# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Virtual Tabletop/Battlemap Mapping >  Study of battlemaps

## SrgDark

First battlemap I ever made with GIMP. Could be worked on further, I think, but is also usable as is. Used some textures I found off internet, some items I picked off dundjinni forums and Neyjour's crypt entrance/fancy sarcophagus. Criticism is welcome! I've still a lot to learn. Burning question, how would you go making the border between this old road I was going for and the grass around it less apparent? 

Just noticed, my stairs are kind of wonky. Tried using darker lines to make them stair like, but I guess that part needs more work too.

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## Josiah VE

Very nice! It has a dark, spooky feeling around it.

I don't know how you went about applying the textures, but I would say put low opacity grass texture (enough to make sure that there isn't much of a solid contrast between the grass and the path) around the edge of the path, if you get what I mean.

Overall a very nice battle map, I will give you some rep.

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## Jacktannery

Great atmosphere SrgDark! Agree with Josiah that you should look again at the junction of grass and path, but otherwise wonderfully spooky.

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## SrgDark

Thanks fellas, for the advice and comments. I'll be sure to strive an' improve with the next one.

This here is barebones version of a dungeon I'm making right now. These tiles are from one of Dundjinni's megasets I think. Though, I did not convert every imagine in the set, which is kind of noticeable in how patterns on plain tiles repeat. Perhaps I'll bother with doing it all.

Anyhow, here's the wip. Like always, comment away if you have something to note or suggest.

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## SrgDark

Here's an update of the previously posted barebones I put down. Unsure what to do with the eastern room. Perhaps make it into a bossfight area. Need to put down doors and some other stuff too, but it's pretty much done at this point. Thoughts? Criticism? I welcome it all.

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## Josiah VE

Looking pretty good so far. I'm not sure if it would look very good but you could try darkening the background texture a bit.

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## SrgDark

Was a good suggestion there, it does look nice with the darker wall texture. It's done now. Added three doors that start off closed, some magical sigils in the eastern room. A couple of skeletons belonging to some unfortunates that ventured here before.

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## SrgDark

Something I'm working on right now. Regan is supposedly trapped in these halls, but erstwhile heroes will find that his prison holds more than just goblins that have taken to worshipping him as a god.

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## Josiah VE

Very nice!

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## SrgDark

Thanks! It's been quite a learning experience, making map of this size without messing up the scale.

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## SrgDark

I think this thread needs more life to it. I've recently finished some eight or so battlemaps, still waiting for roll20 marketplace to update itself with 'em inside. In the meantime though, I've finished a simple enough battlemap set in great outdoors. Let me know what you think!

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## tilt

Looking very good. Personally I like a grid on battlemaps, that gives a scale as well. I don't know if you're planning to use them on a screen or on print - if its the latter, they are a bit dark = toner-heavy, especially the dungeons where you could make a version with a thinner wall and the rest white  :Smile:  Have some rep  :Smile:

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## SrgDark

Thanks! Haven't given thought to making print versions, really. I make them with roll20 in mind, usually 1400x1400 or 2100x2100 in size, so I tend to leave the grid off as roll20 has its own grid system that'll align properly to the battlemap after its size is set properly.

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## tilt

ah... okay.. don't know roll20 - I'm just a tabletop kind of guy  :Wink:

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## SrgDark

It's something to chew on, certainly. Making print versions wouldn't take too much time, I think.

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## SrgDark

Here's something from my very first Map Pack. Time to celebrate by making more battlemaps.

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## Josiah VE

You certainly did a great job on those!

And when did you start making maps...  :Very Happy:  Good job.

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## SrgDark

Less than two months ago I barely knew how to use GIMP. It's been quite a rapid learning period for me  :Very Happy:

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## Josiah VE

Wow! You learn very quickly!

P.S. Can't give any rep by the way.. but I would it I could!  :Wink:

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## Falconius

Nothing learns you quicker than actually doing.  Nice work.

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## Tonnichiwa

Nice job on these maps. I like that you left off a grid so people can just use the one in the Roll 20 system.

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## SrgDark

Glad to hear you like them guys. Yeah, the idea is to make them to be easily used in roll20 or somesuch program that has its own grids. 

Been working on this, additional piece to one I did before. Playing around with how'd I do trees. Here I just used lighter shadows, with deeper black to denote where the base of it would be. Work in progress, I guess.

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## Jacktannery

More great maps SrgDark. A little dark to my eyes, but beautifully made. Congratulations in particular on your water, which is extremely hard to do so well. You certainly have a talent.

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## SrgDark

Thank you! Though if we're being honest, I can't claim credit for water. I did touch it up a bit, but ultimately, it's just a good free texture I picked up. 

