15 - [Inner] The Ward of Erahum [Mouse]

[Mouse]

I'm having a hiatus in the relief shading department.

The problem is, you see, I can't see a way of using either of the CC3 bevel effects to get the kind of relief shading I want, which is best described by this image, which I've already uploaded and credited in the Reference Images thread...

Karst_minerve.jpg

As you can see there is a world of difference between this and the way the map looks right now.

What I'm thinking of doing is creating the entire relief map in GIMP first like this...

shading test.JPG

Then importing it to CC3 to add all the roads, houses, trees, textures and so on - all the things that a normal CC3 map has. If I do this, however, I'm going to have to at least double the resolution on the GIMP file as you can see the pixilation in the image above, even though I've reduced the screen shot.

Can anyone tell me just how big a GIMP file can be before the whole thing starts to get really difficult to handle on a bog standard laptop? I mean how many thousands of pixels in height and width. The file this shot was taken from was 4005 x 3870. Can I multiply both dimensions by 2 and get away with it?

EDIT: Its ok. I've worked out what to do now

[Southern Crane]

I'm having a hiatus in the relief shading department.

The problem is, you see, I can't see a way of using either of the CC3 bevel effects to get the kind of relief shading I want, which is best described by this image, which I've already uploaded and credited in the Reference Images thread...

Karst_minerve.jpg

As you can see there is a world of difference between this and the way the map looks right now.

What I'm thinking of doing is creating the entire relief map in GIMP first like this...

shading test.JPG

Then importing it to CC3 to add all the roads, houses, trees, textures and so on - all the things that a normal CC3 map has. If I do this, however, I'm going to have to at least double the resolution on the GIMP file as you can see the pixilation in the image above, even though I've reduced the screen shot.

Can anyone tell me just how big a GIMP file can be before the whole thing starts to get really difficult to handle on a bog standard laptop? I mean how many thousands of pixels in height and width. The file this shot was taken from was 4005 x 3870. Can I multiply both dimensions by 2 and get away with it?

EDIT: Its ok. I've worked out what to do now

I've been working through the same thing trying to find a style for the limestone geography. I'm not good with line art though. I tried doing that perpendicular style but I couldn't make it look right for me yet. Yours a great start though.

[Redrobes]

Im not sure what to do about this either. I had my chasm vertical so top down didnt show any relief at all. But it looks too flat. I am unsure if that is how it would look in real life or whether I should have faked it a bit more for artistic sake to give some depth.

In Gimp I regularly use up to 20K pixel sized images. Not sure if there is a limit. I know in the past I used to get problems after about the 18K mark on my old paint software and in any case I think if your using images bigger than about 12K its time to break them up into tiles. I normally only use 20K images in Gimp so that I can make the tiles for the zoom maps.

We did the MeDem map which is 40K pix square in tiles. It was not easy using tiles but we found that we had to. I think there are some apps which work in tiles in the background but the main app will page them in and out for you so you dont notice. In fact I think its possible photoshop does this. I do quite a lot of image work in scripts and automated methods. Most my current city map is automated scripts and then I can run the same script on different tiles and then piece it all back together again - not that I am this time around.

[Mouse]

Southern Crane...

I'm no expert. In fact this is only the second time I've ever done any actual drawing and shading in GIMP in my life.

I'm a CC3 mapper. Even if the background is done in GIMP to get the actual effect I'm after, the foreground will still be done in CC3+

EDIT: Haha - Red, you just got ninjad by Southern Crane over on your own thread, and now your getting revenge on me.

[Redrobes]

Yeah thats what I am doing. Background using the automated texture shading and VDale on top for all those small bits n pieces where you can see the obvious resolution difference. I like the process that way but I can see how most may have a problem with it.

[Mouse]

Im not sure what to do about this either. I had my chasm vertical so top down didnt show any relief at all. But it looks too flat. I am unsure if that is how it would look in real life or whether I should have faked it a bit more for artistic sake to give some depth.

