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Your maps are great as well. I find it interesting just how distinctive our styles are.How do you get the boxes around the names?
First, thank you!
I just create a textbox and remove the alpha channel. Then I just select the box and trace its outline with a pen or brush.
@Kruelaid: Wow, your maps are fantastic! The shading really adds depth to the map. What kind of tool do you use to do these shadows?
Your maps are great as well. I find it interesting just how distinctive our styles are.How do you get the boxes around the names?
First, thank you!
I just create a textbox and remove the alpha channel. Then I just select the box and trace its outline with a pen or brush.
Not sure I did this how you do it (I honestly don't really understand what the Alpha Channels and such are or how to use them - something I still have to learn about). However the idea of tracing the box after using the snap to grid feature, then filling in the box with the colour I want before flattening the image seems to create the same effect as you have on your maps (I think).
OK I promised I'd do a quick primer on the basics of doing a 3d map so here it is.
3d Maps Primer Part One
So the first step is configuring the grid overlay. I've shown that with the thin blue (they look kind of black in photobucket) lines. This is the grid feature and you'll need to configure it so that it makes comfortable sized 3D squares. Not to small and not to big. Big problem with Gimp is that you CANNOT resize anything once you've started your work because it will throw off the super imposed grid and I positively guarantee that you will NEVER get it all lined up again. I've made this mistake - I suggest you don't. So you need to configure that grid to something your comfortable with - at the end of the process when your map is all done you can resize it but never part way through.
So at the top I show the basic square of your new 3D grid. Notice that when its super imposed on the background grid its 4 squares wide but only two squares tall. Thats essentially the perspective - thats what your square looks like from a 45 degree angle. Its possible to draw things from a perspective thats not 45 degree angle but that takes actual talent in art and such and I am not good enough to do that - so all your maps are done at a 45 degree angle - until you surpass my artistic skills which will be about 5 minutes from now (I failed high school art twice and I worked harder in that stupid class then all the rest of my classes combined).
Now your going to need a lot of those squares to draw your dungeon (or building) on. What your going to want to do is make a master grid that you start all your maps from. You only want to have to do this once - drawing little squares is NOT the fun part of making a map.
Best way to do that is to draw something like an 8 by 8 3d grid and then copy it into a new layer. Line that up EXACTLY with the old grid (overlap part of it to be certain) and try and see if you can't get the snap to grid feature to help here (I can't remember if I was able to use the snap to grid feature when copying new layers in or not). Turn that 8 by 8 grid into a larger grid - probably 15 by 15 or some such - then copy that to a new layer and repeat the process until you have a big grid. Save that as a file as you'll start all your subsequent work from this grid so that you will never have to draw those stupid squares again (actually you'll still find yourself drawing them for varous reasons but less is definitly best here).
The most important part of all this is that the corners of your 3D squares line up with grid coordinates on the super imposed grid. This allows you to use the snap to grid function and draw straight lines (using the pencil tool with shift). So long as you can draw a straight line from any corner of your 3D squares to any other corner of a 3D square on your 3D grid you'll be able to draw a good map. Thats why you can't resize, because the super imposed grid will no longer line up with the corners of your 3D squares and its critical that they do.
At the bottom of part one I drew a basic passage leading to a 15 by 15 room. Nothing special here. You'll just notice that everything has changed a little from the usual orientation. Instead of North being the top of the page its pointing to one of the top corners. You pick but try and stick with your choice in later work - I'm terrible about that and I constantly forget which way is north on my current map. Don't be dumb like me - make a choice and stick with it. Probably top left corner is North is the most comfortable over the long term.
3d Maps Primer Part Two
So here I have a very basic dungeon. This is what it might look like while I'm in the middle of working on it.
Now to make things clear I've still got the representation of Gimps super imposed grid showing but in actual practise you'll probably have the snap to grid function on but the view of the grid off most of the time as your much more interested in connecting the corners of your 3D map up and the super imposed grid is mostly just a distraction - though you'll occasionally bring it up to do detail work.
So this very basic dungeon shows a passage that goes down a couple of ramps and through a couple of doors to a room. The top ramp is one thats been done without filling things in while the lower ramp is a little closer to the final form. I could have made these stairs but that involves lots of little lines on the ramp. Thats a bit fiddly and takes a bit of time but is pretty easy to do.
Take a look at the ramps. The top one drops 5' in elevation and is 10' long (presuming these are 5' by 5' squares). The bottom one drops 15' and is 15' long. We know how far they dropped because elevation is measured on the grid just like distance. A line that is going straight up or down is usually changing elevation.
