# Mapping Resources > Tutorials/How-To >  [Award Winner] Battlemaps in Photoshop

## madcowchef

Mandatory Mention of not being a skilled tutorial writer:I might not look like a man half my age but I at least write like one.  So bare with me.   Here's what we are going to make:


Step One: Grid yourself. 
I am going to create a battle map with dimensions of 2000x2000 pixels, but before I do that I am going to make a square grid for it that will be 10x10, so all my elements align well to the grid.  
-So I’m going to open a new image with dimensions of 200x200 (1/10th of 2000).
-Make a new layer and use the single row marquee tool then the single column marquee selection along with the paint bucket to fill an “L” with black. 
- Click on the eye to make the background hidden.

-Hit Ctl+A to select the whole thing (you can also go to select ⇨all
-Edit ⇨Define pattern  and name it gird 200 and click OK.

On to the main image.
-File new and 2000x2000
-Create a new layer then Edit ⇨Fill ⇨Pattern  and select the grid you just made.  If you want to be able to see it better you can click the Fx button at the bottom of the layer menu and add the stroke effect.
-Remember to name your layers as you go for ease later on.


We now have our grid ready so when we draw elements they will line up nicely and if we are making a battlemap we want the grid on we now have one.

Step 2: Every day I’m texturing.
Making seamless textures is beyond the scope of what I’m doing here so for now go get yourself some tileable textures from CGtextures, or whatever other resource you like best.  For this tutorial you’ll want the following textures:
+Grass
+sparse grass
+soil
+cement or smooth stone
+Rough stone
+moss or grass for tree texture
+water (good one's are extra hard to find)
+any smudgey grunge texture
Textures are worth spending some extra time on, especially if you are going to do more than one map in the same kind of area, so if my method seems a bit tedious feel free to to just pattern fill in each texture you need instead, just like you did your grid.


-2 New layers (under the grid for all your textures you’ll be creating).
-Select top most of the two new layers
-Paint bucket it in with white.
-Fx (at the bottom of the layer tab) Pattern overly and choose your grass texture.  You can adjust the scale of the overly till you think the level of detail fits the scale of your map

-Once you have the scale of the pattern where you want it, merge it with the layer below by hitting Ctr+E or going to the layer tab and selecting merge down.  This will allow you to edit traits about the layer later on.

New we have a layer but it looks really repetitive due to the number of times the pattern repeats, not to worry we have solutions.

-Copy the Grass layer you just created by either dragging it down to the new layer icon in the layer menu, or going up to layer⇨Duplicate Layer
-now Edit⇨Transform rotate 90 ccw (widdershins always).
-now take your eraser tool and select a soft brush (the round one with 0% hardness works great).  Erase spots at random, especial those that look too patterny to you.

-Ctr+E to merge your two grass layers.  Better, but still a bit overly patterny.
-Create a layer under your grass layer
-Reselect your grass layer
-Fx pattern overlay again!  This time we’ll choose any old grunge texture, and we’ll change the scale to large enough that it doesn’t repeat.


-Then we will mess around with the settings,  I went with blend mode multiply, and then reduced the opacity to 52%


-We now merge that down with the blank layer below it Ctr+E

The next two steps aren’t one's I can give you exact numbers for you’ll have to play with them yourself till you get results you like
-Image⇨Adjustments⇨Hue/Saturation (I usually desaturate a bit, but I live in the northwest where we have less direct sunlight so I am biased) or hit Ctr+U
-Image⇨Adjustment⇨Levels you can lighten and darken your image without loss of all the details and making it washed out and make the contrast pop nicely. just play with the sliders till you like it.


We now have our grass layer.  Go back up to the top of step two, and repeat the process for your sparse grass layer. 


Then your dirt layer.


Your smoother stone layer.  And then copy this layer so you have two. You are remembering to name them right?


And finally a layer each for cliffs and Trees.  We now have a lot of layers and we can quit!  OK not really.  Next we want to create a layer mask for every texture layer with the exception of our bottom most dirt layer.
-Layer⇨Layer Mask⇨Hide all  or click the layer mask button at the bottom of the layer tab, then fill all your layer masks except the grass with black.


Layer masks are all we will edit from now on, leaving our texture alone under it.  Always make sure you have the layer mask selected rather than the texture it is laying over.  White=visible Black=hidden for layer masks they will make your life beautiful again.

We are about ready to start adding elements now that we have all our textures in and masked.  Before we do make sure you grid is visible so you can align to it reasonably well.  

Step 3: Brushing up on brushes.
We are going to need a couple of brushes, a “funky brush”, a “grass brush”, and a “pebble brush”.  We’ll start with the funky one.
-under the Brush tab select a messed up shaped brush
-select shape dynamics and turn the angle jitter all the way up.  You can also mess with size and roundness gitter, and if you have a tablet (which my cheapy cost only $20 and works fine for this) make control by pen pressure.
-save the brush settings you just made.  You can find it later under the brush preset tab.


Now for the pebble brush, which starts as a regular old round hard brush to which I apply the following settings:

Then I save that brush too.

Finally my grass Brush, which is set like this:

OK so now we’ve grown old together and I love you still but its time to move onto the part where we acutally map something out.

