Feedback/Concrit on Battlemaps (VTT/Print)

[wdmartin]

@Gail: in terms of using lighting for ambience and terrain, try adding a couple of layers above all the others, named Highlights and Shadows.

Flood fill the Highlights layer with white (or a very bright color, like a pale yellow that's almost white). Set the layer mode to Overlay. Add a layer mask, and flood fill the layer mask with black to conceal everything in the layer. Switch your colors back to black and white, set foreground to white, and then use a large-ish very soft brush to brush in highlights on the objects below. Adjust the opacity of the layer to taste.

Flood fill the Shadows layer with black (or a very dark color, like a dark blue that's almost black0. Set the layer mode to Multiply. Add a layer mask, and flood fill the layer mask with black to conceal everything in the layer. Switch your colors back to black and white, set foreground to white, and then use a large-ish very soft brush to brush in shadows on the objects below. Adjust the opacity of the layer to taste.

If you need to intensify a highlight even further, duplicate the Highlights layer, wipe out all of the changes on the layer mask of the top Highlights layer, and then brush in the higher highlights in the appropriate spots. Ditto for deepening shadows.

If you make a mistake, you can always undo the changes by switching back to the opposite color (using the keyboard shortcut X) and wiping away your changes. Or use Undo/Redo, of course.

If you need precise, sharp lines in your shadows -- like, say, light shining through an open door -- you can always select the shape you want using the polygonal lasso tool and then flood fill that section of the mask with white (to reveal that area) or black (to conceal it).

I'm not entirely sure if that's what you were asking for, but I hope it helps you.

[Gail Dee]

@Redrobes Looking at them again, they do look rather flat overall D: Definitely gonna work on shadows/lighting thanks! TBH, if not for Schley's assets, would never have jumped into cartography, his work in that regard is absolutely brilliant.

@jpstod The adventures from Adventurer's league come with black and white maps for those who want simplicity and I've seen a couple people add color to them too. I did design these for folks who wanted more detail to their maps esp for reuse in future adventures (for other combat situations). I'm uncertain as to whether you're referring to complexity in the number of assets/objects in a map or the coloring or...?

@Bogie I'm quite terrible at drawing from scratch, especially when compared to the cartographers here. I didn't think of the effect of having grids over everything! For print I'll try putting the grid under furniture etc so it doesn't get in the way. For VTT I offer gridless so folks can overlay their own grid, yes I've have trouble making maps completely faithful to descriptions when the descriptions sometimes say "refer to map included" and the map included has the entrance on the west when it should be on the east. The hardest part has been reading an encounter several times and making a map and someone else interpreting the paragraph differently and expected something very different (though that's been the exception rather than the rule)

@wdmartin Thanks so much for the detailed steps! I've used masking layers previously for lighting but not for manually added light and shadow. My issues in that regard lie in figuring out lighting direction and shadows - pretty awful at that. Are there any particular guides for not screwing it up? Shadow/Highlight is definitely an issue of mine, the other being, lighting for different times of the day or to set ambiance. For instance, this one was around sunset and the cage in the center had a chain fence - not sure where/how the shadows would be laid:
7-03-2-vtt-gridless.jpg

Am currently trying to figure out what sort of lighting would set the mood for Chult battle maps, in the middle of the jungle. Recolored a map 4 times and still didn't manage to get a decent mood:

7-05-2-vtt-gridless.jpg