quality printed battlemat - though for home printers I find that 100dpi gives a reasonable middleground.

[greytale]

Thanks for the info GP and Torstan I am going to look into this further. The feedback that I have gotten over the years from Battlegrounds and Maptools have been positive. I think I am going on six years now and have yet to hear it be an issue. I suspect that my objects just get scaled with the maps to VTT friendly resolution. There are probably only a few objects that would be used as tokens.

Since Dundjinni appears to be failing I have started looking at other groups that have an interest in my work and up to this point I have not done much testing outside of Dundjinni so the 100px thing set off alarms.

Yes I work wholly in raster it is just what I like, and yes scaling is sometimes painful.

Thank again

Grey

[mearrin69]

FYI, I usually work at 300 dpi in my maps unless the file size gets absolutely untenable on my computer...and even then I'll tend to flatten layers rather than reduce the resolution. Exporting to any of these resolutions, then, shouldn't be an issue for me, I guess.
M

[tilt]

I work at 300 dpi as well - then I'm always ready for professional printing and its easier to scale down than up. And I agree with the flatten layer option, or in very big jobs you could have different parts of the map in different files and use the flattened version in the master file

[mearrin69]

I've been experimenting with a lot of options like this. In one I'm working on (the schematic to the keep referred to in the first post) I have the base maps in one file and the labels, furnishing, etc. In another. If I make changes to one of the base maps I just "copy merged" and drop it into the layout map file in place of the existing one.
M

[tilt]

you might also get good use of smart objects.

[greytale]

I work at 300 dpi and I usually use smart objects when I remember.

I typically work way above the final size, again it is just my preference. Most of time I work on an 5'-10' (game scale) object at around 3000 x 3000 if I am painting it. If I am building it from textures I will be closer to 1000x1000. Scaling them to 200x200 per 5' at completion. While it does lose a bit of detail I get the realistic feel I am after more so than if I was working closer to the final size.

Great discussion.

Grey