Step4: Laying your groundwork
We could really start with any feature, but as the exposed rock faces determine a lot of where the rest of things go lets start with that.
-Choose your funky brush
-select the layer mask for the cliffs layer.
-make the color of your brush white (you can hit D to chose black and white the default colors and x to switch between them for quick layer mask fu)
-Draw a cliff


Then go to your Stone work layer (one of your two smooth stone layers)
-Select layer mask for stone work layer
-Use the selection tool to select some square walls sections that align to the grid reasonably, using the paint bucket to fill the selections with white.
-click Fx and select Bevel and Emboss.  One thing to remember is for the blend mode of your highlights unless its shiny chose overlay rather than screen.  The texture option will help stonework look rougher choose any rough stone texture or grunge texture and adjust as needed (often I bring the depth of the texture option down).  Here’s the settings I used:


Then to help define the outer edges and imitate the ambient shadows along the base of the walls:
-fx outer glow.  Then I set blend mode to multiply and chose the color black, this works better than a drop shadow as I can set the technique to “precise” which gives more definition.


Next its on to some loose rock around the walls
-chose your pebble brush
-select white as your color
-select the laye mask for your rubble (the other smooth stone layer)  
-Draw on layer mask scattering some rocks around the walls.

Then its time for far too many layer fx.  

and


Good to mess around with all those settings on your own sometime and get a real feel for them rather than taking my word and taste as gospel.

Next we will play with the grass
-select your grass brush
-select the layer mask for your grass layer
-make the foreground color black (which is to say select black as your color, or colour if you are british).
-draw on that layer mask making trails and removing grass from anywhere you want.
-change opacity to 40% (you can just hit 4 on your keyboard to do this also hitting 0 is back to full)
-draw some more making areas of thinner grass

-select the layer mask for you sparse grass
-make sure your brush opacity is set to 100%
-hit x or change your color to white by process of selection.
-draw some sparser grass
-lower opacity to 40% again
-draw some sparser sparser grass (much sparse. wow.)


Time for your trees, which are a lot like your pebble really.  If you prefer there are a number or online resources that will allow you to simply drop in higher quality more realistic trees, this method is only really good for creating brush and shrubs.  
-select your tree layer
-apply all these layer effects:


Then as we are going to be lazy about it we’ll use a drop shadow for them.  its better to draw your own, but sometimes you are in a hurry.   Here’s the setting I used:


-Chose your grass brush
-select the layer mask for your tree layer
-chose white as your color (make sure opacity is at 100%)
-draw some trees, being conscientious of the grid (make it very clear weather a space is more or less than half covered by a tree).

Step 5: Devil in the details.
OK so now we have all the elements we wanted in place, time to go back and refine things a bit.  First off lets look at those cliffs.  There is nothing about them that shows anything about the paly of light in the scene.  We already know the direction of the sun from the “global light” setting from all our bevels.  So lets add some additional shadows to our cliffs.
-create a new layer above your cliff layer
-hit crt+alt+G or go to layer⇨create layer clipping mask.  This make a layer that only shows when its coincides with the layer below it.  there should be a little arrow showing you the layer its buddies with.

-Set layer opacity to around 50% 
-Set layer style to multiply (not screen)
-select a soft round brush
-make your foreground color black.
-remembering the direction of light, enhance the cracks and shadows of your rock texture
-add some extra shadow at the bottom to make it look like the low point

-when you’re done drawing lower opacity to 22%, we only had it up higher to see what we were doing.

Onto those all to clean walls.
-select your funky brush
-select the layer mask for your stone work
-select your color as black
-draw along the edges causing random messy damage along the walls.

-create a new layer over your stone work
-Ctr+Alt+G to create a layer clipping mask
-select a hard round brush and make it only 2 pixels wide.
Draw some lines where you want the intersections of stones on your wall.

Now for another mashup of layer fx.  We’ll use an outer bevel this time with the usual texture setting.  

Now for some more fancy damage effects.
-create a new layer
-move it between your line layer and your stone work layer, this should make it a layer clipping mask for the layer also.
-paint bucket the whole layer black.
-Filter⇨Render⇨Difference Clouds
-hit ctr+F a dozen or so times (this repeats the last filter and will add more detail to your difference clouds so they get finer)
-You’ll want to change your layer style to hard light, and lower opacity a bit (I used 73%)

-now put a layer mask on your “damage” layer and hide the whole thing.  
-Select the layer mask for your damage layer
-make your selected color white
-Using your funky brush you can now draw in additional damage wherever you messed up the walls extra. its like magic or something!
-finally to help define the edges of the broken stone we’ll add a layer effect like so:



Step 6: Master of light and shadow
Its time to add some shadows and highlights to this poor flat scene.
-create two new layers
-turn the opacity of each down to around 50% (its good to fiddle)
-Layer style for shadows is Multiply
-Layer style for highlights is overlay

-Select the soft round brush
-Select black as your color (in case you forgot you can just hit D to get default colors)
-keeping in mind the direction of the lighting draw your shadows.  If your aren’t sure where they might go, put a temporary drop shadow on  a layer to see where the far ends line up and then just draw lines to connect them.  If you click a location with your brush hold down shift and then click on a new location it will draw a straight line between your dots.  or you can begin drawing and then hold down shift to draw a line that is straight across or straight up and down.


-Select your highlight layer
-chose white as your color
-Draw some highlights near the top of your cliffs where the light would hit them.

-Now turn the opacity down on your brush to 30% and draw some light and shadows on your wall each on the proper layer, it will be subtle but help them look less flat.


Now as its unlikely our terrain is perfectly flat we will plan out the shape of it and where to put shadows and highlights.

-turn down the opacity of your brush to 20% and add the terrain shadows and highlights each on the proper level.


Looks like a finished piece. We could easily dress it up with stock crates barrels or just set the bandits waiting to ambush our heroes behind those walls as they come along the path.  But wait, we’ve decided that we want some water because we are gluttons for punishment.

