[Award Winner] Assorted tips and tricks

[Lukc]

I really like this one on isometrics, and your example is also very neatly illustrated. However, a question pops to mind - why compress to 57.7% of the original vertical height?

Edit: Ahh, ok - a bit of wikipedification. An isometric projection is quite specific. Other, similar projections with different angles are other parallel projections. Isometric basically has the x and y axes at 30° from the horizontal, so a cube looks like a perfect hexagon with 120° interior angles.

[torstan]

Precisely And to get a 30 degree angle you need to take shrink the vertical dimension to tan(30)=0.577 of the horizontal.

[torstan]

This one's quite specific for photoshop, but can be adapted to Gimp (and I've added some gimp tips throughout).

It's a neat tool that often lies buried in Photoshop's preferences panel that allows you to turn on a grid that you can snap to. This is perfect for quick dungeon floorplans on the fly. Combined with layer effects and blend modes (a future mini-tute) this can give you great looking maps really quickly.

Grids2.jpg

• There are a few steps to turning the grid on at the right scale.
  
  • Make sure that you have your image file set the correct scale. Here I'm creating a map at 100 pixels per square, so I set the resolution to 100dpi.
  • Open up Preferences and go to the settings for Guides, Grids and Slices. In here set the grid to 1 inch, and add in the number of subdivisions you want. When sticking to drawing features that take up full 5' squares you can set the subdivisions to 1. If you want to draw some smaller detail, like a 1' thick wall, then set it to 5 - to get a grid line every foot.
  • This should now give you a grid on your map. You can show/hide it with ctrl/cmd + ' . You can also toggle the snap to grid behavious using shift + ctrl/cmd + ; This also toggles snapping to guides.
  • Note for Gimp Users - there's a plugin here by RobA that allows you to create a grid of guides that will do the same job.
• With the snap to grid on, you can create a new layer, and use the rectangular select tool and Fill (option + delete or cmd/ctrl + delete for foreground/background fill) to quickly lay in your dungeon layout.
• Using that as a base, you can use blend modes and layer styles to build a pretty dungeon (or Gimp users can use this plugin, again by RobA, to generate a pretty dungeon map from their basic layout)

This tip originally appeared on Google+ here.

[torstan]

Last week I posted a short tutorial on using grids in Photoshop to create a quick dungeon map (see above). The last panel of that tutorial showed a dungeon map with some layer effects added to give it a little pop. Today I'm going through the layer effects I used to show how it's done.

A note of caution on layer modes - they can easily be over used and if you turn them all the way up to 11 then they'll scream their presence to anyone looking at your map. Bang them in at full opacity, then dial them down to create a more integrated effect.

LayerEffects.jpg

1. After last week's tutorial you should have a nice floorplan for your dungeon map. First find a nice neutral background with some slight textural variation to it. Paper and stone textures are good for this (try http://cgtextures.com). I've placed the floorplan on a new layer and changed it's colour to light blue ( #868ba6 for those that want to reproduce this in PS or Gimp). You can change the colour of a floorplan by locking the transparency of the layer (first of the four Lock options at the top of the Layers panel) and then fill with a colour (Edit->Fill, or option/Alt + delete to fill wth the foreground colour.

Finally I've set the blend mode of the layer to colour burn. Notice how the texture of the layer behind is clearly visible? The colour and tone difference separate the walls cleanly from the background, but the texture keeps the whole thing unified.

2. Here's the map with a couple of layer effects added. To access the layer effects panel double click the layer in the Layers window, or with the layer selected go to Layer->Layer Style->Blending Options... Here I've added a 2px stroke in black at 100% opacity to clearly delineate the walls (they are important after all).

I've also added a black outer glow with a blend mode of overlay and an opacity of 75%. Notice how the walls now separate from the floors and you get a sense of depth.

