[Award Winner] Clustered houses for a city in Photoshop

[Ascension]

Vandy -- outer bevel would not work at all...run thru it and try it yourself and you'll see why...the shapes would not look like roofs at all, they'd look like berms or mounds. You're also probably used to having the light source in the upper left and therefore everything seems to be opposite of what you're used to...remember my sun for this is in the lower right. The river...well I wasn't too concerned about making terrain for this tut, the emphasis was on making buildings.

Red -- Yeah I had it in the back of my head to try and keep this as simple and generic as possible to see what can be done by you guys who really know your stuff. Taken one step further you could generate paths with the selection based on the streets. Putting down the streets and the 1-pixel eraser cuts are hand done but the rest should be able to be automated. Oh and thanks

[dm-kevin]

This is really helpful. I'll have to try this step by step.

The shadowing is well done.

[Nomadic]

Very awesome tut, enjoy your rep.

[Ascension]

Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Just hope that someone can use it to build upon for something even better.

[Asharad]

Bookmarked.

[Hoel]

Hey, that was cool and seems easy enough. Have some rep.

[RobA]

That is really helpful, Ascension!

You seem to get a nicer bevel with PS than I can with the Gimp

Here is my attempt, starting with your black block buildings:

asc_city.jpg

I'm trying to work up something new for the roofs. What do you think?

-Rob A>

[Vandy]

Hi, Ascension.

I worked through your tutorial over lunch and I see what you mean about using a bevel. While the buildings did rise up, the roofs are still flat and not very believeable.

I can also see I need to start using Photoshop instead of Elements in order to have more control over what I'm trying to do.

I really like what you've done here and do believe it is going to be quite useful.

Regards,

Gary

[Hoel]

I would recommend trying with two layers for the buildings, one with low or one story buildings and one for higher multi story buildings. With two layers you can make buildings with multiple roofs and more complex buildings, eliminating those boring house rows...

[Ascension]

Rob -- my goal for this was to keep it simple (since I just kind of stumbled upon it during my Brownstone map) so that you and Red could work your magic I was hoping that you could build upon it to do the thatched roof and tile roof things cuz that's way beyond me...I'm just an idea man, toss out an idea and let others more skilled make it better. I'm sure you two will have something up in a week or so

Hoel -- Exactly, take it and run, build upon it...this is just a simple starter kit. That's what I did on Brownstone, to some extent, but with three different levels of housing (tall, medium, and short houses) but I did mine with more emphasis on the shadows to denote height but I'm sure that you can do up some nice multi-storied houses that cool