The city of Tevreh

[Juhrer]

Let me start by saying that the many tips, tricks, tutorials and great examples on this forum have helped me significantly in making - I feel - better maps. There is still plenty of room to grow and many, many mistakes to be fixed, but I'm confident enough to release one of my cities for your C&C. Behold the city of Tevreh, the second largest city in my campaign world and the place where the players will (hopefully) spend much time to explore and adventure. eyH54HR.jpg

Writing out the story for this one will be a blast!

[vdubuis]

This is great. Always nice to see maps in a desert/dry setting.

[Weery]

Hi Juhrer,

This looks really great. It has a real tropical feel and I love the general city shapes, too. I hope you're going to label the locations and land marks and post that here as well as a bit of background story

Thanks for posting.

[XCali]

Hi Juhrer,

Nice map.
If it is one thing that really riles me up, it's creating buildings for these city maps. I like create in a way that is efficient and practical. So I have to ask, how did you do yours?

[Talondor]

I like it. Is that thing sticking out of the right side a aqueduct?

[DaggerAndBrush]

I really like the organic feel to the city, that is you can imagine they first build a small settlement, then the inner walls followed, to be extend again in later centuries. The arid setting is also a nice touch and adds variety. Overall excellent work.

[HadrianVI]

This is a very nice map. And great work with the bevel effect.

If you wanted to add a bit more variation to your beveled cliffs, you could try this:
Create another sheet just on top of the one with the bevel effect. Then create an entity with the same texture as you have now on the top of the cliffs and follow the top of the cliff.
Once this is done, increase the bevel size. This won't be noticeable because the top of the cliff is now covered by the new layer. Now you can start adding variations to the new sheet. If you want, for example a smooth upper end of a cliff, use a mask to fade out the contour of the new layer. Or if you wanted to emphasize the steepness of the cliff add a slight dark glow (this could probably be achieved by creating another layer just below the new one and use a smooth dark brush). Also, you can vary the height of the cliffs by moving the edge of the new layer.

[Juhrer]

I like it. Is that thing sticking out of the right side a aqueduct?

It actually is!

Hi Juhrer,

Nice map.
If it is one thing that really riles me up, it's creating buildings for these city maps. I like create in a way that is efficient and practical. So I have to ask, how did you do yours?

At first, it was extremely time consuming. The more I advanced, however, I just drew several rectangles, rounded rectangles and circles in Photoshop and copied the layer style once I found it. I lost count of how much buildings I placed (and it is still ever so tedious a job), but I saved myself some time. If you want, I can give you all the specifics of how I made it? I drew from some tutorials I saw on YouTube and on here!

I really like the organic feel to the city, that is you can imagine they first build a small settlement, then the inner walls followed, to be extend again in later centuries. The arid setting is also a nice touch and adds variety. Overall excellent work.

Thank you for the nice words! That's exactly how I envisioned it. This city grew as a settlement on a very strategic location along the coast, slowly grew to the size it is today. A lot of people have abandoned it recently, so many buildings will actually be empty as well.

This is a very nice map. And great work with the bevel effect.

If you wanted to add a bit more variation to your beveled cliffs, you could try this:
Create another sheet just on top of the one with the bevel effect. Then create an entity with the same texture as you have now on the top of the cliffs and follow the top of the cliff.
Once this is done, increase the bevel size. This won't be noticeable because the top of the cliff is now covered by the new layer. Now you can start adding variations to the new sheet. If you want, for example a smooth upper end of a cliff, use a mask to fade out the contour of the new layer. Or if you wanted to emphasize the steepness of the cliff add a slight dark glow (this could probably be achieved by creating another layer just below the new one and use a smooth dark brush). Also, you can vary the height of the cliffs by moving the edge of the new layer.

Thank you so much for that advice. To be fair, I've struggled with a good 45 minutes and just couldn't find a way to make the hills more realistic (I'm actually pretty dissatisfied with how they turned out). I'm making some of the smaller towns around Tevreh (a University town, some farm and mining towns) and will certainly try and experiment a bit more, maybe to come back to Tevreh.

[Tenia]

Great map Juhrer, good looking on the rendering on elevation which is a hard work on bevel and shadows I guess, Bravo !

[AaronSchmidt]

The curves of the divers walls are dynamic and organic. Makes me feel like they were created organically as the city grew up.

The faux Sanskrit font is a nice touch. Does that mean the world has an Indian subcontinent influence? I know in India there is the red fort of Agra that uses a naturally red brick for the structure. https://goo.gl/images/Z7w6HP

Was that an influence also?