# Mapping Resources > Mapping Elements >  Top-Down building images/brushes

## Steel General

Was wondering if anyone out there had or created a set of top-down building images and/or brushes for either GIMP or Photoshop?

I can create various shapes with round or square brushes but they still just more or less look like shapes.

Maybe something converted from Camp. Cart. or some other program?

Thanks...

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## Sigurd

There are a few different sets of rooftops on the Dundjinni forums. They are a really good place in general for detailed pngs.

The problem with detailed images though is that unless you have a lot of different ones the repetition begins to grate with a large city. I think the best plan is to make varied believable outlines in vector format so they rotate and scale without degrading. The outlines are more abstract and the mind is ready to accept their repetition more. IMHO.


Sigurd

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## Ascension

I made up a whole bunch of top down houses for my own use and turned em into brushes, so far I have 19 different house shapes (squares, circles, rectangles, L-shaped, H-shaped, U-shaped, etc).  I recommend that everyone make their own since scale is important.  The first set is nothing more than black shapes on a clear background.  These can then be used with any sort of layer style you choose, esp inner bevels and a thatching pattern overlay.  I made a set of pre-thatched and beveled roofs but when PS turns em into brushes it makes em grayscale so the houses end up with semi-transparent bits, which is really annoying and requires extra steps to remove the transparency.  I also made a set of grayscale ones for use in 3d rendering which hasn't turned out so well.  The best way to do them is to use the GIMP since it supports colored images as brush shapes and you can also set up an image hose (or tube or pipe or whatever they're called) to paint a variety in succession, one of the guys here has a post on how to create one (search for animated brush).  I also second the motion to browse the Dunjinni forums as there are hundreds over there, even modular ones where you can piece different bits together.  All in all, though, it's pretty easy to come up with your own and only takes an hour or so at most, unless yer like me (closet architect) and start making castles, manor houses, temples etc.  The bottom line is: in PS just use black shapes and in GIMP use the hose. Maybe I should do up a tut.

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## Ascension

Here's a jpg file that shows some of my shapes and layer styles that you can use as a reference.  The scale of these is 1 pixel = 1 foot.  I was going to upload the psd file but I keep getting some kind of database error while uploading and it won't let me.

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## Steel General

That'll work great, thanks. If you can manage to get the .PSD uploaded or maybe even a transparent .png that would great.

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## SeerBlue

You can use sketchup to make some simple or very complex shapes for buildings, extrude the shape to get some height if you want and then use this ruby script, roof.rb to add a variety of roof styles, the site has alot of scripts, the roof.rb is the most recent roof generator though.
Its simple to use, just select the face you want to put a roof on, for hip and mansard style, click your plugins menu item at the top and then roof.rb, then make your choice of style and settings.
 For the other styles you open roof.rb first via the plugins menu and then click on three points to set where your roof will be built on the shape. you can texture the whole thing,eaves and all in one color with the paint bucket fill 
  or do the following for more control 
 Roof.rb builds the roofs as groups or components, so they have to be exploded first. To do that you select the roof and a blue box will appear, then go edit and select the bottom item,,,,,model instance something or other, click on that and then select explode, now you can texture your roof as you want.

 Simply put the script in Sketchups plugin folder, oh yeah, some scripts are zips with documentation, some are just a text page which you save as whatever its name is+.rb   


 Then just render topdown views and gimp them into brushes.
 SeerBlue

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## RobA

> Was wondering if anyone out there had or created a set of top-down building images and/or brushes for either GIMP or Photoshop?
> 
> I can create various shapes with round or square brushes but they still just more or less look like shapes.
> 
> Maybe something converted from Camp. Cart. or some other program?
> 
> Thanks...


Here's a gimp one I made a while back

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=545

-Rob A>

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## Steel General

> Here's a gimp one I made a while back
> 
> http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=545
> 
> -Rob A>


Thanks Rob, I'll have to give that a shot.

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## Steel General

> You can use sketchup to make some simple or very complex shapes for buildings, extrude the shape to get some height if you want and then use this ruby script, roof.rb to add a variety of roof styles, the site has alot of scripts, the roof.rb is the most recent roof generator though......


I've never used Sketchup before, I'll have to check into it when I get a chance, thx.

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