June 2017 Challenge map: The Hanging Gardens of Magrael

[Voolf]

That is a splendid new style from you Mouse. You did well with the shadows

[Mouse]

Aw thank you, Voolf

I keep moving through lots of different styles, but I have to admit this texture painting phase of mine has been really quite enjoyable - one that I will probably repeat from time to time when I think the effect might work. Doing the shadows is my absolute most favourite bit of it all. I just LOVE making everything pop out of the picture a the sweep of a brush

[DanielHasenbos]

Wow, the final additions to this map really made it pop. And I see it won you a compass as well, great job Mouse! (:

[Mouse]

Thank you, Daniel

And thank you also for the rep - much appreciated

[Akae]

Great work! very Beautiful!!!

[Mouse]

Thank you very much, Akae

[Wired]

Didn't have the opportunity to congratulate you on this. Very well done.

[Mouse]

Ah well. I thought you had, you see, so you could have gotten away with it

Thanks Wired

[Wingshaw]

You've created a map of the kinda place I'd like to spend some time. I can imagine reading a book (or drawing a map) in the shade of those trees.

I really like the way you have done the plateaus: they look genuinely 3-dimensional, and that's an impressive feat. I think my only nitpick is that the vegetation looks like a texture: perhaps because it blends so smoothly with the terrain, there don't seem to be any individual trees among them. But you do say that it is a texture painting, so perhaps that's what you were going for all along

Wingshaw
(formerly TheHoarseWhisperer or THW)

[Mouse]

Aw thank you TH... I mean Wingshaw

(boy, that is going to take some getting used to! LOL!)

As I said on the Guild FB page there are guest quarters ready for visitors set in the recently renovated underground chambers that were originally lived in by Magrael and her 11 volunteers, and you are more than welcome to come and stay for a while

The entire map is a texture painting - 8 layers of solid tiling texture variously masked (3 ground layers, 1 rock layer, 3 tree layers, 1 bridge stone layer), and then 3 layers of shadow and shading (2 overlay black and 1 multiply black) to create the 3D illusion and mostly camouflage the redundancy in the smaller texture tiles (the rock is the worst for redundancy, but I think I got away with it by making the obvious repeats look different with different shadows and highlights on each one).

I started to run out of time towards the end of the month, so I took a few short cuts with the tree texture, which took a lot longer to get sort of right...ish than I was planning. If there had been more time I would have paid it the same attention as the rock texture, and created more variation with shading applied to individual trees to make them slightly darker/lighter and various different colours.