In Gimp I regularly use up to 20K pixel sized images. Not sure if there is a limit. I know in the past I used to get problems after about the 18K mark on my old paint software and in any case I think if your using images bigger than about 12K its time to break them up into tiles. I normally only use 20K images in Gimp so that I can make the tiles for the zoom maps.

We did the MeDem map which is 40K pix square in tiles. It was not easy using tiles but we found that we had to. I think there are some apps which work in tiles in the background but the main app will page them in and out for you so you dont notice. In fact I think its possible photoshop does this. I do quite a lot of image work in scripts and automated methods. Most my current city map is automated scripts and then I can run the same script on different tiles and then piece it all back together again - not that I am this time around.

I'm using artistic licence to create enough slope to illustrate the drop. Its not technically correct, but it conveys the information, which is what a map is supposed to do (that's what I was taught anyway) I believe that I was also told (by an ex Ordnance Survey draughtsman turned college lecturer) that even the Ordnance Survey uses a little licence when depicting cliffs on an ordnance survey map. Most times the cliffs are not as protuberant as those famous crinkled symbols they use, but they use them because everyone knows what it means.

I have a crappy laptop, and 10,000 pixels square is all I've dared to bump this up to. I don't know if its going to save properly, or if I'm going to have to leave the laptop turned on and the background file open until I've finished it, just so I can get the exported bitmap for my CC3 map.

Because CC3 only references the image when I import it, the size doesn't actually matter, so the CC3 file is perfectly happy with the state of affairs, but GIMP is threatening to crash on me as I speak - its got stuck trying to save the file!

I don't know if I can draw this in tiles. Its complicated enough for me to work the drawing out, without having to work out how to ensure I don't get the lines that cross the seams wrong.

[Mouse]

Yeah thats what I am doing. Background using the automated texture shading and VDale on top for all those small bits n pieces where you can see the obvious resolution difference. I like the process that way but I can see how most may have a problem with it.

Looks like we are both making hybrid maps

I've got GIMP to save and close so I can render an image of the new experiment. I don't know if this is the first time, but this is a GIMP relief map being used as the background for a CC3 map...

Image on its way!

[Redrobes]

I think southern crane is not a reference to a bird but to the fighting style he uses

Oh yeah - check this out:
http://gyokku-ninja.com/free-online-...ane-stance.htm

Getting side tracked again....

[Mouse]

Oh yes - Kung Fu! LOL!

Here is the image I promised. The tiny little cliff island with all the grass and trees around it is the one tiny spot of the relief map I've done so far, and I'm not convinced its really working.

The shadow on the viaduct is probably not right, but hey - I did it by eye and winged it

And sorry - I forgot to make the extent mask visible, but it should be fine for the bigger map (unless I get around to uploading a better one before you update it)

### Latest WIP ###
Errahum_03.JPG

Why does reducing the quality of a JPEG by 5% reduce the file size from 11.6 MB to just under 7 MB?

[Redrobes]

You dont need to show the extents for me so long as the wip image is the same size as the others and you havent moved the shape withing the image. I have the mask all set up so I just take the new wip and apply the mask to it.

JPEG at 100% means no loss - or at least it ought to. That means it needs to encode every last pixels worth of information. JPEG works by working out the spectral content of 8x8 blocks of pixels and then encoding them in most important to least. The quality value tells it how many of the spectral components are encoded so as you reduce it then it knocks out more of the insignificant ones under some threshold. But with 100% that threshold is 0 and your supposed to do them all. So the difference from 100% to 99% could be quite a lot but 99% to 95% less so.

We had a challenge once to make a map but the image size in bytes had to be less than some value I cant recall but something like 64K and the map had to be > 800x600 or something. It was quite tough as you add detail the file size goes up. But we all learnt a lot about file sizes in that challenge. If your image has lots of normal detail in it then JPG is better if you have blocks of solid colour then often PNG can beat JPG in those situations. PNG is always lossless but JPG is normally lossy but with 100% it should be lossless - it does depend on the app tho. Also 5% in one app seems to be different to 5% in another. A drop of 5% in Gimp seems to be quite significant compared to other apps. I am not sure if JPG standard sets the exact method of how many or how much of the spectral components to drop with a determinate amount of quality value.