Mosaic tile styled map

[pyrandon]

Oh poo, Bryan--sorry if I accidentally stole your thunder

Make sure to chime in if you see I take 20 steps to do a one-step process, ok? I make most of my method up from my madness, so it's like the blind leading the blind, and about 20 other cliches, too...

Oh, and post your version anyway, ok??? I really want to see it!

[Midgardsormr]

Heh. Well, I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed when I first saw it, but I suspect that by the time I actually get around to posting a map nobody will remember this thread, anyway! I've got too many irons in the fire, too much on my plate, and I've been burning the candle at both ends.

I'm sure I could throw another log on the bonfire, but that's quite enough cliches for today.

[Baziron]

My first thoughts on this map were "How in the NINE HELLS?!"
And my secondaries were considerations about whether I'd be able to replicate the effect and how to incorporate them into my planned campaign so I'd have something awesome to show.

[pyrandon]

My first thoughts on this map were "How in the NINE HELLS?!"

I actually have only visited the first eight hells.

And my secondaries were considerations about whether I'd be able to replicate the effect and how to incorporate them into my planned campaign so I'd have something awesome to show.

Thanks for that compliment, my friend! You can most definitely replicate this--it's actually a lot of flash, not much content. Seriously. One or two Photoshop tricks used over and over again. Check out the tutorial I'm writing on it in this thread. And make sure to post YOUR awesome map!!

PS: Hey, Midgardsormr: can one EVER have too many cliches? The more the merrier!

[ravells]

This technique would make such a lovely floor tile model for Call of Cthulhu....

[Wordman]

(Arg. Originally posted this to the wrong thread.)

Extremely cool. I recently needed a similar mosaic style in one of my maps. My results weren't anywhere near as realistic looking, but was a lot less work (but more money). It didn't turn out that badly, but not as sweet as your technique. I used the Xenofex mosaic filter, with a lot of tweaking of the underlying image (pre-filter) to get the filter to do what I wanted.

I do wonder if your technique might be easier to accomplish in Illustrator instead of Photoshop.

[pyrandon]

Wordman: PS actually has a built-in mosaic filter, of course, but much as your map the results are very "canned"--meaning extremely lovely in complexity, but lacking human elements and verisimilitude. (You map, by the way is very, very interesting--I absolutely love the tiling of the oceans and have already made up my mind to steal that from you. Yoink!)

I have Illustrator, but have never even opened it, so I cannot say if this technique would be easier there. I imagine you are right, since up until the final steps it really is a vector map. If anyone else knows the program, I would love to see them create tiles like I would have had before adding the layer styles, etc., so this could be imported into PS for rendering, etc.

[Avulsion]

Although I know PS fairly well, I don't have access to it currently. So I tried out your tutorial in gimp and wow... it is a totally different program and so far, looks very gimped.

I sorta figured out how to make the box-like airbrush shape, but I don't see any options to make it jitter in transparency or have the directional brushing (so that it looks more like a snake and not like a bunch of boxy stamps sprayed on a page). If any gimp pros could show me the light, I'd be very appreciative.

If there is any other way to make this mosaic type map, I will do just about anything! It's just too awesome to pass up!

(you can move this to your tut thread if you feel like it)

[pyrandon]

I wonder if RobA or another of our Master Gimpophiles could give soem suggestions on Gimpinizing it--I'm sorry to say I know nothing about it. I would love to see those results too; as you can see form my PS tutorial, it's nothing all that amazingly complex, so I assume you could do it in that program.

[RobA]

Unfortunately the existing GIMP brush engine is quite limited when compared to Photoshop's. The only jitter options are for location (not size, rotation, or opacity). The latest GIMP supports dynamic brush sizing and selecting colour from a palette, however, so these should all help...

Because I like the technique and want to replicate it in GIMP I am playing with some work-arounds, including the use of a script I posted about previously for creating "rotating" brush pipes for GIMP. Put simply, I plan to make a custom brush for drawing tiles, by manually creating the various jitters. Hopefully I can get a brush up in a few days.

-Rob A>