# Mapping Resources > Tutorials/How-To >  [Award Winner] Eneini:  a medieval city tutorial (in Photoshop)

## pyrandon

Okay, friends, as requested I am attaching the first part of my city map tutorial, which shows the process I followed to create Eneini in Photoshop.  I hope it helps you in some minor way with your own endeavors!

Attached is part one of the tutorial.  Part two will be in the next message.

Enjoy, & please feel free to send me improvements, suggestions, & criticism.  Take care!

EDIT 30 April 2007:  Changed the tutorial to contain no background pattern, to make printing easier & less costly!

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## pyrandon

Here is the second half of the tutorial


EDIT 30 April 2007:  For easier & less-costly home printing, the tutorial background pattern was eliminated.

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## ravells

Argh...I can't seem to get the download to work. I'll try again from home this evening.

Thank you in Advance, Don!

Ravs

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## Naryt

I was able to download both parts but it took a bit of doing, I had to make sure that I saved the files to disk instead of opening them directly in Acrobat as I usually do.

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## ravells

Thanks Naryt...working now.

And thanks again Don!

Oh my word! Don....this is  a superb tutorial! Thanks again! You really are a genius.

Ravs

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## RobA

Thanks very much for the tutorials.  I had the time to follow them through using the GIMP.  I kept a few notes along the way to highlight differences in the applications, but feel the results turned out satisfactory.

This was done as a technical exercise, as opposed to mapping for a purpose, so you may see a strong resemblance with your tutorial map  :Smile: 

The real trick is in the streets.  I found it took an incredibly long time to hand draw in streets.  most of mine ended up either too rough, or too straight.  I think it would be easier with something other than a mouse...maybe I need to buy that graphic tablet...

-Rob A>

P.S> This was about 6 hours effort.

EDIT: I posted on the end of this thread rather than starting its own as this was to demonstrate the tutorial...

EDIT2: I cleaned the layers up a bit, removed some of the texture layers, and adjusted the levels.  Also, some judicious use of unsharp mask was applied to emphasize the man made object layers

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## pyrandon

> Thanks very much for the tutorials.  I had the time to follow them through using the GIMP.  I kept a few notes along the way to highlight differences in the applications, but feel the results turned out satisfactory.


No, thank YOU for using the tutorial & posting the results.  It's nice to know someone else 1) can follow my chickenscratch;  and 2) found my six-fingered, humpbacked brainchild interesting & worthwhile enough to take the time to use it.  Nice work, too!

I would be very interested in seeing your GIMP notes--perhaps to add to the original tutorial or perhaps to post as a second, separate tutorial for GIMP users.  I also have a couple questions about your end results in comparison to mine (ex: does GIMP not have the same filter(s) as Photoshop?)  Would you be willing to email your notes & ideas to me?




> The real trick is in the streets.  I found it took an incredibly long time to hand draw in streets.  most of mine ended up either too rough, or too straight.  I think it would be easier with something other than a mouse...maybe I need to buy that graphic tablet...


Yes, tell me about it, my friend!  I tried many, many different filters, fills, processes, & combos of all the above to create the effect without the need to draw in all those streets by hand, but none of them turned out worth a darn.  All fell at either end of the spectrum:  either too mechanical or too random.  

Drawing those streets with a mouse (and I did it with my first map, so I know too) is a major pain;  the tablet helps a lot.  So do lots of breaks.  And listening to songs like "Carefree Highway,"  "On the Road Again," and "Route 66" over & over again.   :Smile: 

On the up-side, a positive aspect of my "artsy fartsy-ish" map style is that I don't need to become Captain Anal Retentive and sweat over each & every street, but I can instead "scribble & slash" them to _suggest_  reality.  I don't think yours looks at all bad, Rob, but I'd put in about another 50% worth of side streets, alleys, courtyards & such.

Thanks again to everyone for your compliments;  I'm so happy I was able to give you a little something.  Again, please let me know if you find improvements or can suggest ideas.

Take care,

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## RobA

> I would be very interested in seeing your GIMP notes--perhaps to add to the original tutorial or perhaps to post as a second, separate tutorial for GIMP users.  I also have a couple questions about your end results in comparison to mine (ex: does GIMP not have the same filter(s) as Photoshop?)  Would you be willing to email your notes & ideas to me?


No problem, just need to make them a bit cleaner.  The big difference is that Gimp doesn't have layer effects.  You need to apply effects as separate layers.  That means that if you change the original layer, you have to redo the effect layer.  Take drop shadow as an example.  I f you erase a part of the main layer, you would have to regenerate the drop shadow or there will be an anomalous bit of one left.




