# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Virtual Tabletop/Battlemap Mapping >  Road Battlemap

## egdcltd

So, after going through the battlemap tutorial, I decided to have a go at something using what I learned, a road (not an original idea). Here's what I've got so far of a short stretch of road, not finished as yet, and no land heights added so far.

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## egdcltd

Here's an update. I'm not totally sure about the hill on the right and I think the dandelions need blending in a bit better.

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## Mouse

The hill on the right looks pretty convincing to me  :Smile: 

Perhaps the dandelions are standing out because their leaves are quite a different green to the grass.  The dandelion green has a lot more blue in it, while the grass has quite a lot more yellow.  If you look at a weedy lawn there's never that much of a difference in colour, though the dandelions tend to be just a tad darker.  Not much though  :Wink:

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## egdcltd

Thanks! Yes, the dandelions in my lawn blend it much better. I thought a cover overlay could fix that. Here's an example, with an overlaid plant and a regular one:



It does overlay the flowers as well though.

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## Mouse

The leaves on the overlaid one match the grass much better, but at the cost of the flowers and seed head.  It may be better to work on the dandelion image separately, so that you can mask just the leaves and leave the flowers nice and bright?

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## egdcltd

Yes, I may have to remake them. They're all from a layered Photoshop image, so it's not catastrophic; I'll just need to move the various heads around again and make new images.

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## wdmartin

Could you just mask the portion of the overlay layer on the dandelions to omit the heads from the adjustment effect?

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## egdcltd

> Could you just mask the portion of the overlay layer on the dandelions to omit the heads from the adjustment effect?


Probably, but given the number of heads and their size, I think it's going to be easier and quicker to simply remake them. There are only half the number of dandelions there appear to be, and they all have the same leaves.

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## egdcltd

Altered the dandelions. I wonder if I should add some shadows to them? Tiny ones admittedly. Maybe some trees as well on the left.

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## Mouse

I don't think the dandelions need any shadows.  They usually form flattened rosettes in the grass when the grass is short, so only the flowers would cast any shadows, if that.

I would concentrate more on the larger objects in the map first - like the trees  :Smile:

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## egdcltd

Trees would make more sense than drawing teeny tiny shadows of dandelion flowers! Now, just need to find some top down trees...

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## Mouse

You have probably already spotted this one, because you have a thread of your own in the same forum, but here might be a good place to start looking.  There are, I know, photorealistic trees in the CSUAC set mentioned in the first post.

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## egdcltd

CSUAC - think I've heard that term before. I have found some that, by the looks of where they are, I originally downloaded from the Dundjinni forums. Not a clue what the license is on them though.

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## Mouse

License details should be available at the point where you downloaded them.  Since I don't know which particular trees you are talking about, it would probably be best to check the source page.

EDIT:  If you no longer have the source page details you could always do a Google image search to find it  :Smile:

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## egdcltd

Unfortunately with the Dundjinni forums down, it's a bit harder checking for the license on anything I have from there. I have a feeling that the majority of stuff was fine for any use, but not everything. And I think I've had these about seven years! The names aren't terribly helpful for searches either. Still, I might be able to find something and then be able to check archive.org.

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## Mouse

Take it from one who knows - where there is doubt, don't use it.

Many of the Dundjinni symbols have been collected together into a vast library you can reach from here

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## egdcltd

> Take it from one who knows - where there is doubt, don't use it.
> 
> Many of the Dundjinni symbols have been collected together into a vast library you can reach from here


Yes, if you can't say for certain what the license is, assume you can't use it (I got an argument over this with someone who insisted that everything on the internet was fine to use how you wanted, because it's in the "public domain." They also "knew the law."). So, everything on that site is fine by the looks of it? Glad I upgraded my internet connection recently!

Unbelievably, I did manage to find the source page: http://dundjinni.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=10840 Can't access it though

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## Mouse

It also pays to read the EULA very, very carefully if you intend to make use of symbols contained in a licenced set, and if you have any difficulty understanding the convoluted or ambiguous points that most of these flowery documents contain (as I do), contact the person or company who owns the licence and ask them straight out if 'this' or 'that' is acceptable before you begin.

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## egdcltd

Yes, it's always best to err on the side of safety.

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## Bogie

> Unfortunately with the Dundjinni forums down, it's a bit harder checking for the license on anything I have from there. I have a feeling that the majority of stuff was fine for any use, but not everything. And I think I've had these about seven years! The names aren't terribly helpful for searches either. Still, I might be able to find something and then be able to check archive.org.


I did manage to get on Dundjinni for a short time using your link.  I found that those trees were posted by a DJ member named Adam Kadmon.  He posted a bunch of trees, got a lot of positive feedback and then disappeared.  He did not post anything about a EULA or restrictions.  He simply stated "I come bearing gifts"  meaning the trees.  It would be very difficult to actually get permission, but I and many others have used these trees quite often and I would not hesitate to do so again.