Because you sometimes have passages that are going north-east/south-west (presuming top left is North) it is important to make ramps and slopes distinctive so as not to confuse them with passages. Thats why my ramps are full triangles - thats the best way to show that its a ramp and not a passage going between compass points. Its also how we count how much the elevation has changed. We know that the top ramp dropped 5' becuase it went down one square. Like wise the bottom ramp goes up/down by 15' becuase, if we count from the back of the ramp its 3 squares up/down (on the bottom ramp in particular your counting the half of the square not obscured by the ramp itself. That said I often include elevation notes along the backs of ramps (or tubes or what have you) on the map because excess parts of the grid are eliminated during the cleaning up portion of map making - One only wants the grid in the actual parts of the dungeon the players are going to traverse - it looks ugly to have the grid outside of the dungeon/building/elevator up a cliff.
I've also drawn two very basic doors in this little dungeon. That gives you an idea of how 3d features can be added. Notice that the doors obscure parts of the grid that the players will be using. Thats something you'll have to take into account. You pretty quickly get used to dealing with this especially when only a little of the grid is hidden but it is something that takes some practise.
OK finally I want to cover some of the problems with 3D maps. There is a reason why Paizo does not do maps in this style. Things in the fore ground hiding the grid are the biggest issue. Now I've found that this is mostly a situation that you get good at working around with a bit of practise - but of course when Paizo did give us a 3d map in one of the Age of Worms adventures a lot of people complained. Working with a 3D perspective map is not what your used to and it will take a bit of work - and I don't mean so much when your at home doing adventure prep, I mean your going to stumble and be a bit confused in actual play with players there. That goes away after a couple of sessions but its understandable why people got angry when Paizo gave us a 3d map in an adventure. DMs trying to run that adventure were getting confused and stumbling over themselves, not worth it for a one shot - not a big deal if you work with this sort of map all of the time as some stumbling as part of the learning process is no big deal if you think it will improve the game (as I believe it does by making 3d environments a natural part of your adventures) for all the sessions from this point on out.
Still parts of the dungeon that hide other parts of the dungeon are a really significant issue. If its just a door hiding part of a square (or even a couple of squares) thats easy - if whole rooms are being obscured by important detail work in the fore ground then thats not something you can 'just get used to'.
There are a couple of ways around this - If you look at the Princesses Manor Map I showed off a few posts above then the building on the left is a 3D version of Foxglove Manor from Pathfinder #2. Its been modified to have an arch from the attic leading to the building on the right but its otherwise identical. However Foxglove Manors floors are only maybe 10' above each other and I could not do a detailed floor plan with them so closely stacked so for this map I did not follow my convention of 5' change in elevation is one square between the actual floors. It held when your looking at say a stair case on one level but that stair case (or ladder or what have you) is linked to the floor above or below by a thin red line. Can't really see it in the small images we get on Photobucket but they are there and if the players go up the stair case I follow that red line to see where they end up on the next floor.
So thats one option - changes in elevation need to be extended so that one level does not obscure the next - some of the time. Much of the time I just draw the change and allow some things to be slightly obscured. If there is a trap door in the floor then I draw the trap door and a tube leading down but the room above still has the grid on it and the tube leading down is 'under' this grid. I'll often change the colours of the tubes walls in this case - for example making the walls of the tube red for the part of the map where it is overlapping. This works if whats being shown is not complex - if it is then don't do this becuase you'll confuse yourself. Either modify the map so that one part of the map is not hiding another part or create a cut out of this part of the map that shows what this area looks like. Sometimes you'll find yourself doing a cut out because important details can't seen from the perspective chosen at the start of the map. One of the stair cases in Foxglove Manor forced me to do a cut out so that I could show it with North pointing toward the bottom left corner as the way the stairs twisted meant that the top of the stairs hid the change in direction in the middle of the stair case. That happens though not that often. Inserts are a necessary part of this sort of mapping but many maps don't require any and I've never had to include more then three on even a large map - though I can conceive of a map that needed more.
I guess thats about it. Hope this helps and if you have any questions I'm more then happy to try and answer them.
The same maps with a higher resolution can be found at my homebrews Wiki. You have to scroll to the bottom and click on the thumbnails. A political version of the same map can be found there too.
I must of missed this the first time through - man thats some pretty maps.
Here is a link that got lost when I hit reply.
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Not sure I did this how you do it (I honestly don't really understand what the Alpha Channels and such are or how to use them - something I still have to learn about). However the idea of tracing the box after using the snap to grid feature, then filling in the box with the colour I want before flattening the image seems to create the same effect as you have on your maps (I think).
