# Mapping Resources > Mapping Elements >  Building brushes and other stuff

## Ascension

Here are the brushes I've made so far that I have used in some of my maps.  In Photoshop you can play around with the brush dynamics to spin em around or scatter em and all that kind of stuff, so I'll leave that up to you to play around with.  There are a few that are brush style and not pencil style (in that they have transparency so underlying layers show through).  These are the tents and a couple of trees, to make em solid, merge them onto a solid white layer then crop out the white, then apply layer styles n whatnot.  Of course this is not an end all be all set but something to get you started thinking and imagining.  :Smile:

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## Steel General

and again I thank you...

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## Ascension

Crappiola, my pc spontaneously rebooted today while I was at work...power must have gone out.  Since I had PS open and was working on a town map (I let it sit idle until I come home) I lost all of my brushes...and I had some really cool ones too.  Sigh.  Well, good thing I had this posted here  :Smile:   It did give me a chance to post the new things that I've been working on:

Trees

1.  make a new 100 x 100 image
2.  grab the pencil, set the tip to the 100 hard round tip
3.  make a dot on a new layer in the very middle
4.  filter - brush strokes - spatter = set the sliders to your liking (I went with 12 and 6)
5.  edit - define brush preset
6.  on your map, open the brush editor and play with the spacing, scatter, roundness jitter, and size jitter
7.  if your trees are too pointy on the edges then filter - noise -median and play with that to get something that you like
8.  add other filters (I like filter - distort - glass the most) or layer styles to your heart's content

Houses on a path: 

1.  new image 100 x 50 (it's very important to be 100 wide because of the way that path-stroking works...if you want to experiment with this you will see what I mean but know that the bottom of the image that we use to define a brush will become the part that faces the outside of the line that we stroke, like in a circle, and the top of the image will face the inside of the line)
2.  fill with black
3.  edit - define brush preset
4.  on your map open the brush editor and set the spacing to 300, set the size jitter to 50%, set the angle jitter to 2%, set the control for angle jitter to "direction"
5.  make some paths (I magic-wanded the spaces between my roads and then on the path tab click on "make work path from selection")
6.  stroke the path with the brush
7.  this gives us a bunch of rectilinear shapes that follows our roads (due to the angle control of direction) and looks slightly slapdash (due to the angle jitter of 2%)
8.  you can now layer style these things up

Optional steps for thatching:

9.  new image 50 x 1
10.  fill with black
11. edit - define brush preset
12.  on your map open the brush editor window and set the spacing to 200%, set the angle jitter to 2%, set the control for angle jitter to "direction", click the box for "wet edges", and add a dual brush of this same brush...you can also play with size jitter and roundness jitter for something more varied and random
13.  ctrl+click on the houses layer in the layer stack
14.  on the path tab click on "make work path from selection"
15.  stroke the path with this new brush 5 times (this can take some time so zoom in to 1600% to save time)
16.  on the path tab click on "load path as a selection"
17.  click on the layer tab
18.  select - inverse
19.  hit the delete key and then deselect
20.  you now have thatched roofs so add some color to make it looks brown or whatever

Chimneys

21.  new image 6 x 4
22.  fill with black
23.  edit - define brush preset
24.  on your map open the brush editor and set the spacing to 800%, set the control for angle jitter to "direction" but leave the angle jitter at 0%
25.  ctrl+click on the house layer
26.  on the path tab click on "make work path from selection"
27.  stroke the path with this brush
28.  our houses now have a few chimneys on them, the bigger the house = the longer the path = more chimneys
29.  grab the eraser tool, set it to pencil mode and erase the chimneys that you don't want
30.  add a gray color overlay and a black inner glow set to center (set the choke at 100%) and a stroke if you like

Caveat 

31.  the process that I have outlined here is only good on a small scale (like 1 pixel = 6 inches or 1 foot) so if you want bigger houses then you will need to make the other brushes (thatching and chimneys) bigger as well...if you just simply up the scaling on the brush there will artifacts like rounded corners, improper spacing, etc. but for thatching huts and shacks rounded corners look good


At any rate, I have posted an image of what these new brushes look like in action (according to my style but don't let that discourage you though  :Smile:  ) along with a zip file containing the ABR file for Photoshop brushes.  Oh, don't pay any attention to the drop shadows on my buildings, those are just place-holders until I put in the real shadows later.