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## egdcltd

That's good to know about the trees. I have a feeling the forum works if very few people are trying to use it.

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## Mouse

And if Bogie himself says its all right, then it must be all right  :Very Happy:

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## egdcltd

Added some trees.

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## Mouse

Oh they're nice symbols!  :Very Happy: 

Do you think, though, that looking at the size of the hoof prints they might need to be about twice the size they are to fit the scale of the drawing?

(What is the scale, btw?)

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## egdcltd

The scale is 5 feet to a square. I have fiddled with the hoof prints quite a few times, and I'm not sure if I'm that happy with them as yet. They might be about the right size - I'm not exactly sure what size horeshoes are, and it does depend on the horse! - but they also might be a bit close together, from top to bottom, and a bit too sharp.

That reminds me, I found some horseshoe things in one of the image packs I downloaded.

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## Mouse

Horses legs tend to come inwards at the bottom a little so the track might need to be a bit narrower than it is, unless the horses are very, very fat  :Wink:   The length between the prints is a little on the short side, though I don't know off-hand how long a horses stride really is if its only walking.  At a gallop I suspect the stride is far longer than that - possibly 2-3 times as long.

If the gird is 5 foot square its not the hooves that are too big but the trees are definitely only shrubs at that scale.  An example here is a mature English Oak tree is about 40-50 feet in diameter - one on its own being more than big enough to cover most of your image.

EDIT: A quick google search for images of horses hoof prints should show you a few horse tracks that will give you a much better idea than any description I can give you, but the prints from left and right legs seem to fall almost on top of one another.  In fact, thinking about it I remember listening to a naturalist explaining that prey animals have evolved to leave the smallest track possible, which is why the left and right hoof prints lie so very close, and why also the stride of an animal like a horse is designed so that the rear hooves have a tendency to fall on top of the print left by the front hoof print on that side of the horse.... which means, I guess that the stride of a walking horse must be about the length of the horse from shoulder to hip.  About... 4 feet?

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## egdcltd

That was another hard measurement - the width of horses. I simply guessed that. The tracks do look a little close at the moment.

The trees (which are birch apparently) I sort of thought are new growth at the edge of an off map wood, so are small. The images I was using are a bit small for this scale, and might not have looked so good at a decent size - they're at full size as it is.

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## wdmartin

Your grid is superimposed on top of the trees.  If you wish to maintain the illusion that the grid is at "foot level", then it should go beneath them.

Also, the trees need shadows to give them some depth.

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## egdcltd

i did actually move the grid below the trees after this, but I think the trees need moving a bit as well. Where they are currently positioned, even after moving the grid, they are so fine it isn't easy to tell whether they are above or below the grid.

I have added a standard drop shadow to the trees. Should I increase the size of it, or attempt to draw shadows in manually instead?

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## Mouse

Maybe intensify the shadows and make them less blurred?

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## egdcltd

Here's the part with the trees with them moved slightly, the drop shadow tweaked and the grid put below them.

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## Mouse

Wow - that's really made them pop  :Smile: 

You must be getting fed up with people telling you to tweak this or that, but I really think you've made huge improvements with this map from the way it was when you started out.

I only have one nitpick (and it is only a tiny one).  Maybe not quite so sharp on the shadows?  But then, that is only a matter of taste.  I think you are so close to perfect with them that now I'm just being overly fussy!  LOL!

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## egdcltd

> You must be getting fed up with people telling you to tweak this or that, but I really think you've made huge improvements with this map from the way it was when you started out. LOL!


Heck, no, I've posted wanting feedback. Here are the trees again; the one in the top right has a fuzzier shadow (5px compared to 0 on the rest).

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## Mouse

That certainly looks more like the dappled shade you might get under a tree  :Smile: 

But again - I stress that at this stage little tweaks like this really are a matter of personal taste in the end.

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## egdcltd

I have no real problem with tweaking. Stopping tweaking - now, that can be a problem! (After all, there are now mushrooms under the trees - because I found some images - and a couple of other tiny things on the map.)

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## Mouse

I hope the people who use your map appreciate all the very hard work you have put into it  :Smile: 

Are you adding any more main elements?

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## egdcltd

Well, it's kind of fun and relaxes the mind a bit.

I'm thinking about maybe some more bushes on the right and maybe something in the bottom left. A rock, a stump, or something else. And possibly change the patchy grass at the side of the track.

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## jfrazierjr

Consider putting a bit of shadowing and highlights on the rocks..or technically on a layer above set to overlay...make those boulders really pop out as ed objects

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## wdmartin

Now that I look closely, the grid is indeed under the trees, but it's a bit hard to tell.  It's so sharp.  May I suggest a slightly blurred grid?  Here's an example.  NOTE: all the following images are 500x500px.  For best effect, click through to the full size version.

