The deceptively sleepy town of Ardenvale WIP

[ladiestorm]

Ardenvale is a sleepy little town nestled against the River Arden, in a little pocket valley of Andelar. A deceptively sleepy little town, for the evil and sickness affecting the continent of Andelar is being felt even here, though the affects are subtle...seen only in the occasional raid of mutated creatures, and the tense, timid attitudes of the townsfolk.

This map is barely begun, but I thought I would post it at its creation, and let everyone see how this town is built. I'm using cc3+ to create this map, and I'm utilizing a 3D 'style' introduced by a wonderful profantasy mapper named Shessar. She has been kind enough to write up tutorials on how to create her fantastic 3D effects, on the profantasy site, and I've been granted permission to link back to that thread, for any cc3+ users that wish to learn the process!
http://http://forum.profantasy.com/c...page=1#Item_20

This map right now, only shows the beginning of what will be the River Arden, but I hope you will stay with me and watch this town unfold!

Ardenvalelrg.PNG

I hope you enjoy the process...

[ladiestorm]

So, Im continuing my little town of Ardenvale, and the river with it's bridge is complete. I haven't started on the town itself yet... the river is a bit of a process. For someone working it the first time, it is a bit time consuming, but I believe it's well worth the effort! I will continue to update as I complete more of this map.

Ardenvalelrg.PNG

And as always, I am hoping for comments, suggestions, ideas....

[ladiestorm]

My river is now complete, and I'm starting to work on the town itself. I've run into a couple of issues that I could really use some help on.

Ardenvalelrg.PNG

My first question is about my shadows. They just don't look right to me. Are they too long? Or too sharp? Should I do something different all together?

The second question is specifically for cc3+ users. I'm not liking my roads at all. I used the 10' smooth road like you would use in cd3, and I tried to fractalize them so they wouldn't be so uniform, but I couldn't select them to do so. I even tried to pull them from the stack to fractalize them but the problem is I can't actually select them at all. Even when I try the window that includes them to list, I am getting 0 selections. As they are, they are too straight and uniform... dirt roads wouldn't really be that way. Any ideas?

[ladiestorm]

Might help if I add the effects... let's try this againArdenvalelrg.PNG

[Kargan3033]

Might help if I add the effects... let's try this againArdenvalelrg.PNG

Looking good so far, as far as I can tell, I'm new to map making myself so I really don't know about shadowing or using CC3 but I think you are off to a good start.

[ladiestorm]

well, thank you I'm actually very proud of how my river turned out... I'm very new to that process. My main issue with the map at the moment, is that such an awesome river needs an extraordinary town... right now, my town is very ordinary.... I'm working on it though, i hope to post more soon!

[ladiestorm]

So, I have been working on this map for a while.. and I didn't like the way it was going, so I have completely remade it. I moved the river, so that I could build on both sides of it, and I've re-scaled some things.


This is the updated version. For those of you following the process of this map, you will probably notice the rather large fish in my river. They look like they are out of proportion to the rest of the map. This is actually NOT a rookie mistake... This was done on purpose. As I've stated in my Larysia maps, wild magic has tainted and contaminated this world. In some places, it's very obvious. Here, the taint and contamination is more subtle, but is obvious if you know what you are looking for. The mutated size of the animals here is part of that subtlety. Wild magic is mutating the growth in subtle ways... fish are giant sized, while some land animals are stunted in their growth. Others are developing strange fur and hair colors. Think of the Wizard of Oz' 'horse of a different color'. That is in part what is going on here.

Ardenvalelrg.PNG

I hope you enjoy watching this village develope! And of course, comments, suggestions are always welcome!

[ChickPea]

It's looking great, ladiestorn. Think I'd be a bit terrified to cross the bridge in case one of the giant fish decided to make a leap at me!!