Necromancer Tower - First Floor

[Ascension]

OK I'll give you an example, change the brush to suit your size.

1. Grab the Pencil tool and use the standard 24 pixel hard square tip.
2. Open the Brush editor. Where it says Roundness, change that to 50% and now your 24 pixel square brush is a 12 by 24 rectangle. Next change the spacing at the bottom to something around 110-125 percent...this will leave a small space between each iteration of the brush "stamp".
3. Still on that window click on Shape Dynamics. Look down the screen to where it says Angle Jitter. Leave the jitter at 0 but in the little window below that it says Control...change that to Direction.
4. Now we have to set up a path to stroke so grab the Circular Marquee tool and make a circle. Click in the middle of the screen hold down the mouse button and on the keyboard hold down shift and alt then drag out to the size you want and release the mouse button and keys.
5. Click on the Paths tab. At the bottom of the tab are some icons, click on the one that says Make work path from selection. Photoshop seems to be incapable of making a round path from a round shape so you will have to edit the nodes with the Pen tool. Right click on the Pen tool and choose Convert Point tool. Click on a node and hold down and then drag until your arc is nice. You might have to remove a node here n there and you'll probably have to tweak each node. Very annoying, it sucks.
6. At any rate, once you have a nice path, click on the Pencil tool again. The settings should still be like we set them earlier so at the bottom of the Paths tab click on the icon that says Stroke path with brush.
7. To make a double block wall use the Direct Selection tool (it is right above the Pen tool). Click on a node and drag it inward. Move the other nodes inward.
8. Click on the Layers tab and create a new layer. Click back on the paths tab and stroke the path. Now you can delete the path.
9. Click back on the Layers tab and at the top of the screen click on Edit-transform-rotate and rotate the inner blocks so that the spaces are offset like in a block wall.
10. Hit ctrl+e to merge the layer down.
11. Filter-noise-median and use a setting of 1 or 2...this will round off the corners of the blocks. Now color the blocks up or layer style them or filter them with your favorite things.
12. Ctrl+click on this layer in the layer stack window.
13. At the top of the screen click on Select-modify-expand and expand the selection by 5 or so.
14. Create a new layer and fill it with color and deselect. Ctrl+click on this layer in the layer stack and Select-modify-contract and contract by 5. Select-inverse. Hit the delete key on the keyboard and deselect (ctrl+d). This is going to be our mortar so move this layer down in the layer stack and layer style it up.
15. Now you can start adding the other stuff like floor, rugs, altars, etc.

It all sounds confusing but once you get used to it you can do this whole process in 5 minutes. I went ahead and made myself a little round tower like yours for about an hour and forgot that I was supposed to be telling you how...I get carried away like that I attached some screenshots of the brush editing windows and, of course, my lil tower. I'm no pro at mapping on this scale so it's rather basic but I do know about making brushes do what I want them to do.

[RobA]

Adding on to what Ascension stated, also refer to this tutorial on mosaic tile maps:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=1482

Much of the techniques are the same for making the mosaic tiles as for making "bricks" along a path.

-Rob A>

[Steel General]

I'm no pro at mapping on this scale so it's rather basic but I do know about making brushes do what I want them to do.

You don't give yourself enough credit, I'd really like to see you do something at this scale. I think you'd be presently surprised by the outcome.

[Ascension]

To be real honest, that's the first structure drawing I've ever done that wasn't Sketch Up. I know the techniques and ins n outs of PS so I guess I need to start broadening my range, thanks bro.

[mr_thehun]

for some reason my photoshop doesn't have square brush tips as presets?

sorry figured it out.

[Coyotemax]

you can load them, they're likely in your presets folder.

Go click on the little brush shape icon with the drop down arrow right underneat where it says "Layer" in the menubar. On the top of the dropwdown window you'll see a little triangle, click that. Look down the list until you see square brushes.

if it's not in there, then it's missing from your presets folder. If that's the case let me know and I'd be happy to upload a copy of them.

[Tom_Cardin]

That is a nice little tutorial Ascension. Paths...another feature of photoshop I have rarely used.

[vhailor27]

Sorry. Wrong post.