An inn with a ship in it

[torstan]

Another inn, this one with the remains of a crashed ship as a crucial building block. The first is at the ground level of the bar. The second gives the top deck of the ship - used as a stage area for the bar, and the rooms. These aren't technically the same elevation (the top deck of the ship is only 4-5 feet above the bar room floor whereas the upstairs bedrooms are around 10 feet up, so I actually split the second map into two for my game.

RustedShuntBottomSmall.pngRustedShuntTopSmall.png

C&C welcome. As before, the maps are dressed in maptool with barrels, tables, chandeliers, fire, beds, wardrobes etc though I was lazy and just used the ones I used for my previous map. Oh, and I know the bar tops themselves. I'd forgotten to put them in until minutes before the start of a game so they were a rush job.

[RPMiller]

How incredible cool and original is that!!! What a great idea and would work marvelously for a secret pirate's cove. Very nice, and repped!

[RobA]

I agree with RPMiller. A most creative and unique idea!

-Rob A>

[torstan]

Thanks for the comments, and the rep! I enjoyed drawing it, particularly creating the sea. I'm working on the underwater portion of the map and will post it when it is done.

One problem with the map above is the very sharp edges of the rock face. However I'm not too sure how to go about fixing that. Any suggestions?

[jaerdaph]

Very cool and original idea! Is the broken ship hull a metal ship?

I'd love to know about the water too. Is it available as a bitmap fill?

[torstan]

Thanks Jaerdaph.

Yes, the ship is meant to be metal. It was inspired by the inn called the Rusted Shunt in the Dungeon adventure Porphyry House Horror. I decided that an Inn with that name should have a rusted hulk as part of it's make up.

The water was created in Gimp and is easy to replicate. The essential pieces are three layers (1) a colour layer for all the blues and greens (2) an overlay layer to get the light and dark of the water and (3) a highlights layer to get the light reflecting off the top of the water.

The Colour Layer

1. Create three layers.
2. Fill the bottom layer with a nice blue-green-grey.
3. Fill the next layer up with a greener shade
4. Add a layer mask to this layer. (layers dialogue, right click on layer->Add layer mask)
5. Click on the layer mask (square to the right of your layer in the layer dialogue) so it is outlined in white.
6. Go to Filters->Render->Clouds->Plasma
7. I generally stick the turbulence quite high to get a lot of different patterns in the plasma.
8. Now you should have some bits of your green showing over the blue below. Play a bit with the layer mask - applying a blur to it is usually a good idea - until the two look nice and mottled.
9. Repeat steps 3-8 with another layer and different shades until you get a mottled blue green effect NOTE: Remember to pick a new seed in the Plasma dialogue each time or all your colour will have the same mask.
10. Merge all these layers together. This is now the base water colour.

You should now have something like this:
ColourLayer.png

The Overlay layer

1. Create a new transparent layer.
2. Go to Filters->Render->Clouds->Solid Noise
3. Check the box marked turbulent
4. Play with the x-size and y-size until you have a nice detailed pattern in the preview window then press okay.
5. Go to Layer->Colours->Invert
6. Make sure this layer is immediately above your water colour layer (move it using your layers dialogue).
7. Change the layer mode to overlay.

You should now have something that looks like this:
OverlayLayer.png

The highlights layer
1. Duplicate your overlay layer.
2. Change this new layer's mode back to normal for the time being.
3. Go to Layer->Colours->Threshold.
4. Take the black marker on the histogram to 1.
5. Move the white marker down slightly (around 245 usually gives a good result) and then click okay when you are happy with the preview.
6. Invert the colours of the layer again so now the thin lines are white.
7. Change the mode of the layer to lighten only.
8. Reduce the opacity of the layer until it looks good.

You should end up with something like this:
HighlightsLayer.png

Play with the opacity of the different layers until you are happy. Remember you can also change the colours afterwards. In the example above the water shades are very bright, so I decided to lower the saturation and darken the whole thing down a bit to get this:

Final.png

Hope that's of use to someone. I enjoyed figuring out how to get Gimp to do this.

[jaerdaph]

Thank you so much for this - I'm *just* starting to play around with GIMP now!

[torstan]

Not a problem at all. Feel free to ask questions - I'm also very much a learner when it comes to the more complex features of GIMP but I'm happy to help out where I can.

[joebob]

Awesome water creation, I've been looking for something just like that.

I really like the dark, cold look of the water in the ship map, and I will certainly be trying that soon.

[torstan]

Glad it was useful.