# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Building/Structure Mapping >  Crypt of Guirren Villus

## NathanC

A little bit of a back story here. I've never done a crypt as a stand alone map, I typically put them in things so pointers would help.

The idea -
This is a crypt that belonging to a hero who died thousands of years prior to the events taking place in my home campaign setting. Long story short in typically hero fashion, he did some great deed and his blade is being sought to destroy an evil artifact. Stealing from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I plan to have guardians, who are his party members guarding each level of the crypt, before they party needs to face him proving themselves worthy to claim the blade....real original stuff right lol.

Anyway the crypt is "lost" in the mountains and actually build directly into the mountains. The main floor has two guardians, along with a false treasure area. there will be two fountains on either side, one helping to trigger the the secret door to level 2.

I just started the layout, and would appreciate some feedback.

Also I'm going to try to be better about posting my WIP step by step (which I'm terrible at doing)

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## wdmartin

It looks like you were trying to use drop shadows as walls?  The effect makes it look to me as though the interior of the rooms are "above" their surroundings.  What program are you working in?  If it's Gimp or Photoshop, try using a bevel effect rather than a drop shadow.

If you want some occlusion shadows at the base of the walls, try using an Outer Glow effect (color: black; mode: multiply; opacity: 35% or to taste).

Here's a super-quick example in PSD format:

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## NathanC

wdmartin, thanks for the tip.

I am actually am using the bevel (inner if I'm not mistaken) for the walls.

The effect your seeing might be the inner shadow that I stuck on there to try to give it depth from both sides. 

I'll ease back on both a bit, then play with the glow settings and see what it looks like when I get back to it on Monday.

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## wdmartin

Ah, I see.  I don't think Inner Shadow is going to do what you want, then, because it's applied equally all the way around the perimeter of the area.  Normally the shadows would fall in different places depending on where the light source is -- thicker at one side, slowly thinning towards the middle, and attenuated or entirely absent on the opposite side.  It may even be worth brushing in the shadows manually.  Defining where your general light source is helps you figure out where the shadows should fall. 

Here's another sample PSD:



Super-brief tutorial:

1) Make a new layer.
2) Fill it with a dark shadow color.  I used a dark desaturated blue for this one, but black is fine.
3) Set the blend mode to Multiply.
4) Turn down the opacity a bunch.  30% or so, but adjust to taste.
5) Add a layer mask that hides the layer.
6) Using a soft white brush on the mask, brush in your shadows.
7) Select your walls and subtract them from the layer mask -- the shadows should be on the floor, not the top of the wall.

And there you go.  If you want you could do the same thing with a bright yellow or white layer set to Overlay mode for highlights.  I think JackTannery has a good tutorial on object source lighting somewhere, too, if you have something in the scene that is supposed to emit light.

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## NathanC

I'm not so much using the shadow for a "shadow" as much as tying to use it to simulate height.

what I was trying to do was something like this


I did that one a while back and used the inner shadow to create height on both sides of the wall in the center. 
I'd have to take a look at the .psd to get a better sense of exactly what I have the settings at. I'm thinking the reason it works in the above situation is the size of the center wall vs what I have in the crypt.

Thanks for the tutorial that's much better then what i typically do for shadow, which is just throw a mask on a black and trace the outline of the wall. Never though to set Multiply or actually subtract the walls from the mask.

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## NathanC

OK so here's where we're at after reworking the wall effects to give it height.



wdmartin here are the settings I used to fix the walls. They are the same as the cave.




After i drop some assets into the map I'll try your suggestion for the shadow.

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## wdmartin

That's already significantly better.  In the first version my eye kept reading the lowest parts as floating above everything else; in this revision it's much clearer.

In your Bevel, try changing the blending mode of the highlights from Screen to Overlay.  The latter is a bit softer and less plastic-y.

In your outer glow, try changing the Technique setting from Softer to Precise.  Either one works, honestly, but I find the latter gives slightly better control over how the glow falls.

And yes, conveying depth from a top-down perspective is difficult.  I still struggle with it after several years working at this.  The best advice I can give is to keep your light sources in mind -- depth is largely a product of shadow and highlight.  In the absence of those, any scene will be flat.

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## NathanC

Today's progress



The sword in the back room there it the only light source in the building right not. I just rendered light in there to cause I wanted a nice omnidirectional glow.

still need to add main doors, stairs down, some treasure in the other two room and shadow, before I get to the meat of the location on the 2nd level.

was also thinking about "roughing up' the floor a bit with some cracks, looks to nice for being lost for years.

