Fantasy Galleon

[cniemira]

Behold! My first attempt at a boat.

The "Sea Roc" comprises mostly CC3 and SS2 art, with some bits from the CSUAC (most notably the pier), and a pair of custom images (the "pit" views into the cargo hold). I'm not fond of the water texture, but I guess it's serviceable enough for now.

I'm still learning CC3, so it's still lacking in a lot of ways (this is only my 4th attempt at a map, and the first one I actually plan to "finish"). That said, I think I've got a lot of the basics down, and I'm looking for C&C on how to tweak this up to the next level.

Uerth - S01 - Sea Roc (2).png

(Oh, and... I was thinking of putting together a tutorial on how I made the boat shape, since it took me a lot of trial and error. It's probably not the most efficient way, but if anyone's interested, I'll gladly share.)

[Steel General]

I like this so far, and I think the biggest problem with the water texture is that it's too repetitive.

EDIT: oh and your signature is messed up I think.

[Sigurd]

Its very pretty and useful. You might find it more easy on the eye if you replaced the water texture with something less busy. You might also try a shade or overlay to denote what was inside and what was on the open deck.

Sigurd

Keep it up!

[Hinaloth]

I like this so far, and I think the biggest problem with the water texture is that it's too repetitive.

+1 The water is ... well, too squarry I think. But else it's fun to see

[cniemira]

Thanks for the comments. Here's my second pass:

Uerth - S01 - Sea Roc v2 (trimmed).png

I've replaced the water texture with something that I feel works much better, and darkened the interior compartments.

Headed in the right direction?

[Turgenev]

It might just be me but I still fine the water to be too uniformed (samey). The galleon looks great though! Nice work.

[Midgardsormr]

The trouble is that it's got a very pronounced contrast between bright and dark, which makes the tiling obvious. You might be able to disguise that with an additional texture of a different size blended into it... Perhaps a clouds render out of Gimp would do the trick. Try adding another sheet filled with the attached texture, and give it a transparency effect to taste; 15% is where I'd start. The texture is 700 X 700, so it shouldn't line up with the existing water, and should therefore break up the obvious repetition (I hope).

[Redrobes]

There is a tutorial and a script to automate making seamless tiles here...

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=1373

The problem that you have is that the overall contrast of the tile is too high and it needs 'flattening'. Using the script there are two parameters, one is the flattening amount 1 - 3. I would go for 2 unless you think otherwise. And the second parameter is the image to tile and flatten.

To break up repeating patterns of a seamless and flat tile. Take a layer and flood it with the tile as you have already done. Then take another layer and flood it with the same tile but stretched a bit in both directions. Resample it maybe 131% or so and then flood it into layer 2. Then blend both layers together. Prefereably with a nice noise function but you can do a straight 50:50 average and it still looks good.

[cniemira]

Well, I think I'm making progress in the water department.

I started by "flattening" out my water tile. The IM script Redrobes provided didn't work out very well for me (might just be my result with this tile).

Before:
blueish water.png

After:
Final.png
Yikes! Even more contrast in that one. I eventually just resorted to tweaking the color levels by hand with The Gimp, and got this (this is actually my second version. The first was a bit more turquoise until I turned the blue back up. See below):
blueish water (2).png

When combined with a semi-transparent cloud render as Midgardsormr suggests, here's what I got:

Uerth - S01 - Sea Roc v3 (trimmed).png

I didn't like the turq color, nor did I feel there was enough "noise" from that cloud, so I tweaked a bit more and came up with this:

Uerth - S01 - Sea Roc v4 (trimmed).png

You can still see the water "pattern" if you look for it, though.

[cniemira]

Turning up the opacity on the cloud layer a few percent gets me this:

Uerth - S01 - Sea Roc v6 (trimmed).png