I have to say. while I love the farmland texture overall, I don't think it fits well at this scale. IMO, the buildings are way to large to match the implied camera height for the farmland areas.
Joe
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Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Daniel the Neon Knight: Campaign Cartographer User
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Here's an update. I'm really running out of time but life is a little hectic at the moment. Will need to push hard for the end of the month. Comments welcome.
Torq
###Latest WIP###
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Software Used: Terranoise, Wilbur, Terragen, The Gimp, Inkscape, Mojoworld
Hi Torq!
I really, really like this map. In particular - the individual trees which fit really well with scale on which you're working; the colour of the river (green rather than the usual blue) and river banks, which have a great shape to them and again beautifully in keeping with the scale.
The only thing that doesn't quite work for me at the moment (although you're probably in the process of dealing with it) is the uniformity of the paving. The texture itself is beautiful, but I think there's too much of it. It looks to me as if the entire area below the city was paved first and then the city built on top. Is there any way in which you could break up the paving, maybe with more green areas, suggestions of kerbs on roads...unpaved / muddy areas...anything to disrupt the uniformity?
Another thing to try (if you haven't already) which I discovered sort of by accident on the Arboria map is with these semi-isometric maps, to make the drop shadows of the walls very intense (little or no tranparency) and a darker colour of the wall (in this case gray). It gives a suggestion of the vertical height of the wall without the 'floating' drop shadow effect, i.e. the drop shadow looks like part of the wall itself.
cheers
Ravs
Hmmm, not sure I buy that. If they were going to go to all the effort of paving the river they would surely make it a regular width - whereas this river looks to be much more organic in shape. Also, there's currently a brick wall at the end of the river at all three ends where it leaves the map. Not sure that's intentional
I actually rather like that look, other than the blocked section on each end which does not look quite right for some reason(though it's not that bad).
Torq, I love the trees you added between the two versions. It really helps to make the whole thing pop.
On the down side, you have shadows for all your trees and buildings, but you bridges are flat on the water. Should be a quick fix though.
Also, even though the farmland background looks better blown up in size, I really don't think it goes with this map. The reason why at that they are all blurry while your city building lines are super sharp and clear. To me it just tends to stick out rather than blend into the background as I would expect. Again, based on scale, the fields should be fairly well visible at this altitude, especially when contrasted with the buildings and trees directly over top of some of them.
Joe
My Finished Maps
Works in Progress(or abandoned tests)
My Tutorials:
Explanation of Layer Masks in GIMP
How to create ISO Mountains in GIMP/PS using the Smudge tool
----------------------------------------------------------
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Torq - the detail is incredible (as always).
Not sure about the repeating stone pattern in the texture used for roofs. It all runs N/S.
-Rob A>
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