Nocturnal Scenes

[Gamerprinter]

Haven't got the Halloween out of me, even though its just past... I wanted to experiment creating encounter maps at night. I know this isn't too VT friendly, since VT's like to apply the darkness/shadows through the VT itself and not the map. But I just wanted to play.

Here's a ruined wilderness (or something) with a skeleton at the doorway. Light is cast be the moon, but whether the shadows created are of trees higher up or cast by clouds, I haven't decided.

This was an hour playing around in Xara Xtreme... what do you think? Too dark or otherwise unrealistic?

I think this is experimenting towards creating a village at night. Next I'm going to create some buildings with interior light and window shapes cast by the windows onto the ground surrounding it.

GP

[Redrobes]

Great - almost photographic. The thing that gives it away the most is the skeleton cos it has a dark halo around him and I bet that token came with that halo as part of it. Another thing might be to desaturate it a bit because eyes don't see color so well at night that everything turns monochrome. Its well moody tho and I bet if you had some low level skeletons they would give more creeps to players than if you had that map in daylight. Its not something I have considered in the past but I bet theres a subliminal effect that a GM can exploit.

[Steel General]

Very nice GP! I had to look at it a second time to see the halo on the skeleton that RedRobes pointed out.

Lighting and shadows are definitely some of my biggest weaknesses on any of the stuff that I've done.

[Gamerprinter]

The Skeleton object is mine, I created it for the Underhalls (dungeon tiles challenge) and repurposed it here. So I put the halo in and can remove it. I actually placed the skeleton above the shadow layer, so the white in the bones can stand out better. I thought about desaturating it as well, so I'll try that this afternoon and repost.

GP

[Redrobes]

Cool. Don't get me wrong - I am being extremely picky here. That map would be good enough to win a monthly challenge with a suitable requirement for it.

[joão paulo]

beautiful artwork

very good

...this gives me fear

[Gamerprinter]

OK, I desaturated the color somewhat - I didn't want to go completely monochromatic, so there is some level of color still. I altered the overlay nighttime shadows and I removed the halo from the skeleton, using a very slight drop shadow instead.

GP

EDIT: oops, forgot to upload the image, here it is!

[Redrobes]

fabulous - really looks moonlit now. Could be a real place or photo of a model.

[ravells]

Much better with the desaturation. Looks really atmospheric. My only very minor critique is that the leaves (oak leaves by the look of them) are enormous.

[Gamerprinter]

The issue with the leaves of course is that its a non-seamless texture, rather its a photo of leafy ground. Like using masks, I placed a rectangle of dried grass, with a rectangle of the leaves on top. Then a transparency cloud filter was used on the leaves to show the ground from beneath.

Had I decreased the size of the leaves, the repeating pattern by the non-seamless texture would become too obvious. I could possibly play around with the texture to make it more seamless or I could add some additional detritus to cover glaring non-seamless joins.

At the scale I made them, seams are more or less invisible. I'll dabble some more in the wee hours of the morning - I've got some gaming to do in a few...

GP