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## wdmartin

Try a grunge map for that.  Steps:

1) Go to textures.com (and create an account if you haven't got one)
2) Go to their grungemap section.
3) Find a nice, big grungy image and download it.
4) Open the grunge map in photoshop.
5) Press CTRL+SHIFT+U to desaturate it (discards all color info, yields black and white).
6) CTRL+A to select all, CTRL+C to copy.
7) Go to your map and paste it as a new layer over the one you want to dirty up.
8) Press CTRL+T to resize the new layer -- make you grunge map fit.  It doesn't matter if the aspect ratio gets skewed.  Press ENTER to confirm.
9) Change the layer blending mode to Multiply.
10) Fiddle with the layer opacity until it looks good.
11) Optional: if you only want it to apply to the one layer beneath it, make it a clipping layer by holding down ALT and clicking the border between the two layers in the layer dialog panel.

This is a good way to add a bit of organic, non-repeating variation to seamless textures.  I have a folder of grunge maps, and I often use several in any given map.

EDIT:

Here's a quick example PSD:



The left side shows clean, un-grunged tile.  The right side has been mucked up with a grunge map.

The example isn't the best -- to my mind, grunge maps work best on a comparatively large area, which this isn't.  The grunge image I used was 4320x3240 originally, and it got shrunk down to 400x400 in the sample.  That's not a lot of space for the tonal variations to play out.

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## NathanC

I'm not sure if I'm getting it.



I feel like it's darkening the map more then adding the overall texture. Do you think it's because it's a small map?

Tried a second Version as well

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## wdmartin

The second version looks better -- it's added smatterings of dirt at random spots.  Yes, it does darken the map a bit; that's increased by the fact that you're layering your grunge onto a fairly dark texture to begin with.  If you want it lighter, try adding an adjustment layer in between the tile layer and the grunge layer to bring up the lightness of the pattern before the grunge is layered onto it.  Curves, Brightness/Contrast, or Hue/Saturation can all be made to work for this -- pick one and experiment.

Alternatively, try adding a layer mask to the grunge effect, then use a soft black brush on the mask to hide the grunge in areas that you want brighter.  You can, for example, leave dark, heavy grunge around the edges of the room while erasing it from the middle.  Or you can leave it in most places, but carve out "clean" paths where people actively walk.

It's a bit easier when you have grunge going onto a lighter background.  Here's some sandy soil with some grunge:



Specifically, this is a 2000x2000 layer of Soil Sand 18 with Grunge Map 154 layered on top of it at 50% opacity.  The grunge does two things:

1) It makes it much less obvious that this is a repeating, tiled pattern by breaking up repetitions.

2) The tonal variation suggests minor changes in height (darker = lower), or possibly in the soil's water content (darker = muddy).

I really like the grunge technique for soil, grass, and other organic things which are not supposed to have a repeating pattern to them.  It's not quite as good for things like brick and tile which are supposed to have repeating patterns normally. In those cases I pick a dark grunge image, but turn the opacity down really low -- the idea being to get some subtle tonal variation without losing the basic pattern.

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## NathanC

That grunge for soil and natural things beats the hell out of what i've been doing which was loading a tone of different patterns in and then randomly hiding parts. never gave me the height but did break up the pattern.

Never used adjustment layers, didn't even know they existed. so much easier to play with the color now.

This is where I ended up today.

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## wdmartin

Looking lots better! ^_^

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## NathanC

Thanks, wouldn't look anything like this with your much appreciated pointers.

What do you think about the stone door arches? I'm kinda on the fence about them.

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## wdmartin

The shift in color from the stone of the walls to the stone of the arches is a bit abrupt. Try this:

1) open your stone arch in Photoshop.
2) make a new file - the size doesn't matter much. Flood fill the new document with your wall texture.
3) go back to your arches and use the Match Color tool, specifying the texture file as the thing to match.  It's in Image > Adjustments > Match Color, near the bottom.


The match won't be perfect, but it'll be decent.

The other option is to retexture the arches using your wall texture, but that's rather more involved.

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## Bogie

Nice map, getting progressively better.

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## NathanC

Thanks Bogie.

I fixed up the archways per your suggestion wdmartin, they look much better now.

I think i'm just about done with the entrance level


I'll be starting level 2 after lunch.

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## NathanC

And here's the start of level 2



Always nice that once you have all the settings ready to go from above you can just duplicate the layers

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## NathanC

No Lighting right now but pretty much done with the rooms

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## wdmartin

The distorted arches around the edges of the circular room look wonky.  Are those supposed to be hidden?  If not, you could just use straight arches but set them back a bit from the curvy wall.

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## NathanC

I know what you mean but the other way felt weird too.