> Yes, tell me about it, my friend!  I tried many, many different filters, fills, processes, & combos of all the above to create the effect without the need to draw in all those streets by hand, but none of them turned out worth a darn.  All fell at either end of the spectrum:  either too mechanical or too random.


I did a bit of experimentation, and there is one filter in GIMP that gives interesting results...mosaic.  I make the "grout" the same green as the fields to make it appear as grass in peoples yards.  I have attached a sample




> I don't think yours looks at all bad, Rob, but I'd put in about another 50% worth of side streets, alleys, courtyards & such.


I agree, the look like big lumps.  I was just getting fatigued.  I think the mosaic might be a good solution.  Just need to play with the settings more.


-Rob A>

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## pyrandon

Clever idea, Rob!  The mosaic tiles do not look bad in the GIMP edition you've posted; not bad at all.   I think one would still need to hand-draw in most of the same alley & sidestreet lines, so I'm not convinced this is a huge time saver.  Is that assumption correct?

Also, after playing with Photoshop a bit I can't seem to reproduce your exact effect, even using the mosaic, mosaic tiles, and other pixelate/texture filters;  even with some play adding other filters, etc., the result appears too "geometric" in my tests. 

Another option occurred to me while playing: creating a "buildings" brush that dabs in groups (or lines) of houses;  I had thought of this more for villages, where the spaces would be greater, but I wonder if I could make it work for cities, too.  I'll have to experiment with that.

Thanks again, and nice work!

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## RobA

I'm not sure what the mosaic settings in Photoshop are.

I have attached the Gimp dialog.  I found the best effect was as selected (for buildings.

I also did a quick test running the mosaic filter three times.  Also attached.  Think I'll keep playing as there seems some potential for filling large areas easily.  There has to be a reasonable programmatic way to generate streets.... might have to look into L-systems and fractals again  :Smile: 

-Rob A>

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## automeris

I am attemting a download of the tutorial for a fourth time.  I keep getting 2-3.5 MB in and having the download just stop.  I have tried both parts.

While I was waiting I decided to play around with the road thing.  I, too, thought Mosaic would be a natural filter for getting sort of random roads.

Here is what I did, just a few steps, and the results:

Using the Gimp:

New Image, 400x400 pixels, RGB, fill with black (000000).

Set the grid to 20 pixels, and snap to grid, and put in a rough grid of magenta (ff00ff).

Ripple (Filters ... Distort ... Ripple) with Antialiasing, edges wrap, sine wave, period 90, amplitude 6, in both horizontal and vertical.

Duplicate the layer.  Turn the background layer's visibility off.

Apply Mosaic (Filters ... Distorts ... Moaic) with Antialiasing, Octagons & squares, tile spacing = 2, tile neatness = 0, light direction = 135, color variation = 0.  Tile size and height you can play with.  For these I used both equal to 20.

Select All (ctrl-A).  Copy (ctrl-C).  New Layer with fill color ccbb77 (or whatever color you want your roads.)  Paste (ctrl-V).  Fill with foreground color (I used 552211) (Edit ... Fill with FG color).  Anchor layer (ctrl-H).

I don't like the look of the darker color, because there was too much transparency in the mosaic, so lets select the background (road color) by color and paste it onto a new layer filled with the darker color.  If I wanted to, I could texture that color here, as well.  Discard the other layers.  Flatten and save as a JPG.  Not worth even saving as an .xcf file because all the steps are so easily duplicated.

Voila:  Random_roads1.jpg

The pattern could be more regular if I were more careful with my initial magenta grid, and if I used neater tiles.  I was going for random here, starting with something easy to draw in an orderly fashion.

Random_roads2.jpg is with a more regular starting grid and squares for the mosaic instead of octagons.

It seems that attachments appear in reverse order to the order you attach them.  Now I know.

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## automeris

When I applied the mosaic filter in the above examples, I did it with color variation of .2, (unchanged from the default,) not zero, as stated above.

And it seems part 1 of the tutorial just finished downloading successfully.  On to part 2.

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## RobA

I didn't mean to hijack this thread  :Smile: 

To keep the discussion going on random/programmatic street generation I have created this thread:

Techniques for street generation in cities over in the City Mapping forum.

-Rob A>

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## pyrandon

Rob:  I don't feel you "hijacked" the thread at all!  In fact, you and automeris are doing 100% exactly I wanted:  improving that tutorial!   I hope I can translate what you are doing in GIMP to Photoshop (the mosaic filters are actually quite different between the two), but I am excited about what you're doing;  keep it up (in the other thread, now  :Smile: 

If anyone else has any further suggestions/ improvements for the tutorial, please post it & let us all play with it!

Thanks again,

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## RobA

Don-

Can you repost the tutorial pdfs without the background?  While it looks great on the screen I want to print it and can't afford the ink :Smile: 

TIA

-Rob A>

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## pyrandon

Great suggestion, Rob--although I sure _liked_ that background!   :Smile: 

I reposted both halves of the tutorial with plain white backgrounds.

