Tolfain Citadel

[Turambar]

It does look nice. However (there always seems to be a however with me), the lighting on the terrain doesn't match the lighting for the non-terrain items. It's probably the blue ambient sky light on the terrain that isn't on the buildings that's causing the visual mismatch that I find a little jarring up close. Changing those drop shadows on the buildings from black to a slight bluish cast like the terrain shadows might sell the integration a little better. Maybe turning off the sky light in the terrain renderer? It does look like the sky light is giving everything on the terrain that color cast that's missing from the buildings. What renderer are you using for the terrain?

Interesting, since I did not use any skylight on the terrain render. In fact, most of the terrain render is in Gimp the same as the buildings (the base heightmap and base textures was Gaea but the rest is done with Gimp). However, using a slight bluish cast for the building shadows is a good idea (and maybe what is throwing you off, since I DID use Gaea to generate the terrain shadow layer). The overall lighting on the hill, may be another things throwing you off a bit, since I used a pretty crude method using black and white gradients in Gimp, which probably isn't ideal.

[waldronate]

The shadow intensity and blur for the buildings fall into several categories, but that's pretty common with manual shadows. For example, the wall sections around "The Yards" have a shadow that looks solid black and hard-edged, in comparison to the bluish shadows on the terrain right next to it or the soft edges on the drop shadows on the buildings inside the wall. I know exactly how much work those manual things take and how hard it is to blend them against a backdrop done in a global light transport renderer. You've done a good job here, but I guess I want it to be that little bit more betterer.

[Turambar]

The shadow intensity and blur for the buildings fall into several categories, but that's pretty common with manual shadows. For example, the wall sections around "The Yards" have a shadow that looks solid black and hard-edged, in comparison to the bluish shadows on the terrain right next to it or the soft edges on the drop shadows on the buildings inside the wall. I know exactly how much work those manual things take and how hard it is to blend them against a backdrop done in a global light transport renderer. You've done a good job here, but I guess I want it to be that little bit more betterer.

Ah, I see where you are talking about with the edge of the wall shadow. I missed blurring that, like I did with the building shadows. Thanks for the catch and t he tips. You are right hat these kinds of maps take a ton of time, but each time I try to incorporate more improvements, so your comments will certainly be helpful as I start my next city!