I'm still looking for a good balance for the shadows. One of these day's, I'll find it, I'm sure.

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## Josiah VE

Can't say I like how you've depicted the trees.. but still looks nice!

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## SrgDark

Mhm, trees are still a point of wondering for me. Should I put down just shadows, so that players and DMs have greater field to use and see, or should I just put down trees and blot out pieces of the map? Still trying to find the balance. Here, for instance, I tried with the top down trees look.

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## tilt

I've seen people use an outline of the three instead... you could use an inner glow to show the green of it...  right now though, I think your trees need more shadow or they might be mistaken for bushes  :Smile: 

The last battle maps I made myself just used the tree as is:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...2&d=1275936861
http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...3&d=1275925874

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## SrgDark

Yeah, they might indeed. Especially given it's clear where from light's coming here. I should probably highlight a single square too, so that people have the idea of scale.

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## Falconius

Wild or unkept trees in an open area like that will likely have branches all the way down to the ground any ways (making it somewhat impassible).  Only in woodland mature enough to have a canopy do branches not grow close to the ground, simply because there is more light higher up.  It also occurs with very old trees that have a huge canopy of their own.  Then their lower branches are spread out enough to get in there comfortably.  Some trees of course have a natural defence against grazers in that they grow long smooth trunks to keep their leaves out of reach even in open areas (Africa).  I don't know if any of this helps, but thought I'd throw it out there.

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## SrgDark

It's good to know, certainly! 

I've continued my work. This is one of WIPs for the second map pack, which'll be stuck in the great outdoors.

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## tilt

lovely colors, if I should give some advice/critique it would be that I have a difficult time seeing what is what. Are the bright green spots trees? if so, are the other bushes? They all seem the same height and coarseness. The path is much to coarse as well - if its just a bit travelled -which it looks like cause no green on it, then it would be trampled.  :Smile:

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## SrgDark

You should!  :Very Happy:  I do like advice and critiques. 

They're all supposed to be trees of various sizes, but like you said, they seem like bushes when you give the map a casual glance. I tried putting down directional shadows to indicate that they're trees, but that needs more work too. The lack of sense of scale doesn't help the matter. Once you put down a grid, it becomes much more apparent that these aren't some tiny things. Here is the same map with a grid slapped on. 



One square is 5 feet. With the grid, scale's easier to tell, but I leave them off for roll20. It has its own grid that is automatically set, after all. Y'think that sharpening them would give a clearer idea of what they are? Will likey try to make a top down cut of a trunk. With proper settings, it'll be slightly visible though the canopy, giving a much better idea of what is what.

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## tilt

ah.. much bigger scale than I thought .. but yes, its hard to show all those trees without showing where the trunks are  :Smile:

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## wdmartin

Re: grids.  This one is much too heavy.  It distracts from the content of the map.  Make it lighter.  Also, you can increase the sense of vertical depth if some of the objects in your map are "above" the grid.  Example:



In this, you can see where the grid lies, but it doesn't obscure the details.  Also, the grid runs "underneath" the tree, which preserves the illusion that the grid is "on the ground" not hovering somewhere up in the air.

To make this grid, I rendered out a bunch of white lines.  Each square is 100x100 px, and each line was 2 px of solid white.  I added it as its own layer, and then blurred the layer -- 2px Gaussian blur.  Then I changed the layer blending mode to "Overlay", and adjusted the opacity of the layer to taste (75% in this case).

You're always going to have people asking for both gridded and gridless versions.  It's just a good idea to produce both.  They can be made at the same time with only minimal effort, and then people don't have to ask.

As for supporting printing, if you design at a resolution of 100 pixels to the five-foot square, that is effectively the same as designing at 100 DPI, and they should print out fine at that resolution.  The printed squares will wind up 1 inch across.  If you're making an unusually large map, you might need to reduce that to 50px.  If your map is so large that the finished JPG is over 10 MB, you're likely to hit performance problems with VTTs like Roll20 or Maptool.

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## SrgDark

That's some nice insight mate! Real helpful. Something I'll keep in mind for the future. As far as the one up there is concerned, it was quickly slapped on to show the scale properly.

To celebrate my gathering together some of the maps I've worked on lately into my second Map Pack, here's a better done grid for the map you reffered to, where followed your advice. Grid's done by roll20 rules tho', being 70x70. One square represents five feet. Looks nicer, don't it? 

A question though. If I wanted to make it print friendly, I just upscale it from 72 to 100 pixels/in and then add the grid in? Shouldn't be issues, right?

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## wdmartin

It does look much better, yes!

