Swamp Temple of Katara

[wdmartin]

I developed a need for a Greek temple in a swamp with a well in the center.

swamp-temple-01.jpg

This one is based on the Temple of Concordia, in Agrigento. I relied heavily on this diagram, though I took liberties with the floor plan.

Questions:

1) The pillars. They look awfully stubby to me. Suggestions?

2) Do the pillars need more variety?

3) Do the puddles look like puddles? I'm not 100% convinced by the downward facing bevel/emboss filter, but I wasn't sure what else to do to them. It feels like they need to be a bit shinier.

4) Are the walls too bright? Do they look too much like they're floating?

5) It feels like it needs a little more vegetation. I specifically want a cold, fairly barren swamp, but the complete lack of undergrowth may be a bit much.

Basically, the map as a whole is coming together pretty well, I think, but there are lots of details I'm not satisfied with.

[Bogie]

Nice work, I really like your floor tile. Yes, the walls are to bright. Also try a little bevel to give them some depth. You can add a shadow to the Pillars or use pillars that are a bit iso, or both.
Might need to darken this pillar also, it is kinda bright now.

column01_2_DPA_kpl.png71D_columnshadow4.png

[wdmartin]

Thanks. I'll work on it more tomorrow. Some lighting of some kind so those pillars throw shadows would probably help with the illusion of depth.

Here's that floor tile as an seamless overlay. The original is from textures.com, but heck if I can find it on their site again.

Cracked-Tiles.png

And here's a version where I went in and erased some of the larger areas. This is nice for lighter colored stones that get too much of their own texture wiped out by the greyish bits of the main texture.

Clean-Cracked-Tiles.png

I got moss in the cracks by putting a layer of moss over the floor and using conditional blending in the layer properties to make it only show up in the dark areas.

[Bogie]

Love the overlay, thanks!!

[wdmartin]

Here's a revision.

swamp-temple-02.jpg

Changes:

- Beveled the walls.
- Added lighting and shadows.
- Pool emits pale blue light.
- Added a few clumps of grass/flowers.

You wouldn't think from that description that I just spent four hours working on this sucker. X_X

[wdmartin]

And another minor revision.

swamp-temple-03.jpg

Changes:

- Dimmed the plants in the top right corner a bit, they were too bright.
- Added low, ground-hugging fog.

I'm wavering back and forth on the fog. It makes it moody, which is good, but also obscures some of the detail.

And at this point I'm not sure what else to do with it. I experimented with adding a couple torches in the two inner rooms, with pale orange-yellow light; but I didn't like the effect.

In this location, the player will be confronting an amnesiac muse who has been tasked with guarding the area as a punishment. She can't remember what she did, but she knows that she must guard the Well of Mnemosyne in the center of the temple, and prevent anyone from drinking from it. The well drains memories from living creatures in a very wide radius. I've got like three weeks till our next session, so I could easily mess with this some more if anyone has suggestions.

[Neyjour]

Very nice job on this!

I prefer the previous version, because the fog really does wash everything out and obscures a lot of the detail. But if the fog is necessary for your game, then just try experimenting with its opacity. You might be able to find a nice balance where the fog is obvious, yet there's still a visible level detail, dark/light contrast, and colour.

Your floors look fantastic. I love that broken/cracked texture with the moss growing in the cracks. Love the glow from the pool, and the walls look much better now. But the tops of the columns look much too bright (IMO), even in the non-fog version. I'd suggest darkening them up a bit more. Are the very tops of them a separate piece? (They look a bit like a flat circle just pasted on top). If they are a separate piece, you could try adding a small bevel to them and a tiny dropshadow, to make them look less flat (more height and depth).

The flower vegetation is a nice addition, but they also look much too bright (and it looks like they're possibly on top of the fog rather than underneath?). I'd try darkening them up a bit more, and a little trick I use in all my battlemaps is to lower the opacity of a lot of the elements/objects I use. Just by a very tiny bit, down to 90 or 95 percent, depending on the object (you don't want the underneath layer to show through). I've found it really helps to make everything blend well together and not look like they've been "pasted" on.

For your puddles, the bevel effect makes it look like they're (slightly) above the ground. I'd suggest getting rid of the bevel and applying a small inner dropshadow to give them depth, and make it look like they're down in the ground rather than sitting/floating above.

[wdmartin]

Yay, feedback! And from one of my favorite mappers, no less.

... the fog really does wash everything out and obscures a lot of the detail.

Yes, after a couple of days away, I agree. I do need fog -- I've been playing up the ever-present mists, which were devised largely to explain why the player can't just turn into a hawk, spot the points of interest from far off, and beeline for them. I've dialed them back a bit -- instead of two fog layers at 60% and 20% opacity, I've got just one at 40% now.

The details are clearer, but I'm not sure it looks like fog any more. Nothing's ever simple, is it?

... the tops of the columns look much too bright (IMO), even in the non-fog version. I'd suggest darkening them up a bit more. Are the very tops of them a separate piece? (They look a bit like a flat circle just pasted on top). If they are a separate piece, you could try adding a small bevel to them and a tiny dropshadow, to make them look less flat (more height and depth).

The pillars are actually in a separate PSD. I made them over there and pasted copy-merged pillars into place into a document for the peristyle, then made yet another PSD for the full map and pasted in a copy-merged peristyle. So they're at two removes from the overall document. But! I went ahead and added a bevel on the original, manually updated all 38 pillars in the peristyle document, and then updated the main document.

