# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Virtual Tabletop/Battlemap Mapping >  [CD3] Generic forest path

## Midgardsormr

I am starting a 4e game soon, and I'll be using MapTool displayed on my HDTV to facilitate it. I needed a simple foresty battlemat with a path running through it, so I whipped up one in City Designer 3. This is Bitmap style B.

The shadows are wonky because I only put them on one sheet--I was in something of a hurry, and it takes CC3 about four hours to save out at this size on my computer, so I'm not going back in to change it. It is scaled to 200 pixels per square, and for print at 200dpi, which will give a 32" x 21" battlemat. 1 square = 1" = 5 feet. 

Hmmm... looks like it exceeds the maximum pixel count for the forum. I attached the full res map in zip format instead. The thumbnail below goes to a reduced resolution version: 100 pixels per square. 100 dpi = 1 inch / square = 5 feet.

This image is licensed CC Attribution. The component bitmaps and symbols remain the property of Profantasy.

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## Steel General

Looks fine to me, If you hadn't said anything about the shadows I probably wouldn't of even noticed. Even so, I don't see anything terribly bad about them.

The only thing that "bothers" me at all is the dark stroke around the trees, but that's really a minor thing.

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## Midgardsormr

Those are a part of the symbol. I could maybe strip it off if I'd exported the sheets separately, but I didn't want to go to that much trouble for this map. Maybe next time.

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## NeonKnight

I will come back to this tonight.....studying CCNA Dynamic Routing Protocols today  :Frown:

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## Torq

Nice map Mid. Good for a quick forest skirmish. Can really slot it in into almost any game.

Torq

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## NeonKnight

Hmmmmmmm....looking at the Map, My first thought based on your comments is:

WHy is it taking you so long to save?

But then, not knowing anything at all about pixel count and what not, I don;t know if that means you have a huge file or not. I do see the map is 21 Inches by by 30 inches (according to Phtoshop, not the 21x32 you ascribe), and I know I have saved a great many maps in CC3 that size and large to be printed out at 1" per 5 feet scale (all the maps in my Thunderspire and Pyramid of Shadows gallery for example is that scale)

The attached road/Forest encounter was done for a current adventure I am writing, and it is saved at the same resolution you did and only half the size, yet appears to have more detail (not saying my map is better) so don;t know if that is the issue with CC3 or not.

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## Midgardsormr

Could be an issue with my eight-year-old workstation and FastCAD's inability to use the second CPU. I'd probably be well-served by an upgrade, but the old machine is still adequate for my needs for now. I'll probably have to trade up when I get into the Maya classes at school. For now, though, it's good and stable, and it gets the job done, albeit slowly.

I'm seeing only 30 inches, as well. I may have set something up wrong. Doesn't really matter--I'm sure there's plenty of space for a skirmish there.

We'll see how things go as I create a couple more. If I run into a snag, I certainly know where to come!

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## waldronate

The lighted shadow filter in CC3 is, um, compute intensive (the drop shadow one somewhat less so). If the system runs out of physical memory then it will start swapping to disk, which will make things ever so much worse in terms of rendering time.

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## Midgardsormr

That would certainly explain it. I'm thinking that 200 pixels / square is a bit more than I need for a map like this, so I remade the King's Road poster map from Keep on the Shadowfell at 100 ppi. Since that map is obviously copyright to WotC, I can't post it at full resolution, so I made a watermarked and 1/4 res map, so you can see how my work is progressing but the image won't be useful for gaming. 

I added some shaded relief in Photoshop, just to practice the dodge/burn overlay technique.

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