Step 7: Wetting our appetites

We’ll have to make a water layer.  We remember that from earlier (which is to say we go back and re-read that part).  Strangely we are putting it above our grass layer what madness is this?


- mask the whole layer (create a layer mask and fill it with black)
-select the layer mask
-select white as your color
-using your funky brush draw a stream (we’ll make it go along our flat path as we already added a sense of hight to the rest of the area.
-use a bunch of layer effects, an outer bevel to make it look like the stream is sunk, an inner shadow set with the same color as the dirt to make it look like its receding under water, and an inner glow set to center with multiply to show deeper darker water.  Here’s my settings you can play with your own:


Hmm this river needs some rocks.  The good news is you can just select your pebble brush, go back to that layer and add some in the stream.  
Finally some white water
-create new layer over water layer
-select your grass brush
-make white your color
-draw some foam under each rock, with a little tail if you want the water to look fast flowing.


That’s about it.  There is a million more tricks and tips, but with what you’ve learned with custom brushes, layer masks, layer clicking masks, and judicious use of bevel effects you can get a very long ways.  I might add more later if people have specific requests.

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## Schwarzkreuz

Its clear and understandable. I am sure many users will find this usefull.

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## madcowchef

Underwater Stones: There’s no need for your river rocks to feel so all alone
-First off we need to copy our rubble layer by either dragging it down to the new layer button on the layer tab or going to layer⇨Duplicate layer with it selected.
-move it beneath the foam layer but over the water layer.
-Ctr+a to select the whole thing
-select the layer mask
-either use the paint bucket to fill the layer mask with black, or hit delete with black and your background color.
-now select white as your foreground color
-select your pebble brush
-draw some stones in your river.
-now you’ll change the opacity and the fill.  Fill affects the visibility of elements that aren’t layer effects, whereas opacity affects everything.  as light and shadow show better in water than other traits we’ll lower the fill as well as the opacity.  Here’s the settings I used:

The same technique could be used for anything else you want to submerge, bodies, boats you name it.  For deeper objects you could use some filter⇨Distort⇨ripple to show distortion of the image coming through the water.

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## ajb47

Great!  I'm sure this will help me out a lot.  Thanks for this.  I hope to spend a lot of time this week making battle maps.

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## Schwarzkreuz

I always wonder when I see long year members with low postings suddenly reappear to post a small comment  :Wink:

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## ajb47

> I always wonder when I see long year members with low postings suddenly reappear to post a small comment


It's because when I first got on the internet waaaaay back in 1992 and the place was still using Usenet, I was one of those who actually read those Netiquette articles.  Lurk and browse to get a feel for the place before posting.  Also, my interest in maps and mapping ebbs and flows.  Also also, it took me awhile to actually get a program for making maps electronically, and I still like to draw them by hand sometimes (been doing that since I was 12 and I'm now 47, so...)

So, mostly, a lack of anything useful to say on my part.  Just listening and learning what I could.

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## madcowchef

Stone Magic: Inscriptions and glowy bits.
We decided that those walls at the top of the hill are from a magic tower that clearly suffered one of those frequent magical accidents so we are going to add some more magical stone work.
-first we draw in a stone circle on our stone work layer, roughing up the edges with our funky brush like we did before.


-We have an image with appropriate permissions for our use of some magic symbol, in this case a protective pentagram we want to use so we copy it on over.

-Add it to the stack with the other clipping masks on our stone work layer ctr+alt+g
-Place it above our brick line layer
-Ctr+E to merge down


We know have an inscribed stone, fancy.  But we decide that isnt quite what we want, we need something more glowy and magicy!  We want the inscription but we need it to glow so we want it on its own layer.
-Ctr+Z to unmerge
-move it to the top of your layer clipping mask stack
-Ctr+Alt+G removes it from your layer clipping mask stack.
-Select your brick line layer
-Right click on the Fx symbol in the layer Tab⇨copy layer style
-Select your pentagram layer right click on the far right side⇨paste layer style.

-Back to where we started, but now its time to add some glow. We want to to be blue so well do a color overlay, we want some inner glow for the bright center part, and we want some outer glow to light up the area with fancy blue glowing light.  Heres the settings I chose:

-go back to the damage layer and use our funky brush to damage the edges of the stone circle just like we did the walls.

That glow looks like it should be banishing more shadows, we can do that.
-select your master shadow layer
-with a big soft brush well just delete some of the shadows around the circle (I had to use the select tool to show how big a soft brush I was using)


Now we have a flat circle of protection as a slab, but what if we want some obelisk?  We could search for a map element that looks like what we want, but lets just make our own.  
-Select your stone work layer
-select a square and use the paint bucket to fill it with white (optionally with white selected as your background color you can just hit delete)


-Select your funky brush
-select black as your foreground color (in case youve forgotten hitting D will bring back black and white as your default colors and you can hit X to switch between them)
-Rough up the outside to make the square look imperfect. 
-Now on the Shadow and highlight template draw in your light and shadow on it.  The top part of the image shows my plan of how the light will fall


Not bad but not deep enough a shadow for what we want.  Lets use the same method we used on the cliff to deepen it.
-Create a new layer
-Ctr+Alt+G to create a layer clipping mask
-We could go to Fx in the layer tab and copy the layer style for the extra shadows on the cliff, by right clicking, or just set the layer style to multiply, and take opacity down to 22%.
-Select a soft brush
-Draw some more shadows


We want some fancy glowing script on this one too.
-Select your glow layer (the same one you used for your glowing protective circle
-With a small hard brush make some squiggles on the side of your pillar

Lookin good, lets just add shadows the same way we did for making our walls by drawing them in on our master shadow layer, then we will use the eraser to remove them closest to our glowing script, same as we did for our magic circle.