I also dimmed them a bit in this version, but I'm still struggling with them. I want the interior of the pillar to be distinct from the lower parts in order to convey depth -- too close a color match between the base and the shaft makes the shaft blend in. Of course, part of the problem is the lighting! If the shaft is bright enough to look good in the shadowed southeast corner, it's blindingly bright in the sunny northwest corner. And if it's dim enough to look good in that northwest corner, it fades into oblivion at the southeast. Glurgh. @_@

The flower vegetation is ... much too bright (and it looks like they're possibly on top of the fog rather than underneath?).

I've dialed down the saturation on the blossoms. Also I like the 90% opacity trick for blending solid objects! That never occurred to me. Good tip. Oh, and they are indeed under the fog. The trees aren't, but that's because they're supposed to poke up above it.

For your puddles, the bevel effect makes it look like they're (slightly) above the ground. I'd suggest getting rid of the bevel and applying a small inner dropshadow to give them depth, and make it look like they're down in the ground rather than sitting/floating above.

I have done so in this version. It's considerably more subtle, and I was dubious at first. But after a whole bunch of flipping back and forth between two versions, I like it better.

Here's the new version:

swamp-temple-04.jpg

[Neyjour]

Yay, feedback! And from one of my favorite mappers, no less.

Ahh! Thanks so much!

Yes, after a couple of days away, I agree. I do need fog -- I've been playing up the ever-present mists, which were devised largely to explain why the player can't just turn into a hawk, spot the points of interest from far off, and beeline for them. I've dialed them back a bit -- instead of two fog layers at 60% and 20% opacity, I've got just one at 40% now.

The details are clearer, but I'm not sure it looks like fog any more. Nothing's ever simple, is it?

Yeah, it's looking much less like fog now, and still washing everything out. Hmmmm... I've only dealt with fog once before, but in mine, I didn't have to worry about ground details being obscured: WIP: floating boulders (need help/suggestions please)

But... that gave me an idea of something you could try with yours. Instead of using one large, single layer of fog, try using smaller pieces instead. This way, you can move them around, duplicate them, add various layer modes to the different layers, have lower or higher transparency in different sections, sections that are brighter or darker, thicker or thinner, etc. Basically, you'd be able to make the fog look exactly how you want (and where you want it), and it would allow you to have sections of the ground that are almost (or completely) obscured by thick fog, and then other sections where the fog is much thinner (or completely gone), allowing at least some of the ground detail/colour/contrast to be seen and appreciated.

I was looking at the credits list for my map, and the fog I used is "misc cloud smoke element" by dbszabo1. Unfortunately, he has multiple ones that are all named exactly the same, so I'm not 100% sure which ones I used. But I'm almost certain I used the ones I've circled in red:

misc fog smoke element.PNG

I cut out various pieces from them (with the Freehand Selection tool and a fairly large Outside Feathering, so they'd blend and transition well with each other), but I also scaled them down (the whole images, not pieces) to different sizes, and flipped/rotated them to get some more variation.

I don't know if that will work for your map, but it couldn't hurt to give it a try.

The pillars are actually in a separate PSD. I made them over there and pasted copy-merged pillars into place into a document for the peristyle, then made yet another PSD for the full map and pasted in a copy-merged peristyle. So they're at two removes from the overall document. But! I went ahead and added a bevel on the original, manually updated all 38 pillars in the peristyle document, and then updated the main document.

I also dimmed them a bit in this version, but I'm still struggling with them. I want the interior of the pillar to be distinct from the lower parts in order to convey depth -- too close a color match between the base and the shaft makes the shaft blend in. Of course, part of the problem is the lighting! If the shaft is bright enough to look good in the shadowed southeast corner, it's blindingly bright in the sunny northwest corner. And if it's dim enough to look good in that northwest corner, it fades into oblivion at the southeast. Glurgh. @_@

Hehe. I feel your pain! But the tops look much better now! They're not as bright, and they have some 3D depth now and look like they're actually part of the column. Maybe try darkening just the body/base of the columns a little bit, either by just upping the Contrast, or using Curves (probably better).

I've dialed down the saturation on the blossoms. Also I like the 90% opacity trick for blending solid objects! That never occurred to me. Good tip. Oh, and they are indeed under the fog. The trees aren't, but that's because they're supposed to poke up above it.

I'm glad that tip was useful! It doesn't always work for all types of objects, but when it does, it can make a big difference. Your blossoms still look a bit "pasted on", but I think part of the problem is that they're very sharp and almost pixelated-looking in some parts. You could try applying a very tiny Gaussian Blur (try somewhere between 0.03 and 0.05) to soften them up a bit, and help them match/blend better with the ground texture (which is much softer). It also looks like you could lower their opacity a bit more as well.

Oh, and if you decide to try the "fog pieces" technique, you could even add a thin, wispy layer over the top of parts of the trees, if you wanted some higher fog but don't want the trees completely covered/obscured.

I have done so in this version. It's considerably more subtle, and I was dubious at first. But after a whole bunch of flipping back and forth between two versions, I like it better.

I do too! I think they look much better now.

[wdmartin]

Okay, further refinement!

swamp-temple-05.jpg

- Switched to paste-n-adjust fog chunks from dbszabo1.
- Darkened the pillars with a curves layer.
- Worked more on blending the plants in -- 90% opacity, 90% fill, adjustment layer to decrease brightness.

The fog you used for Miasma Summit was this one. I can tell, because you left a comment on its page saying so. ^_^

The fog is looking much better now, I think. The 18 fog layers are at 100% opacity, but they have their mode set to Screen and I've made heavy use of layer masks that started with using Render -> Clouds on the layer mask, then painting on it with a brush set to 10% flow to build up their thickness slowly.