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## MittenNinja

Very nice tut! I'm working through it now (albeit very slowly, stupid work).

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## pyrandon

Thanks, MittenNinja--make sure to post the results so we can ooh & ahh you!  :Smile:  

Also let me know if you see any problems or can suggest any improvements, ok?  Thanks.

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## Jharviss

I've been working through your tutorial all day long on a city of mine I've been wanting to map out for a while.  It's not a very complex city design, which is unfortunate.  Your tutorial would be much better suited for a different city environ.  Ahh well!  That aside, here's the WIP.

I'm pretty sure I'm sitting at the most tedious step right now.   :cry:

I should note that I was looking ahead in the tutorial and reviewing the different filters and embosses you used and I'm quite dismayed--I've gotten this far using Photoshop Elements, the $50 version of photoshop, and I say it's going to be quite difficult to do some of your nifty effects at the end.  My building may look a bit dry.  

I guess I'll have to experiment.

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## pyrandon

Hi,  Jharviss and welcome to the Guild.  I'm really glad to see your posting--great start!  I like that island-bridge idea a lot.

By "the most tedious part" I'm sure you mean the side streets & alleys, right?    I find it tedious too, & we've had some discussion in these boards about finding automated ways of performing the same task (good stuff;  read it here), but "by hand" (or "by mouse" or "pen"...) remains my favorite.  Two pieces of advice I can humbly offer:  1) take frequent breaks or else your hand will turn into a misshapen claw, ruining your chances at a hand modeling career, and 2) if you are following my esoteric ideals then you need only _suggest_ the existence of side streets, not actually draw each & every one, therefore you can sort of "scribble" a bit vs. having to painstakingly place each one.

The Photoshop Elements is an issue.  As I state in the tutorial, I used CS2.  If you do find a method in Elements would you mind letting me know so I can put that in the tutorial too?  

And make sure to keep posting/updating your image, ok?:  I love it!   :Smile:

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## Kepli

The results look great, so I am definitely going to take a look at the tutorial   :Cool:

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## Fister

I have had little to no experience with using Photo Shop and additionally have never attempted to create my own fantasy map.  I followed the tutorial and 12 hours later I had my first map.  I am so pleased with being able to create anything on Photo Shop and want to offer Pyrandon my sincere thanks for developing and sharing his well put together tutorial.

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## RPMiller

Make sure to give him some rep for it.  :Wink:

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## pyrandon

Awwww...shucks!

Thanks, I really appreciate it!  Seeing your results totally made my day.  Glad I can help in some way.   :Smile:

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## ravells

Rightful praise, well deserved!  :Smile: . This is exactly what this site should be doing.

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## Midgardsormr

Very nice tutorial!  I might give it a try for an upcoming project, provided I can get my current map done sometime in the next eight months.  

I haven't read through very much yet, but I did notice one place where an improvement can be made regarding shadow placement:  Instead of trying to remember which direction your light is coming from, you could simply draw an arrow on a trash layer.  

I like to keep notes like that on my working documents, where I can refer to them easily rather than having to sift through a stack of other pages.  Which is not to say that I don't generate a lot of handwritten notes all over my desk... I'm afraid I make a terrible mess in my work area.

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## pyrandon

Thanks for that arrow suggestion, Bryan--nice one!

As I re-look at this map tutorial (coming up on what, a year later?) I see plenty of places where I would do both slighter and larger modifications to that process, for I really was learning PS as I worked (which is one of my primary reasons for making tutorials in the first place).   Now that my bag o' tricks is a bit more stuffed, I may have to go back and revisit/revide it some day.  I will certainly be using the arrow suggestion  :Wink:

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## RobA

Just bumping this tutorial thread for new guild members...

It has been here for a while, but is worth pointing out!

-Rob A>

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## RPMiller

It's an anniversary bump even!  :Wink:

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## JasperAK

This really needs to be stickied

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## bryguy

> Just bumping this tutorial thread for new guild members...
> 
> It has been here for a while, but is worth pointing out!
> 
> -Rob A>


so glad you bumped this, otherwise i would never had seen it  :Smile: 



ill have to try it out sometime!

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## woekan

This tutorial is amazing! I just have to bump it. Thanks alot!

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## RPMiller

I have gone ahead and stickied this thread so that it will be at the top, but I would strongly recommend that folks use the rating system at the top so that we know that you all feel that a thread is that great. Thanks!

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## mearrin69

*animate thread*

Hi all,
Looks like it has been a long time since anyone posted in this one...so I want to drop in and say thanks for the tutorials! Just finished reading these and am going to try them out tonight. I like the results and method - I truly feared trying to draw all of the little buildings of a big city by hand.