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## Coyotemax

Hahah, while I was looking at that, I was trying to use the sliders in the screenshot to see more  :Very Happy: 

Seriously though, I like the path stroke idea.  All this time working on photoshop and I'm only now getting involved in paths.  Looking back at some of the town maps I'm starting to see how it could be done quicker, here I was thinking each building was placed individually  :Smile:

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## Nomadic

> Crappiola, my pc spontaneously rebooted today while I was at work...power must have gone out.  Since I had PS open and was working on a town map (I let it sit idle until I come home) I lost all of my brushes...and I had some really cool ones too.  Sigh.  Well, good thing I had this posted here   It did give me a chance to post the new things that I've been working on:
> 
> Trees
> 
> 1.  make a new 100 x 100 image
> 2.  grab the pencil, set the tip to the 100 hard round tip
> 3.  make a dot on a new layer in the very middle
> 4.  filter - brush strokes - spatter = set the sliders to your liking (I went with 12 and 6)
> 5.  edit - define brush preset
> ...


About time someone posted something on making city mapping in photoshop easier... *bonk* enjoy your rep...

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## Gandwarf

That map looks pretty interesting Ascension... are you going to post it?

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## Steel General

Neat stuff... though I think the shadows for the trees on your example are just a bit overstated.  :Smile:

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## Ascension

It'll be part of a city tutorial...yep you heard that right.  It's monstrous though.  It took two weeks to write, off and on due to burning out frequently, and now I'm going back through and following it to see if it works.  It's terribly hard, long, and complex so I'm trying to make things simpler and this will probably take another two weeks.

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## Coyotemax

I'd be willing to beta test it if you want feedback on what seems complicated and not

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## Ascension

Once I get some pics into it I'll let ya have a crack at it.  That's sort of what I'm doing right now...following along, creating it according to the steps that I wrote, and then screenshotting it.  It's currently 22 pages, 150 formal steps (cuz I put many things in to each step) without pics.  Putting in screenshots will probably triple the page count.  When ready to publish, I'll cut it into manageable sections.  

This whole thing was the brain child of Dungeon Raiders (member here) who I am doing some pro-bono maps for (antique-style continent map and a village) and he also wanted a village-building tut so that he could do future villages on his own and replicate the style.

PS - the pic from the post above is from the tut and not his map.

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## Coyotemax

I look forward to the opportunity to assist!  just let me know  :Smile:

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## StillCypher

Suhweeeeeeet! And a tutorial, too! You da man!

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## scscofield

I'm curious, are those brushes usable by GIMP?

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## RobA

> I'm curious, are those brushes usable by GIMP?


Yes, they will load fine in any recent version of Gimp.

-Rob A>

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## StarRaven

Thanks for pointing me here! This technique should come in handy. :Smile: 




> Optional steps for thatching:
> 
> 9.  new image 50 x 1
> 10.  fill with black
> 11. edit - define brush preset
> 12.  on your map open the brush editor window and set the spacing to 200%, set the angle jitter to 2%, set the control for angle jitter to "direction", click the box for "wet edges", and add a dual brush of this same brush...you can also play with size jitter and roundness jitter for something more varied and random
> *13.  ctrl+click on the houses layer in the layer stack
> 14.  on the path tab click on "make work path from selection"*
> 15.  stroke the path with this new brush 5 times (this can take some time so zoom in to 1600% to save time)
> ...


After making a work path from your selection (14), you can then ctrl+click the houses layer to select it again before stroking the path. That way you won't have to delete later (16-19).

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## Ascension

Here are the brush icons that I made for my Elosha map - in Photoshop abr format so they might be used in Gimp as well.

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## Ramah

Great stuff. But shouldn't there be a pyramid icon too?  :Smile:

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## Ascension

The pyramid and henge I just drew right on the map and didn't make em brushes...forgetful on my part and they are really crappy too  :Smile:

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## Leetsauce

^^ thx for the short tut it will help when i start to develop my first town :p

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## Canaille

hey, think you can make these as PNG's as well so that those of us who are using Paintshop Pro (probably just me) can use them as well?

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