We could leave it at that and have some pretty fancy stuff, but lets get extra fancy and pick up the glow on the vertical surfaces near our glowing objects.
-hold down Ctr while clicking on the layer mask for your stone work. this will select only the active parts of your layer mask (the white visible stuff).  This assures we dont draw on the wrong part
-Chose the color of your glowing magic stuff for your foreground color.
-select your master highlight layer.
-select a soft brush
-turn brush opacity to 30% (you can just hit 3 on your keyboard to do this)
-Draw a bit of blue glow onto the surfaces nearest to the light.  It will be subtle but help carry the color and create a convincing illusion of our light sources emitting light.

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## ajb47

> I might add more later if people have specific requests.


My only request, after being the one who seems to have nudged you into doing a tutorial or three, would be for trees that don't look like hedges, like in the map I posted in the other thread.  Is it simply a matter of picking a certain pattern?  Because there are a lot of patterns on CGTextures.com, and really, others that can be found just by doing a google search for seamless tree pattern or tile.  And most of those seem great for the overland or regional map forests, but may not be fine for the scale of a battle map.

Now, just because that's my only request doesn't mean I wouldn't like to learn all your secrets.  :Smile:

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## ajb47

Alright, maybe not my only request.  Interiors would be useful, too, when you can get to them.  I don't mean to sound like, "Gimme more!  Gimme more!", but I like the whole learning to fish part (Right?  Give a man a fish -- teach  a man to fish).

Thanks again for doing this.

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## madcowchef

You are most free to ask for anything. It helps me spend my time making tutorials that will actually be useful to folks which is much more fun and productive. I make no guarantees I'm capable of giving useful help on some subjects though (bogie should do one on placing items in rooms, his clutter work is superior).  For trees there is always insertable map elements (those pre made or pre rendered ones you can find on many sites), or using a combination of a texture and hand drawing your light and shadows to give it depth and interest, but my standard technique is shrubs.  For really big trees sometimes its more appropriate to to just do the bases, the trunk that is, as the upper part of the tree isn't down were it can get in the way of an encounter.    When you say interiors do you mean the interiors of buildings?  Give me an example and I might be able to tailor my help towards it.

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## wdmartin

Good stuff.

Here's a technique I worked out recently for adding leaf litter to an area.  All of the textures used here came from CG Textures.  I'm on Photoshop CS6, but I think all of this will work in CS5.

Suppose you have a nice little outdoor area, like this random pedestal in a field:



As you can see, it's got some mud and grass layers, basically the same as in madcowchef's tutorial.  I made the stone pedestal in a separate file, also using madcowchef's techniques, and pasted it in as a layer by itself.

Now we want to add leaf litter.  Because dead leaves can be blown by the wind over everything here, the leaf layer needs to be above the pedestal.  Here it is, using a dead-leaves texture from CG Textures:



Of course, it obscures everything below it.  To fix that, change the blending mode of the leaf layer to "Lighter color".  Like this:



This makes Photoshop compare the colors of each pixel in the leaf layer with the one directly beneath it.  If the leaf color is lighter, then it's visible.  If the leaf color is darker, then it vanishes.  The end result is that only the brightest leaves are actually visible.

If that's all you need, you could stop there.  But if you want a little more control over where the leaves go, hide the leaf layer with a layer mask, then selectively reveal the spots where you want leaves.

You could just use a round brush for this, but that tends to make it look odd.  Here's an example:



If the brush is soft, the edges of the leaves blur into the grass too much.  If it's hard, you wind up with leaves cut off.  And either way, you tend to wind up with circles of leaves.

To correct that, let's use some brush dynamics.  I use two things.  First, in the brush palette, turn on Shape Dynamics.  Here's a screenshot.



The minimum roundness has been set to 31%, and the roundness jitter turned all the way up to 100%.  That should help avoid overly-obvious circular curves.

Second, let's turn on scattering:



That has some pretty aggressive scattering -- 248% on both axes, a count of 2, and a count jitter of 86% (making it likely that you'll get more than one ovoid often through a swipe).

Now we can scatter leaves across the area.  Thus:



Due to prevailing winds, the leaves have fetched up on the left side of the pedestal with a clear area to the right.  There are a few spots where the leaves don't look right -- either partially cut off, or overlapping something they shouldn't, such as the edge of a stair.  I'll fix those up with a standard brush.



You can go as far as adding or removing individual leaves, if you like.  If the pattern becomes too obvious, you can also add a second leaf layer rotated widdershins, as with madcowchef's grass.

Hope this is useful to someone.

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## Jacktannery

Great tutorial Madcow. And that's a really good leaf trick WdMartin.

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## madcowchef

That's a great one one Wdmartin, good use of blend modes.  I'd like to use that one with some trees in bloom for a spray of flower petals on the ground for one of those idyllic ruin maps, the kind that invariably include a overgrown fountain.

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## ajb47

Here's my first attempt at following your tutorial, though without the stream.  I probably could have used more opacity in a couple of places, especially my cliffs.



I do have a question about the tutorial -- on the fancier damage layer mask step, you seem to be saying to add a layer mask to the clipping mask and I couldn't find the option for that.  I tried a "Hide All" and it put a black mask on the damage (the part with the Difference Clouds), but what I tried after that didn't seem to match what you had written, and I liked the damage the way it was, so I got rid of the mask.  I'm sure it's just my lack of familiarity with PS that tripped me up.