Take a look.

Not color matched


i liked the idea of them curving with the room maybe i need to approach it in a different way

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## wdmartin

Hmm. Try moving them flush with the wall but leaving them straight.  The curve is large enough that the flat bits probably won't be too noticeable.

Do there need to be doors there at all?  Could you substitute a pillar on either side of the entry?

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## NathanC

The doors are part of the room puzzle, on each level there's an armor rack, taking the armor opens the door to the corresponding room as marked with the etching (which may be too easy)

so i'm trying to convey a closed door.

Got a session tonight, I'll try the pillars tomorrow

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## NathanC

On the tail end of a cold so hand't gotten to mess with this a much as I would have liked.

tried the pillars. like how they look but i don't get a closed stone door feel to them.

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## NathanC

So I went back to the arches, just not rounded.

Also added some lighting effects in the room with the planar gate

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## wdmartin

Sorry for slow response, life has been busy.

Did you put a bevel/contour on the stone floors?  My eye keeps reading them as "above" the walls.

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## Bogie

Nice battlemap.  Good choice of textures.  I agree that the bevel on the floors looks wrong.  I think that if the light from the planar gate was bright enough to light up most of the room, then the corners would not be that dark, shadowed yes, but much less.

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## NathanC

No worries wdmartin, I get it, haven't been able to work on anything as ineptly as I'd like to.

I saw what both of you are talking about with the floor and I think it was because of the inner bevel I had on The wall. I think it looks right now.

Bogie, I had no idea it was that dark, I just adjusted my monitor cause I saw it instantly on my laptop. It seems the reason it was so dark was because of the way I rendered the lighting effect centering it .5 behind the arch. I transformed the render a bit, so now it's not pitch black back there, I might hit it with a 50% opacity mask on the back.

I'm still bothered by the stone arch doors. I was thinking about trying to draw them from scratch following the contour of room, but I really want to try to use the ones that are there but like they were actually build into the wall. It would be so much better if I could actually draw something.

Thanks both for the input and suggestions BTW

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## Bogie

Yeah, that looks much better!  It is amazing how much different our maps look on different monitors.  The arch you used for the gate would match the walls much better than the door arches you are using now.
In case you don't have it, here is the portal without the Glow Effect:

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## NathanC

Yeah I'm looking at it on my monitor at work and it looks way different.

Thanks for the no effect arch, here's what I ended up with after just dropping them into the map and playing with some color match and adjustments.



 I'm using this as a frame or reference for the doors as far as appearance goes in terms of location against the wall.

I honestly think once I figure out these doors which feel like they are taking longer then they should I'll be done.

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## NathanC

Yeah so it's staying like it was in the last post. I can't draw lol.

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## jpstod

Something My eyes don't like....I don't see the need to have a different color around the rooms...If I understand you right the Crypt is suppose to be Inside a Mountain, so why do you feel the need to outline the rooms..

For me on the First level it makes it hard to at first find the entrance...

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## NathanC

jostod, not sure I'm understanding what you mean by outline the rooms.

The thought was that the entrance of the crypt (the southern part) was exposed built into the face of the mountain kinda like this

in your opinion what do you think would draw more attention to the entrance?

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## jpstod

Do away with the Extra Shading and Area outside of the Rooms....What purpose does it serve....Is the a way into the Second grey area outside of the Rooms?

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## NathanC

Still confused and I could just be being dense.

OK so the way it works is like this.

1 is the outer entrance there is a stone door

2 is a entrance with a continual flame that needs to be used to light both of the braziers on either side of the door. If only the left one is lit 3b opens, right one opens 3a

3 is the main area with three lion fountains the jewels in the coffins in area 3a and 3b are inserted into the northern lion head and then the wall opens to 3c

3c contains four additional jewels on the altar the sword is on, these are used in the corresponding fountain to open the wall to area 4



Are you suggesting getting rid of the main entrance south of area 2?

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## jpstod

I suggest getting rid of the Areas in Red

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## Steel General

I made this several years ago; https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ead.php?t=5276

Take a look maybe it will give you some ideas.

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## NathanC

OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH!

ok that so that area actually is something, the initial idea was a ledge that some neferrious critter could perch on...then I got to thinking that maybe, drawing from the Indiana Jones inspiration that a rival group of treasure hunters could have beat the party here and set up an ambush.

I think I have a version without the ledge and the top exposed just a bit through the rocks. I'll post it later so you can see what I mean.

And Steel General, I should thank you since I used that map to great effectiveness in a game a few years ago.

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## Steel General

Great! Nice to know it was of use to someone.

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