3. The shadows aren't quite deep enough, but rather than bump up the outer glow I add a drop shadow with no offset (offset drop shadows imply directional light, and I don't want that impression inside a dungeon - light sources should be in the rooms, not outside shining across the map). The drop shadow here is dark brown and has a blend mode of color burn with 75% opacity. That gives some great over saturated shadows and really dark nooks and crannies.

Finally I've added an inner glow. This highlights the edges of the wall, and contrasts with the dark shadows. I've used an inner glow in white with a blend mode of overlay, 40% opacity and a size of 50px (half a square).


I this case I've avoided using any Normal, multiply or screen blend modes (other than for the stroke). These modes mask the underlying texture, whereas the overlay and colour burn blend modes combine with it. I want the texture to unify the layout and provide some visual variation throughout the map.

Play around with the different options. Inner glow, outer glow, drop shadow and inner shadow give you lots of options for creating edge effects around an area. Once you've found something you like, click the New Style... button in the layer effects palette and give it a name. Now you can apply this layer style to any future selection by going to the Styles item on the left hand list and finding it again.

These skills don't just work for dungeon layouts, but also for text effects, logo design and much more. It's really worth the time to dig in and get to know the layer effects panel.

For Gimp users, there aren't any layer modes. However if you have a floorplan you have a selection. This selection then allows you to use filters such as drop shadow, which mean you can replicate all the effects here very easily by a combination of layers. You can also use Stroke Selection to create the stroke in step 2.

[jfrazierjr]

There is also a layerfx plug in available via http://registry.gimp.org/node/186. Note that the Python version has some nice additional features that are not possible in the "normal plugin" version, but if on windows, you have to do some extra work to get Python set up to work with GIMP.

[torstan]

Good call. I knew there was a layer effects plugin but I'd missed that.

[torstan]

Today's post on G+ was a reshare of a tutorial on creating dungeon walls using paths in photoshop. The tutorial is already on the CG so I won't reproduce it. You can find it here. It shows how to go from this:

1.png

to this:
9.png

[torstan]

In honour of the news that Wizards will be reprinting the 1Ed core rulebooks I thought I'd go old school and put together a quick old school map.

OldSchool.jpg

This is less a min-tute as a set of guidelines:
• The walls were placed using the tips on grids from earlier this week: https://plus.google.com/100445521601...ts/1xdFSTtKrXP
• The colour is key to getting that old school feel - it's #18769d
• To add the grid, open this file (http://thulaan.com/Downloads/Grid.psd) in Photoshop and go to Edit->Define Pattern. Now you can flood fill a region with a grid by going to Edit->Fill... and choosing Pattern -> 100px grid. Lock the transparency and fill with blue to get the old school blue grid.
• The doors are white squares stroked with blue:
Door.png
• The statues are just a circular graphic (attached)
Statue.png
• I used arial bold for the secret door label, again stroked with blue (Layer Styles->Stroke)

The (much longer) Gimp version of this tute can be found here: http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ol-map-in-Gimp.

Old School Blue Maps in Maptool

After I'd posted these tips on G+ Scott Pellegrino asked the obvious question - can you set the Fog of War in maptool to be old-school blue so that players reveal the white dungeon as they go. The answer is yes!

Maptool.jpg

Once you've imported your map into maptool - go to Map->Edit Map and choose the Fog tab and set the colour using the HSB settings to the values shown in the image below. Now the Fog of War is classic old school blue! You can also set the grid colour in the same way.

The tokens in these screenshots are not mine, but come from the free token packs by Devin Night (http://www.immortalnights.com/tokensite/index.html). Check them out, they're amazing.

[Immolate]

I really love this concept Torstan, and I learned from it as well. Repped and rated!

[maxsdaddy]

I think I can still remember the smell of the mimeograph machine when I see "old school" posts like these. lol. I need to find the poor man's version of photoshop though, still to rich for me. If I made a living at it, maybe. But hard to justify the expense as a hobby. You had a really late lunch today judging by your post time! Thanks for more tips and tricks.