As for interiors, I was talking about dungeons and buildings and caves where creatures live that the PCs are supposed to encounter.

Thanks,

AJ

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## madcowchef

Your walls look great.  I did use a layer mask on the damage layer so only part of the walls got the extra roughness, this implies that the others are relatively flat on top, if not in the best of shape (the rest of the texture to them comes from the texture effect we put on the bevel for the stone work layer).  If that isn't how you picture the tops or your walls, then there is no need for the layer mask, you can put the damage over all visible surfaces (you could also do this by turning up the depth on the texture effect of your bevel).  Here's where I applied the damage in false color to make it more obvious:

Its always better to play with settings and learn what they do, no two textures are the same so opacity effects and other factors always change appearance, I'm just hoping to get you familiar with some of what you can do to make your battle maps more fun.

What part was unfollowable?  I am highly fallible in my writing and very interested in improving it so others can hope to follow my ramblings.

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## ajb47

It wasn't "unfollowable", it was more I didn't see the choice you suggested in the menu -- actually it was grayed out.  It was these steps:



> "-now put a layer mask on your “damage” layer and hide the whole thing.
> -Select the layer mask for your damage layer
> -make your selected color white
> -Using your funky brush you can now draw in additional damage wherever you messed up the walls extra. its like magic or something!
> -finally to help define the edges of the broken stone we’ll add a layer effect like so:
> "


When I was on my damage layer, there was no option that flat out said "Add Layer Mask" -- my choices were Reveal All, Hide All, etc.  I chose Hide All and it created a filled black layer mask, but when using my funky brush, it seemed to just draw a shadow under the walls rather than damage on the walls.  Or maybe I just drew on the wrong layer or some other newbie mistake.  I thought it looked OK without that extra step in this case, though, so I deleted the mask and went to the next step.

Now I want to try to adapt this to creating a beach scene since one of the games I am running by post has the players trapped on a deserted tropical island.  I'm thinking a sand instead of dirt layer and a longer grass texture for the grass layer, and a more tropical looking tree texture for trees.

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## madcowchef

Hmm I usually do it with the button on the bottom of the layer tab, I see now that its greyed out if you do it from the top menu.  Hide all does the same thing though.  I shall go back and correct that to make it more clear.  Thanks!

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## Kennyt

Great tutorial!   Something that MANY could learn from!  :-)  I'd like to get around to making one as well - for the ghetto GIMP users out there :-D

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## madcowchef

Would be nicer to have a GIMP tutorial its free.  I'm not sure I can afford the newest PS stuff myself.  I'm sure at least half of what I did in this one is gimpable, I just don't know which half.  I have one more on fancy lighting, but I need to get it worded as close to sensical as I can manage.

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## Jacktannery

I could probably translate this tutorial from photoshop to gimp for you relatively easily - it all looks doable on gimp to me. I'll take a look over weekend - if I forget bump this thread or PM me.

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## Avengeil

First of all thanks for the tutorial as it is very helpful. 

Now two mini-requests. Can you explain the reasoning behind the funky brush and how it could possibly translate to gimp?

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## Meshon

This is great, thank you very much. I gotta say, I'm a big fan of the attention you put into making a mess. I spent some time awhile back sorting out how to get moss growing between cobblestones and piling up debris along the edges of streets so that the locations look used. I was also struggling with how to make walls look crumbly and it looks like you've got a system that works really well. Now I just need someone to post a challenge to build a really messy battle-map to get me working again.

And the leaf scatter, top notch wdmartin!

cheers,
Meshon

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## madcowchef

Well I don't know gimp so I'm no use there I'm afraid.  As far as the purpose goes its simply to make irregular edges in a controlled fashion.  Any method of doing the equivalent would work just as well.

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## Jacktannery

> First of all thanks for the tutorial as it is very helpful. 
> 
> Now two mini-requests. Can you explain the reasoning behind the funky brush and how it could possibly translate to gimp?


In the GIMP tool options tab there are some tools that can do this easily. Just below the brush size and shape tools, you will see ASPECT RATIO. Set this to 0.20 or so for a slightly less rounded brush. Then go down and tick 'APPLY JITTER' and set the amount to between 1.00 and 2.00. This should have the same effect as MAdCow's photoshop brush.

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## jtougas

Great tutorial ! I have spent years learning how to do what you explained so well. Thanks so much for taking the time to share  :Smile:

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## Avengeil

It took me a moment to figure out and after upgrading to 2.8 I understood what you meant. I love the brush changes.

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## Mask_of_winter

This tutorial really spoke to me man! Thanks a lot. I'm not an artist but by using good textures and layer effects I've been able to produce cool maps. There are so few tutorial that apply to battlemaps.

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## Avengeil

Another question in my ongoing attempt to see what I can use from this tut in my gimp mapping. 

   What exactly does a layer clipping mask translate to?

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## ajb47

I have another question, now that I've made a few for my own use -- what's the best way to do jungle trees?  My grass looks pretty good, at least to me, and I just added a pretty nice ocean layer, but the trees for this tutorial look deciduous instead of tropical.  Most of the jungle tree patterns I find are profile rather than top down.

Guess I should show my latest work:




Looks like I could fill in a little more of the ocean up the side, now that I see it again.

Thanks in advance.

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## Moonblade

Totally awesome tutorial, Madcowchef. One of those threads where I just have to thank you for everything.

