[WIP] Sunken Cavern (photorealistic battlemap)

[gogocamel]

I've been running a D&D 5e campaign for a new group over the last three months. I am typically a minimal prop, abstract, theater of the mind gamemaster. However, this new party is all new players and come from a strong video game background, and they have been struggling with filling in the blank spaces created by this approach. To help with this I have running a fair amount of gridded combat. Since I don't want to be investing in a ton of minis, I have been using glass drops on a grid. This has helped, but I've found that more detailed battlemaps help get this group into the game. As such, I've started creating 20mm gridded battlemaps in Photoshop.

Here is the first one I am actually happy with. This is about 40 layers of various masked seamless textures with hand drawn highlights and shadows. I'm quite pleased with how the water is working out. The cavern walls and mist are lacking the depth I want and am looking for suggestions on how to bring that out.

### LATEST WIP ###

Sunken Cavern.jpg

[DanielHasenbos]

This map is looking great! I'm not really into battlemaps so I can't give you any advice on the depth of the walls and mist, but I'm sure there are some people around here that can give you great advice!

-Dan

[Santra]

Hello
I'm not an expert on graphical things. But for how it looks to me, is that the mist actually looks really in depth. There isn't too much of it, but what you have seems to float around in different heights. Looks good. For the cavern walls, I was wondering if you have too much pattern. I mean as if you would have smoother areas and then rougher areas it might be easier to make it look as if it's in different heights. Just my thought on the matter.

Anyway, in general I think your battle map looks really great.

[wgrasham]

This is a really nice looking map.

[Jacktannery]

It's a good map. I think you can bring out a bit more depth by adding contrast between the cavern walls and the water/floor. Basically: darken the cavern walls and lighten the water. At the moment, all the colours on the map are quite dark. By building more contrast between the walls and the floor, you might get closer to what you are trying to achieve? I agree with Santra that your mist is fine.

Here's a really quick example. I'd also reduce the brown inside the water a little, and perhaps lighten your grid a smidgen to make it fade a bit more on the dry ground.

Sunken Cavern.jpg

Note that your water colour is much better than mine above - I just added some white. Keep your nice colour whilst adding contrast.

[gogocamel]

Thanks for all the feedback. To reduce the pattern/texture of the walls I made a level adjustment layer to darken and reduce the contrast. I also added a secondary shadow and highlight layer to better emphasize the light source from the upper right corner. I then threw a level adjustment on the water to lighten it a bit. It reduces the clarity of the water, but brings out the ripple better. I dropped the opacity of the grid on the sand, but it didn't provide enough contrast between the submerged and non-submerged portion. So, I added a slight gaussian blur to the submerged grid. And the I threw a couple of mushroom patches for good measure. So here is where I'm at:

### LATEST WIP ###
Sunken Cavern rev2.jpg

[wdmartin]

For the underwater grid, you could try using Distort to ripple the lines. Like this:

rippled-lines.jpg

I'm pretty sure I did that using Filter > Distort > Wave. Cunning Cartographer made a short tutorial on it.

Other than that, it's looking very good, if dark. I love the base texture you're using for your water -- is that available somewhere? Good water textures for top-down views are hard to come by.

[Jacktannery]

gogocamel, that looks really great. I think your grid in the water is fine, I'm not a fan of rippling grids personally. Great stuff.

[gogocamel]

For the underwater grid, you could try using Distort to ripple the lines.

I like that idea. I may play around with the zig zag effect to have the grid radiate from the rocks in the pool.

I love the base texture you're using for your water -- is that available somewhere?

I actually don't use a texture for my water. Here's the basic steps I use to create it.

Step 1: Once I have my base textures complete. I create a layer and fill it with clouds. For this example I used #0000ff for my foreground color and #bef9f9 for my background color.
Render Clouds.jpg

Step 2: Then I apply a gaussian blur. This example is 300 pixels/inch, and the blur is an 8.8 pixel radius. I also set a level adjustment to clip the black and white levels on the input to make the contrast a little more drastic.
Blur and Set Levels.jpg

Step 3: Then I apply a ripple filter. This one is set to Medium at 450%.
Ripple.jpg

Step 4: The I set the layer opacity to about 65%.
Opacity.jpg

Step 5: I apply a layer mask and remove the non-submerged area with a soft brush.
Layer Mask.jpg

Step 6: Next is to lay in some shadows to show the depth of the submerged area. On a new layer I paint the shadow with a soft brush starting just above the water line. I paint further down into the water adjusting the brush opacity in 15% increments. I set the layer mode to Multiply and adjust down the opacity until it feels right. I create another layer below the water layer and paint in a white highlight just above the shadow I created. I set this layer to Overlay and adjust down the opacity to blend.
Highlights and Shadows.jpg

Step 7: The next step is to further define the boundaries between water and land. Here I apply a Bevel and an Inner Shadow to the water layer. This example uses the following settings.
Bevel & Emboss
Inner Bevel
Smooth
Depth 776
Size 8
Soften 10
Highlight/Screen 9%
Shadow/Multiply 50%
Inner Glow
Overlay
Opacity 81%
Color #8fa7c9
Softer
Edge
Choke 23%
Size 202
Contour/Inverted Cone
Range 17%
Layer Style.jpg

Step 8: I then mess around with the contrast of the bottom layer and the opacity of the water layer to get water to a transparency level I like. This example I cranked up the contrast on the stone all the way and dropped the opacity of the water to 43%.
High Contrast Low Opacity.jpg

From there I paint in some highlights and shadows for the depth of waves or floor below. Anything below the water I run over with the blur tool.

[wdmartin]

That is an extremely useful water technique. Repped!