As for prepping for print, I'd go the other way.  Design at 100, then shrink to 72 for roll20.  The reason being that scaling things up necessarily involves a loss of quality in a raster graphic.  Here's an example (click the thumbnail for full size):



In this, I designed the left swatch at 72 pixels to the 5-foot square, and set the DPI at 72.  Then I upscaled it to 100 pixels to the 5-foot square, and 100 DPI.  It's not a huge difference, but if you look closely you'll notice that the upscaled side is a bit blurrier than the left image.  That's because when you're increasing a raster image in size, there are going to be gaps: places in the new image for which there are no pixels in the original image.  When that happens, the scaling algorithm has to fill in the gaps by "guessing" what pixels ought to be there.  Generally, that means it starts at the edges of the gaps and takes an average of the color values in adjacent pixels until it's filled in the empty spot.

The results tend to look "fuzzy".  It's more noticeable the greater the shift in size; going from, say, 11 pixels to 100 pixels gives you a waaaaay blurrier image.  Going from 72 to 100 is not so dramatic a change, but it's definitely present.

Compare with this swatch  (click the thumbnail for full size):



In this one, I designed the original (on the left) at 100 pixels to the 5-foot square, and 100 DPI.  Then I downscaled it do 72 pixels to the 5-foot square, and 72 DPI.  If you compare closely, there is some loss of detail, but the image still appears sharp.  That's because when going from large to small, the algorithm winds up removing pixels rather than interpolating them.  It's easier for the resizing algorithm to figure out which pixels to get rid of, so it winds up preserving the ones that are most important to the clarity of the image.

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## Josiah VE

Great work here SrgDark. Your second map pack after like starting three months ago! Have some rep!

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## SrgDark

I see wdmartin, that does make sense. Thanks for the explanations  :Very Happy: 

An' thanks Josiah.  :Very Happy:  I've had some time on my hands. With the way college is going into exam period, I'm thinking I might not have as much soon enough.

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## SrgDark

Hey guys, I hope y'all are having a blast making maps. I'm busy with college, so it's still hard for me. Still, I managed to whip this up as a practice piece. It's suppose to be a rice field, but I don't think I've gotten the field just right. Still, I figured I'd post something, just to show I'm still amongst the living. Rock on dudes!

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## SrgDark

Finally, the college workload is getting lighter. Decided I'd start working on my next map pack about now. This one'll be a temple dungeon, with the entrance, first and second floors, as well as the catacombs that extend below, perhaps towards some nasty secret hidden away. We'll see. To that end, here's the entrance, which is still a bit of a WIP. Needs that foliage now, as well as cracks upon the floor. The shadow of the roof these pillars are supporting I'm not too happy with either, so that'll probably get reworked. 

I've included a bit of flavor text too, since I like to flesh the maps out.

_Temple of Avir Tel has been abandoned ever since the Dairine, the goddess of fertility and nature, took it upon herself to interfere with mortal affairs. As her punishment, god of war Cruor broke her mortal vessel and burned it along with every major temple she had on the continent. Avir Tel was one such temple. Ever since the fire, it lay abandoned, with nature slowly taking it over while good people of nearby village Longdong did nothing to interfere with the process, believing the place to be cursed. Which might as well be true, given the nature of its new inhabitants..._

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## Farland

Great maps! Personally I prefer gridless.

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## SrgDark

Thank you. I've been away a while, but I've recently made some new stuff. Nowadays I've more time, so I'll probably start to be more active again.

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## SrgDark

I've been working on more maps lately, now that I've got the time. August Challenge'll be a part of it, since they partially dwelve down deep. For now though, have a WIP I'm working on currently. Second map of the pack. Upper courtyard of Leo Londo, an old fort on an almost worthless island. It does however, hide secrets of its own.

The hexes are not for the map. They're just the way architects decided to pave the courtyard. I'll probably tune down the opacity of them a bit more. As always, this one is perfectly usable in roll20 as is. 25x25 size, I'd say.

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## wdmartin

Yes, definitely turn down the hex opacity.  The pattern is much too strong -- it distracts from the rest of the map.

Other than that, looks good.

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## cyderak

Srg Dark....

Very cool maps,

Feel free to post your killer maps on my Facebook Groups page seen here:   https://www.facebook.com/groups/1510397315867964/

Maybe you'll get some commission work out of it.

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## Farland

I'm really enjoying your maps and I could use them in my game. Can you post without grids please?

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## SrgDark

Ah, been a while since I posted here. Wish I did it more often, but such is life. Farland, most I post here and on deviant are gridless. I like to make them that way so they can be readily inserted into roll20, since it sets its own grid up perfectly. Like this little temple map, which was supposed to be for a monthly mapping challenge I sadly never delievered for.




It's done now. It and rest of variations can be found here.

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