I will share my second try with the tips and tricks mentioned on the opening post -- an attempt at copying the first dungeon on DnD 5e's Starter Set, Lost Mine of Phandelver. This is 25x25 squares, 70px each, made for roll20.



Enjoy. Thanks again Madcowchef.

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## madcowchef

@Avengeil I was hoping someone more knowledgeable in gimp would give you advice, I'm not really certain myself.

@ ajb47 Sorry I missed your question.  Aside form finding elements others have posted, you could try to make a more fern edged brush and see if that helps.  My method really only works well for fuzzy brush and scrub.  You look like you have something good going with the texture you've chosen at very least, you could even choose that texture as as the "texture" under the bevel/emboss option and make those leaves look more shaded.

@ Moonblade You're most welcome, that looks like it will add a lot to your game experience!  

Great to see people using the tutorial, love seeing the results.

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## Tanc1974

Thanks for the great tutorial.

Played around with your tutorial and came up with this for some elven barrows.

Cheers
Tanc

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## madcowchef

Thanks for sharing its fun to see what folks come up with from it.  I especial like central pond with the rock in it, nice texture choice for your beach and good shadows.

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## Juan Severino

Can you make this tutorial as a video tutorial, that would be nice like that people can see the steps that you are doing.

THANK yOU.

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## madcowchef

My technical skills are far below the ability to record myself, and the thought of doing so terrifies me.  There are some excellent video tutorials on Photoshop basics out there though that are a good place to start.

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## Pmumble

Thank you for posting this, Madcow. It helped me so much. I just finished making my first map ever thanks to your tutorial. 

The map that I'm making doesn't really match the tutorial so I removed it, but this is a great head start.

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## madcowchef

Great!  I tend to follow the techniques suggested in tutorials without giving much mind to other suggests myself so I can relate.

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## Pmumble

It wasn't so much that as much as a dire urgency. I needed a campaign map ready for a game right away and I turned to your tutorial to learn how, even though it's a post-apocalyptic office building.  :Smile:  Most of the techniques I've used I got from your tutorial and slightly modified (I turned your pebble brush into a blood drop brush and a broken glass brush). But then I started doing some things that weren't in the tutorial (vector shapes, blurred the bottom level) so I wasn't sure if I should post it and derail the thread.

.. and then my game was canceled so I still have a week to work on the maps so they're still in progress. There are 36 total floors to explore, but I'm only making 6 total. Such a long way to go, but so thankful for all the help here so I can slowly learn.

Here's level 8 of the left tower so far (exported at half the res). My lighting sucks, still trying to figure out how to do that well. I'm just a beginner at artistry and photoshop so it's slow going. I haven't found a ton of toppled office building tables/chairs so still pretty empty inside.

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## madcowchef

Excellent use of things!  I don't think anything related to battlemaps or the tutorial can be off topic. I love the little tutorial  wdmartin posted on page two and have adopted it to several other things since.

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## woekan

Hey Madcowchef! Here is my result using your tutorial! Any tips?  :Smile:

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## madcowchef

Looks great!  A little darkening near the base of your cliffs wouldn't go astray.  I think the blending you did with the rocks looks a really great on the right side and the left would look better with the same blending. triangular shadows next to the crenelations (on top of the wall) will help show their height over the wall, though the shadows on the sand already give that information.   The more important part is that you did great digesting the techniques so you can use them for your own nefarious ends.

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## woekan

Thanks for the tips! Ah yea i missed the triangles at the sides of the wall thingies!

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## captaindm

Been a long-time user of Dundjinni and I was sick of not being able to do everything I wanted on my maps. Finally got Photoshop, and it's not super user-friendly, imo. This tutorial, though, is so awesome and I feel like I now have a lot of little techniques under my belt to help with map making. So, thanks so much for taking the time to put this together!

Here's what I was FINALLY able to finish.

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## madcowchef

Nicely done!  Photoshop was made by an alien race who studied human only from afar before making it.  Hope the ability to produce your own encounter maps adds to your gaming fun.

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## Falco4077

Any chance you have a PDF version of the tutorial you made to start this thread? I just find it easier to use a PDF file then try to read it all on here. Just a thought.

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## madcowchef

No I'm afraid I've never messed with PDFs much, would probably be a good thing to have though.

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## johnvanvliet

the FREE GPL office program 
"LibreOffice 5.0.3 " 
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/

can save a document as a PDF

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## MrSpiffy

A friend just pointed me toward this post to learn some basics on mapping.  I joined CG specifically so I could share what came out of reading through your instructions.  Here's my attempt at part 1 of your tutorial.  Not bad for a first attempt, and all thanks to excellent instructions.  Thank you!!!  (FYI, I used GIMP for this image.)

I'll have to poke around here and see what else I can learn, and hopefully even contribute back at some point down the road.

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## ChickPea

Nice work, MrSpiffy. And welcome to the Guild.  :Smile:

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## madcowchef

Oops I missed this one.  Great job!  I particularly like how your walls turned out.

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## Nikkor

Hi and thank you for the tutorial. It's GREAT
I've followed it but my first try doesn't satisfy me so I would like to ask for some points. 
I'm not really confident in how to choose the right texture so I would like to ask if there are things to look out for.
the ones below are the try I've done following your tutorial (I know, I didn't really check out the alignment during the making) and a winter conversion of the same map I've done changing the textures



I'm pretty happy about how they came out for a first try but I'm having problems with the wall shadows (for the trees I've left the drop shadow for now). I can't get them to look like yours (well defined).

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## allredwires

I think that looks pretty cool Nikkor. Very nice for a first try at it.