I'm new to this site and to computer mapping in general and think this one will help me with my current project a great deal. Looking forward to reading the rest of the impressive-looking tuts on here and trying out some of the techniques. Thanks again!
M

[edit]oh, rated and repped![/edit]

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## Ostar

Thank you for sharing this, It is just what I'm looking for.   :Very Happy:

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## Starving

First of all Thank you very much for your work.  I'm very new to GIMP and have not been happy with my drawing with a mouse.  I was just reading your tutorial and saw your comments and had an idea which I honestly havben't yet tried out.  Anyways have you tried chaning your mouse settings?  Slow down the speed of your mouse.  I'm hoping it will reduce my twitchy hand and give me more control.  By the way I'm responding to your 2007 posting and don't know if someone else has already commented on this.  

  My thanks to everyone here for sharing and inspiring me.

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## Gumboot

This is a fantastic tutorial. I've been trying to do a few city maps recently, and I think I'll try this tutorial for the next one. Thanks a bunch!

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## Tzi

I must say this is working wonders for me.

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## Fortunato

> Okay, friends, as requested I am attaching the first part of my city map tutorial, which shows the process I followed to create Eneini in Photoshop.  I hope it helps you in some minor way with your own endeavors!


Thank you for this excellent tutorial!  I use GIMP but it was still invaluable.  Just a few hours of work and here is my first city.  Warning: it's a 17MB file!

http://www.unicornbacon.com/City%20-%20Levloe%20v03.png 

I did find some of the steps near the end of part 2 didn't translate to GIMP, at least I couldn't figure it out.  I'm not a GIMP master but I am interested if anyone else has translated them.

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## SotK

This is my first attempt, also done in GIMP. I managed to somewhat translate the layer styles in part 2 such that they worked in GIMP I think.

For the buildings I duplicated the building layer and then added a bevel to it (Filters->Decor->Add Bevel...). I then used the emboss filter (Filters->Distort->Emboss) to add an embossing effect. I then put this layer above the buildings layer and set it's mode to Overlay. I did a similar thing with the walls too.

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## Realmwright

This should come in quite handy. Many thanks!

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## Mkoth

Just wanted to thank you for the great tutorial and providing me with knowledge to make my first map here at the guild!

http://www.cartographersguild.com/fi...-tutorial.html

-Mkoth

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## rado907

I also followed this tutorial to make a map, and I write to thank pyrandon the author!

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## wisemoon

Just wanted to add my thanks for the tutorial. Also, while the mosaic filter in Photoshop is a good way to get a bunch of buildings, it does seem a bit too uniform. I was playing around a few days ago and discovered that with appropriate settings, the cracquelure filter works better. You end up with roughly square and rectangular shapes with grooves between them, which I imagine could be selected and deleted to reveal the road layer. I'm posting this on my iPhone at work, but when I get home and get some results I will post them here.

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## Asca

Hello,

I know that this thread is an old one (if I made a mistake by posting here, please accept my apologies), but I wanted to thank the author of this tutorial.

I'm a young frenchman (by the way, I know that my english isn't really correct but I still wanted to thank the author) and desperately I looked for a "how to draw a fantasy map" tutorial in my native language. I hit a brick wall. As a result, I started to surf the web but this time in english. After watching a video on youtube, I followed the link on the video and I ended up on your website and I found this tutorial.

Immediately, I liked the map drawn by pyrandon, "Eneini". Then, I installed a evaluation version of photoshop and I downloaded the pdf tutorial.

After hours of effort over several days, with any knowledge of photoshop, I achieved this result :


(names are in french)

I don't know if it's ok or not, but I think I was satisfied.

Whatever, thanks a lot, pyrandon, for this tutorial. It even helps people in other countries ! I will keep preciously this tutorial.
Also, I thank the Cartographers' Guild for this very useful website.  :Smile:

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## 3E208

Thank you for your sharing! :Very Happy:

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## Nim Tara

Waaa thank you for the tutorial!!! I wanted to try to make my own map with Photoshop for so long... and your tutorial is simple and amazing!!!  :Very Happy:

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## LeoFromBR

Nice tutorial!

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## pyrandon

Wow--as you can all see, I don't "haunt" my old stomping grounds very often (I'm like Haley's Comet, I guess), but I was astounded and flattered to see so many nice comments about this tutorial.  Thank you.  

But more importantly, what a bunch of great maps you've all made!  Nice going! Excellent work, everyone!  Keep it up!

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## arsheesh

Great to see you back at the Guild pyrandon!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

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## tilt

Pyrandon... wow.. been a while.. and I've been mostly gone the last 4 years  :Wink:

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