A collection of desert city maps

[NathanC]

I don't know PS, but from what I have seen if you want to try, remove the bevel from the buildings and add a outer glow to it(see below). I can't give more details than that though. Of course, in GIMP, I would:

make a selection so that the draw-able area of the selection was OUTSIDE the walls of the building.
Add a new layer
add layer mask to the layer
stroke the selection(size depends upon the map size, but based upon your original map size, probably 25-100 px
undo selection
Gaussian blur about 30% more than the stroke size

Yeah so that's pretty much what I do, select the wall layer grow the section by a few PX depending, fill a layer with blue black, hide it, then take take a brush (soft) and color in the outside.

Honestly, I always have to play around with it until I get the right feel. From what i remember, the PS Outer Glow is the easy way to do what I had to do several steps to achieve. It looks like you already have an outer glow on the building anyway, so i would simply stroke the building just tiny bit(like a pixel or two) to indicate that's where the wall and top meet, just so you have an actual "edge".

And make sure you are consistent. If you prefer bevel/emboss, that's fine, but I would then ditch the outer glow and make sure all of the objects have the same effect. You have one full building and 2.5 other buildings in this scene, but only the central one has the Bevel/Emboss.

I think what the problem is as far as in consistency goes, is that a few of the buildings are pre-made, I got them off of rpgmapshare years ago, and slapped them in to this map do I didn't have to create new ones. I tried to simulate the style and color so it would work well together, the building on the lower right corner (that you only see a little of) it my attempt to really duplicate the style. At this point since the session I needed them for is over it would be easy enough to go back in and build out the others from scratch keeping the same style.

Quick question, for that last image with the cave, did you use a stroke to get the depth effect? Or was it one or more layer effect? As I said, other than right where it meets the ground, it does a really good job of conveying depth to me.

I have to look to be sure, but I believe, and don't hold me to this, that there's a stroke on the wall and an inner shadow and outter glow, the later set to multiple. When I have a chance I'll open the settings and take a look.

[NathanC]

jfrazierjr - Here are the settings i used for the ettin cave.

There's a 3px black stroke on the wall as well as a general painted shadow over the whole interior and a darker shadow that i traced the base of the wall with.

Ettin Cave settings.png