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## madcowchef

You've done a great job, those look fun already.  When I choose textures I look for ones that are a bit bland (detailed obvious repeats tend to draw the eye) and ones without directionalality unless I know I will only be using them at one orientation (if your more dedicated you can always rotate and manipulate textures to match contours but its a good bit more work).  If you're having trouble with the definition with the shadow you can always use a completely hard brush and then use Filter->Blur->Guassian Blur then adjust the level of blur to your liking.

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## Wulfquee

hello all i am new to this site . but i made a pdf file now of all this guide from madcowchef over 40 pages . if he aloud me  it. I will put it up here for all .

1 Question madcowchef should i add the leaf Trick from wdmartin if he aloud it ofc ?

just let me know here . i would have mail you a privat message but i am not aloud yet need to make more post before i can do that.

finely Thank you so much for all the work you have put in this Tutorials one of the bedst i have seen in a long time . 

P.S let me know if i shall upload it with wdmartin Leaf Trick

if posible plz some mail those 2  since i cant so that see my Post

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## madcowchef

Howdy, you are most welcome to include it in an easier to use format.  I can't speak for wdmartin, but I thought it was a very useful trick so if he has no objections go for it.

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## Wulfquee

> Howdy, you are most welcome to include it in an easier to use format.  I can't speak for wdmartin, but I thought it was a very useful trick so if he has no objections go for it.



just waiting on Wdmartin to replay before i post it

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## Wulfquee

> just waiting on Wdmartin to replay before i post it


still no replay from Wdmartin

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## Aabra69

Great Tutorial.  I'm new here but wanted to give this a go.  Mine obviously isn't amazing or anything but I don't think it's terrible which is a marked improvement on my non existent previous abilities.   :Smile:

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## madcowchef

Looks like you got a very serviceable map already, congrats!   I think your walls turned out particularly well.  Hope it gives you some great ideas for making your own maps for your group.

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## egdcltd

Great tutorial! I've been trying to learn Blender to make battlemaps in that (and for those who think Photoshop isn't user-friendly, just give Blender a try!) but I've achieved more following this tutorial than I have in many hours in Blender. Okay, not an original creation, but here it is.

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## madcowchef

Great choice of textures I especially like what you went with for the water.  I use blender for smaller map elements, but rarely for terrain at large.  Combining it with the much beloved Wilbur is a fun way to model mountains that I've only rarely messed with, as you say the intuitive interface is not a thing for blender.

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## wdmartin

> still no replay from Wdmartin


Whoops!  Sorry, I didn't see this.  December was ... pretty awful.

Anyway, if you'd like to include the leaf trick in a PDF, go ahead.

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## egdcltd

> Great choice of textures I especially like what you went with for the water.  I use blender for smaller map elements, but rarely for terrain at large.  Combining it with the much beloved Wilbur is a fun way to model mountains that I've only rarely messed with, as you say the intuitive interface is not a thing for blender.


Thanks! I'm pleased with how it turned out. Prior to this, I'd only done two interiors in Dundjinni.

I have seen someone creating battlemaps regularly in Blender, but it isn't the easiest thing to use.

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## johnvanvliet

> Great tutorial! I've been trying to learn Blender to make battlemaps


not the best tool
nor even a  "ok"  tool for that 
( yes it can be done , just like MS's Excel spreadsheet CAN be used to DRAW a image using the cells )
there is an Japanese artist that dose that 


while blender can edit raster data it is not meant for that 

i export uv mapped images and edit those in gimp  and reimport them into blender 


blender is great for 3d and some 2d'ish  like this *  random *  generated texture 
-- an exception is the node editor for guided RANDOM things

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## Aabra69

Just thought I'd throw this out here.  Just finished making this pretty generic road for any number of encounters.  Feedback would be appreciated.

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## Meshon

> Just thought I'd throw this out here.  Just finished making this pretty generic road for any number of encounters.  Feedback would be appreciated.


Hi Aabra, that's a fine looking map. You should post it in the Battlemap forum, you'll be more likely to get feedback there I think. One thing I like to see on roads is evidence of travel; wheel ruts, horse prints, that sort of thing. 

Cheers,
Meshon

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## egdcltd

> One thing I like to see on roads is evidence of travel; wheel ruts, horse prints, that sort of thing. 
> 
> Cheers,
> Meshon


I want to do things like that - I posted in the Help forum - but perhaps you can point me to something, as you've mentioned it.

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## Aabra69

> I want to do things like that - I posted in the Help forum - but perhaps you can point me to something, as you've mentioned it.


I would also love to do it.  I tried adding some straight lines for wheel tracks.... I then reduced the opacity and used a grunge brush to randomly delete parts of it.  I applied an emboss filter with a texture.... it looked....  I mean it wasn't terrible I suppose but the map looked better without it.  Any suggestions on how you would create it?  BTW I made another Swamp map which I have posted in the Battle Maps forum as you recommended.  Hopefully I'll get some good feedback.

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## madcowchef

Round Up your Wagon (wheels):
Let make us some wagon tracks ignoring the whole horse wear in the center in favor or the expected wheel ruts, because this is a map and we get to make things representative rather than illustrative sometimes.

First off we need a wagon wheel brush. Lets open a new file and create a new layer.  On it we are going to put two dots:

Very complex I know.  
-Select it all (ctrl+a)
-edit => define brush preset
-Go into your brush tab and turn the spacing way down

-Go into shape dynamics in that brush tab and change the angle control to "direction"

Save the brush!