Well, I don't know, if I'm using the correct terms here, as I am using the german version of GIMP. There the term is "alpha kanal" which I translated into alpha channel. When you open the layers-menu, there's an option that should be labeled "transparency" (or something similar) where you'll find various options regarding the alpha channel. Well, I can't explain what it is as I don't have any knowledge about how the GIMP actually works. :-) But if you select an area and then remove the alpha channel, it shows the current background colour. Be careful though to place the textbox (or any other selection) where you want to have it, because it can't be moved once the alpha channel is removed.
I haven't tried it, but I guess using the method you described on a textbox will make the text disappear, because the colour will be overlaying the text.
Btw, what is the 'snap to grid'-feature? Is it the tool that has the anchor as a symbol? It sounds like its the tool that adds a layer to another, right? I guess I should download the english version of GIMP so that I exactly know what you're talking about.
Thank you very, very much for taking the time to explain how you're doing the 3D-maps. I'll read it tonight, when I have some time. It's noon round here and I'm a little busy right now...
Yesterday evening I checked out the Cartographer's Guild-Site GentleGiant linked to and it's great! It has lots and lots of great tutorials for map-making with GIMP, Photoshop, Illustrator and several graphic programs I haven't even heard of. I can highly recommend it, especially this one!
Contributor
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Has anyone had any luck taking the maps from the AP folios and printing them out to the correct size to use? If some one has I would like to know how you did it because I don't want to go to Kinkos and drop $100 buck for them to do it.
I'm not sure if any other programs can do it (probably so, but I don't own any others), but Campaign Cartographer has the ability to break a map into sections (kind of like tiles) and print it onto multiple sheets of paper. You can set the printing scale so any map is printed at the 1" = 5 feet scale. You just take the multiple sheets and put them together like tiles to make the larger, poster-size maps.
Since you can import images into the map, you can scale the image to the appropriate size and print using this feature, although the resolution of the image would need to be pretty high.
What I usually end up doing (when I have the time) is taking the printed maps and using scanned images to make CC3 versions. I put an example of that work in a Picasa album *here*.
It's not an original map, but working with someone else's design allows me to play around with the effects and other features of the program.
Well, I don't know, if I'm using the correct terms here, as I am using the german version of GIMP. There the term is "alpha kanal" which I translated into alpha channel.
There is definitly Alpha Channels in Gimp. I just don't understand them yet.
I haven't tried it, but I guess using the method you described on a textbox will make the text disappear, because the colour will be overlaying the text.
I did not make it a transparency - to be more clear on what I did I made the filled in box on the main layer of my map and after that was done I simply flattened the Text's layer on top of it. Since the text is being flattened onto the main layer the colours don't mix if the text opacity is 100%.
Btw, what is the 'snap to grid'-feature? Is it the tool that has the anchor as a symbol? It sounds like its the tool that adds a layer to another, right? I guess I should download the english version of GIMP so that I exactly know what you're talking about.
No the tool with an Anchor is for anchoring a layer - the Grid is not a layer. Its just a view of lots of little squares on the program that are not really there. Its like super imposing graph paper on your work. I'll try and explain...
I really suspect that the only differences between the English and German versions are in the language. I'll try and explain were it is in the English version and you can probably then find it in the German version.
Open a new file (or an old one for that matter) Does not matter what the file is we just need access to all the drop down options located at the top left of any file.
So at the top of your new (or old) work should be a bunch of menus.
In the English version they are:
File - Edit - Select - View - Image - Layer - Tools - Dialogs - Filters - Script Fu
Click on 'View' and a menu drops down. It has a whole bunch of options. Many of the options can have a check mark in front of them or not at the users preference. If they do have check marks then different things are displayed in GIMP. There are small bars in this list of options that divides them into five parts. In the fourth part we have the following options that might or might not have a little checkmark in front of them:
Show Selection
Show Layer Boundary
Show Guides
Snap to Guides
Show Grid
Snap to Grid
So to bring up the Super Imposed Grid
Click View -> and make sure Show Grid is Checked
To make the program Snap to the Grid
Click View -> and Make sure Snap to Grid is Checked
To Configure the Grid
Click Images -> Click Configure Grid
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If your still a little lost check your user manual. Your looking for a German version of Grids and Guides.
@Kruelaid: Wow, your maps are fantastic! The shading really adds depth to the map. What kind of tool do you use to do these shadows?
Just plain old drop shadow.
Resurrecting this thread because of Kingmaker's love of the old-school hex. Gnome Stew posted a review of Hexographer, which is certainly worth taking a peek at. :)