Wizardess Drow House Battlemap

[Eldresh]

Drow House.jpg
Created in Adobe Photoshop CS6
70 px grid

Most of the mapping I do is for the Dungeons & Dragons game I run, and this map is no different. The WIP of this map was done entirely on the Cartographer's Guild discord channel, so I don't have a WIP thread for it, but it has reached a state where I consider it finished. I start these maps by blocking out various areas in black, white, and greyscale to make it easier to get a feel for the layout and refine where and how I want things to go before I get into any detail work. Following that, I build up the base textures for floors, then walls, then move on to detail work, furnishing, and lighting effects.

This particular map was created as the official complex for a Drow House composed of wizardesses, hence the large magical laboratories on the northern side of the map. The grid style is a new one for me and an experiment in balancing functionality with something that didn't feel like it detracted from the overall appearance of the map, and it is my first time doing a map that involved balancing more natural looking areas with the more clearly artificial one.

Here you can see the original layout I built this map off of along with the room labels. You can see that the lake isn't on this version as it was somewhat of an afterthought that I added after noting the area was a good place for one.

Drow House (layout).png

In the future, I think I need to work on getting my various floor styles to flow better together, as I feel like the floors here feel very mix-and-matchy and I'm not sure that's a good thing. In addition, I feel like I need to work more on cave walls, as in this map it can be difficult to tell sometimes where a cave floor turns into a wall, and I need to work on furnishing some of the public areas like the great hall and the reception area better. They're a bit too blank for my taste but I just wasn't sure what else to do there so I decided to call it done with the work I'd already completed on it.

The textures themselves used and many of the furniture tokens used in this map are not my own, and I'd like to take this moment to credit their creators, without whom this map just wouldn't be possible.

Furniture:

Bogie, deviantart.com/bogie-dj
Neyjour, deviantart.com/neyjour
Cisticola, deviantart.com/cisticola

Textures:

jojo-ojoj, deviantart.com/jojo-ojoj
Yughues, Drummyfish, p0ss, opengameart.org

[mtcarpentersr]

I'd agree with the floor tile comment you made. For me, too fancy a floor pattern detracts from the readability and function of the overall map, particularly when you are competing with the texture from the walls. Making the walls a bit darker and the floors a bit lighter, for me, helps the readability of a battle map. I always default to K.I.S. = Keep It Simple. Maps, especially battle maps, can get really cluttered really quickly, so I think making some choices of what is important to keep or get rid of can really enhance the piece. Adding some grime/mold/grit to the finished floors helps to make them look more integrated into the design since this is underground in a cave system.

I think you were successful in integrating the flow of natural structures vs. finished rooms. I really like how this is laid out. I struggle with how something like this would be laid out in real life vs. needing to keep it contained to a printable/usable area. The space feel big, which I think works for the cave aspect.

I actually like your cave walls. I was going to ask what your working process was to make them look so natural and cave like? I really like the colors you chose for the floors and the wall.

I'd say the last thing I'd suggest is the overall contrast of the map. The whole map's value looks to be the same, which make it a bit hard to read. You might drop a correction layer on the whole piece and really push the darks darker and the lights lighter. Adding some more lighting - torches, lamps, etc. in the finished areas will help enhance the overall look.

Great map. I'm still working on how to do good battle maps, so I enjoyed looking at this. Nice work.

[Eldresh]

Basically what I've done for these cave walls is overlay a series of bevels and shadows on top of one another. I had a time trying to figure out how to make them look natural and not artificial, as I'd never really had to do cave walls like this before, but here's the process. There are 5 layers for the cave wall bevel, and here's what I've got them doing from bottom to top:

1. Bottomost layer, "Stone Extension", extends the natural cave wall texture out a bit and ends with a blur instead of a hard line. It has a layer mask that consists of only a ribbon of area around the cave walls.
2. "Cave Bevel", the layer itself is only a white filled area over where the cave floor will go with the fill% set to 0. The layer style consists of a smooth emboss, sized up and smoothed a tad, with highlight mode set to overlay and shadow mode set to color burn, both turned down. The bevel uses the guassian contour and has a texture set to the smooth stone texture used for the cave floors. Lastly, it has a drop shadow that's been sized up a bit with the angle set to opposite the global light.
3. "Bevel 2", this layer is a black filled area of the cave walls, excluding the stone extension, with the fill% set to 0. This time its an interior bevel, set to overlay and multiply, that's been sized up about half as much as the other layer. It has a texture of the cave wall's stone texture, with the depth set to around 50. In addition, there's an outer glow here with its color set to black and blend mode set to multiply, opacity lowered and glow sized up a bit. Lastly, there's another drop shadow whose opacity has also been lowered a bit (I spend a lot of time playing with these opacities til I find a balance that works for me) and it has had all three size silders pushed up a tad.
4. "Short Bevel", this is a folder with a layer mask consisting of another area including only the ribbon of area around the cave walls where the Stone Extension is plus a little extra.
5. Inside the folder, "Wall Short Bevel" (I know I have the most creative layer names ever) has the same filled area as Bevel 2, still with fill% set to 0. Its another bevel that's been sized up a little, set to soft light (turned up to 95) and multiply (turned down some), and uses a totally different, pebbly sort of stone texture to give the walls a more natural feeling to them.
6. Finally, "Wall Inner Dark" is just me having painted some inner parts of the walls where they are particularly thick black, both for the sake of file size and because it looks better in roll20.

As for the contrast, that's a good idea. One of the primary bits of feedback I get on maps is they're either too contrasty or not enough, so I suppose I overcompensated in one direction here. I'll keep in mind what you said about the busy floors too, I do tend towards busy floors more often than not and I should probably back off from that.

[mtcarpentersr]

Thank you so much for sharing that. It will take me awhile to unpack that and try it out.

(I spend a lot of time playing with these opacities til I find a balance that works for me)

It seems 80% of the time I spend is doing this or different layer styles, settings, textures, etc. I keep fiddling with it until it just feels right.

(I know I have the most creative layer names ever)

Beats my names: Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 3. At some point I do rename them, but it seems only after I have about a dozen layers or so.

Thank you again for the info on the walls.

[Bogie]

Very nice work, a useful battlemap.

Thanks for the credit.

[Kellerica]

A very impressive battlemap, Eldresh. I love the darker color scheme, and the texture work is excellent. I guess I see what you mean about the floor styles, but it doesn't really bother me personally. The glowing fungi has to be my favorite thing about this map, they are just beautiful. Great map overall!

[Eldresh]

Thanks you two, and thank you Bogie for your wonderful furniture pieces. I can't begin to imagine how much time they all must have taken you.

[alemoron]

I really liked your work plus sharing the map layout.