Now create a new layer on your map.
using the pen tool draw out your wagons path

go back to you brush tool make sure your wagon rut brush is selected and black is your foreground color and hit enter (this will stroke the path you made with the pen tool with your brush) 

Yay its ugly!
First lower the fill of the layer to something small (say 14%) you can adjust the over all opacity later if you like also.
Lets add some emboss to it, you can see the settings I used and imitate them or mess around till you get something you like better:

next to make it look a little more imperfect we will add some of the "texure" option to our emboss choosing any old dirt looking pattern we have laying around:

Finally well put that whole layer in a folder (control+G) and put a layer mask on the folder.  We then just need to use a blurry edged brush set to low opacity and randomly lighten up some of the path to break up the evenness.  there we go one wagon wheel rut.

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## egdcltd

That's great! And you can use the same method for hoof prints too - instead of using a couple of dots for the brush, use a couple of horseshoe shapes slightly offset from each other, and turn the spacing up, not down.

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## Tordrigar

I would like to thank you very much, madcowchef, for this very helpfull tutorial. Thanks to you, I managed to do this.  :Smile: 
I'm open to any suggestion to improve my skills.

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## madcowchef

Nicely done!  Good choice of textures for your greenery.  The only quick improvement I could see would be picking a less directional texture for your water, or using one of the distort Filters to bend the texture a bit to match the path of your waterway.

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## Tordrigar

> Nicely done!  Good choice of textures for your greenery.  The only quick improvement I could see would be picking a less directional texture for your water, or using one of the distort Filters to bend the texture a bit to match the path of your waterway.


Thanks a lot for your compliment and advice.  :Smile:  I'm not totally satisfied by my light green bushes. Too much blurry... 

 Otherwise, I've tried to bend two water textures (the one I used before and a less drectional new one). Do you think the result is more convincing ?

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## madcowchef

I'd say so.  Lot of practice and experimentation goes into improving, but if you have something usable for your games even when you misstep a bit then the practice is a whole lot more fun.

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## YourGuts

Hey madcowchef, thanks so much for this tutorial, it's been a huge help and enabled me to get a foot in the door and start making my own battle maps. With a few extra tidbits from around the web, here's what I've managed so far. 



But after stumbling across your Deviantart tiles, your caves really impressed me. And I'd love to know how I'd get started making my own. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

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## madcowchef

Nicely grungy!  I'll see about putting together something on cavern making, but it might be a bit before I have time.

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## madcowchef

You aren't far off really.  You textures are a bit close to each other so its hiding the contrast a bit more than it should.  I'd try substituting a couple different textures to see if you can find some that show off your work a bit more (you can drag your layer mask right onto a new layer and then just hide the previous one).  Picking good textures is a lot of trail and error when you're getting started.

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## madrileen

Thanks for the advice, I'll get right on that!

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## Mikael Lidberg

Amazing tutorial, thnaxs alot for this. Realy inspiring.

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## phazed

I love your textures, is there anyway i could get them? especially that cliff texture.

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## kinwolf

Thanks alot for the tutorial!    I do not have access to photoshop so I did it with krita instead, and it was quite a challenge since I have only basic experience with graphic software.  From what I saw, there are some important differences btw the photoshop way of doing things and krita ways, but it forced me to experiment with krita and it was a good learning opportunity.  So, here is the humble result I got.  It still look very rough compared to some others I have seen in this thread, but I think it's a good first try for me  :Smile:  


I still need to figure out how to do the shadowing part of the cliff in krita.  And I totally cheated on the trees and bushes and used tiles for those  :Razz:

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## madcowchef

Looks great!  Experimenting and learning is much more important than following step by step so you got the most important part of it.  Looks like a great start to making some fun battle maps for your games.

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## Sitrane

Fantastic tutorial! I have a degree in Video Game Art and Animation but there were a few tips and tricks I picked up that really helped with designing maps. Hopefully I can post a picture of my map I designed soon but it's part of an upcoming Kickstarter, so I have to keep it under wraps.

However, I am running into one major hurdle: What is everyone using to create overhead views of their trees and plants? This is proving to be extremely difficult to create something that looks realistic.

From looking at previous posts, @Kinwolf did a really great job, so I'd love to hear how you made your trees and bushes.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

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## Lichlark

Thank you so much for this information! Figured I'd share my first little project!

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## madcowchef

@Sitrane:  lots of folks are using free items from the web.  There is also a new tree rendering option within Photoshop that with some creative cutting and pasting can make a half descent top down tree I hear tell.

@Lichlark:  Looks great, I'm not in your game and I'm already dreading that place.

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## CredePendrel

Afternoon all!

Long time lurker, first time post. I wanted to share my first attempt at madcowchef's Award Winning Tutorial "Battlemaps in Photoshop". It DEFINITELY needs some work and further adjustment but I am actually somewhat happy with the results so far!. 

I am not happy with the wall results; but there are going to the first update I try and make. *I had to compress the images a lot to get them to post. I hope they are clear enough!*

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## CredePendrel

Here is my attempt at the water effects!! Coming along nicely

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## Sitrane

> @Sitrane:  lots of folks are using free items from the web.  There is also a new tree rendering option within Photoshop that with some creative cutting and pasting can make a half descent top down tree I hear tell.
> 
> @Lichlark:  Looks great, I'm not in your game and I'm already dreading that place.


@madcowchef That tree tip is amazing! I use Photoshop DAILY in my job and I had no idea that was there. I will definitely be playing around with that.

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## Cassio

> Here is my attempt at the water effects!! Coming along nicely


How did you do your river banks? The way the coast transitions is so clean!

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