How to map out city districts? (fantasy)

[jl3141]

Hi all,

Looking for some exemplars and/or advice on making fantasy-style city maps whose primary use would be to showcase districts or regions effectively (e.g. "military quarter", "market district", "upper class housing" etc).

Ideally I would also like to avoid representing each building explicitly (I'm mapping a rather large city, and I don't know that I have it in me to go to this level of detail)... though from what I've seen so far, that does appear to be almost a staple of the genre.

Thanks in advance everyone =]

[Gamerprinter]

You think that's bad, when I make a city, I not only include all the buildings, I put roofs on those buildings so mine look like buildings instead of irregular polygons with a color texture. There are some city maps created here that are a mass of connected buildings so that alleys, courtyards and irregular shapes are shown, but individual buildings are not - so that might be one way to shortcut your way to elements of your map.

[snodsy]

I'm working on a map now that I've used a technique in Photoshop, a square brush with spacing set at 150, size jitter at 33%, then Bevel & Emboss adjustment layers on the buildings that have a bevel set all the way up to create roof peaks, a drop shadow, stroke and pattern fill-, then you can paint the buildings on pretty quickly, you can also erase just as easily - see my map - the girls of Italy - in this same forum, hope this helps

[xpian]

Here is Torstan's tutorial on how to use brushes in Photoshop to lay down a great number of buildings very simply: http://www.fantasticmaps.com/2013/03...namic-brushes/

[RedKettle]

Here is Torstan's tutorial on how to use brushes in Photoshop to lay down a great number of buildings very simply: http://www.fantasticmaps.com/2013/03...namic-brushes/

That looks like a very interesting method for drawing the buildings in photoshop at a small scale... I am now looking for an opportunity to try this out!