We start with a bit of grass with a grid on it.



The grid here is 100x100px to the five foot square, and the grid lines are 3px wide.  They are much too dark, and much to sharply defined.  They dominate the rest of the image.

Here's a version with the grid toned down:



I did this with the following steps:

1) Used Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur on the grid (3 px radius).
2) Changed the layer blend mode to Multiply.
3) Set the layer Fill to 75%.

That's a bit more subtle, but honestly, I don't much like a dark black grid on a bright background.  Let's try it with a white grid instead:



I inverted the grid color, changed the blend mode to overlay, and punched the Fill back up to 100%.  Better.

Buuut maybe a bit TOO subtle.  Players need to be able to clearly differentiate between squares after all.  This might not have quite the contrast we're looking for.  Let's make a sharper line at the center of each grid line:



To do this, I added a second grid layer.  This one was NOT blurred -- it has the same original 3px width, only it's white and I set the layer Opacity to 30% with a Normal blend mode.  The added definition to the center of the line makes it a bit clearer.

Sadly, it also makes the edges of the map kind of glow in an odd-looking way.  Here's a version with that corrected:



I added masks to the blurred grid and the regular grid layer, and just masked out the edges.  It's not a super-careful masking job -- you can see some of the lines "spread" a bit as they hit the edge of the image -- but it gets the idea across.

Overall, this is a pretty strong grid.  I might tone it back a bit, but a lot depends on how the grid's visual properties interact with the other things in the image.  If we give the eye something besides the grid to focus on, it will seem to "fade" a bit even though the actual pixels haven't changed.  Thus:



Ahhhh.  All that's left is to take a nice long nap under that tree.

EDIT:  Oh, and I suppose it's worth mentioning that you don't have to use solid black or solid white for your grid lines.  For example, in a night scene it might make more sense to start with a dark blue.  You can vary the color of the grid lines to suit the overall tonal balance of the rest of the image.

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## egdcltd

> Consider putting a bit of shadowing and highlights on the rocks..or technically on a layer above set to overlay...make those boulders really pop out as ed objects


I did actually have highlights and shadows on the rocks - looks like those layers got removed when I altered how the slope was shaded! I'll have to re-add them. Thanks for noticing - I thought they were still there!

@wdmartin - I did move the grid after you posted, and the trees so that they covered more of it, but yes, it's still not obvious. I had thought about increasing the size of the lines, but I have to say I think your way looks better than having thick black lines on the map. Thanks, I'll give it a try!

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## egdcltd

Here's the grid tweaked both ways (although without the edge mask on the white). I think the black may work better with these trees - they're so thin the white is leaking through a bit. EDIT: Added the black with another grid, like the white.

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## jfrazierjr

Honestly, I have never been overly concerned with the location of grid lines relative to objects simply for the sake of time(and if I needed to due to a rock being part of the base image, I would just add a layer mask in the shape of the rock to keep the lines from covering it).  With that said, I kind of like the lighter color lines, but would probably suggest lowering the opacity, perhaps to 60%-70% or so...

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## wdmartin

Much better.  I agree, the black works better in this instance.

If there are still places where the grid is too strong, you can always fade it out slightly using a mask.  (If you paint shades of grey on the mask instead of black or white, it goes partially transparent).

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## egdcltd

I may have a fiddle more, especially around the rocks. The lines overlay those and don't look so good now. Either a mask as suggested, or move them above the grid.

Edit: Here's some tweaking with shadows and highlights on the rocks (before and after). Not sure about the highlights though.

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## Mouse

I actually prefer the first of those two pictures, since the rocks in the second one seem to be standing up out of the ground like mushrooms in the second one... unless that's how they are?

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## egdcltd

Not quite like mushrooms, but I do sort of want them to stick out of the slope a bit.



The current shadows were just done using the drop shadow as a guide.

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## Mouse

I'm sorry!  That was a bit harsh of me.  They don't really look like mushrooms.  The shading on the grass makes them pop up a bit too much, that's all.

Looking at your section sketch there, I'd say the shadows would be more on the vertical face of the stone than the ground around it.  Reading back through the thread I would hazard a guess that this is what jfrazierjr may have meant?  That's just a guess, though.  I'm not one to knowingly put words in a CL's mouth  :Wink: 

I imagine that the top corner where vertical rock face meets horizontal rock platform on each of the rocks, there may be a dark shadow along the front line of the rock fading quickly to none? 

Bearing in mind the apparent direction of the light (which seems to be from the north west going by the shadow on the trees), there would be very little shadow at all on the grass that is actually cast by the rock itself.  The hill shading should take care of the slope illusion, so you only have to add shade within the shape and form of the rock itself to make it look 3D.

I hope that made sense!  LOL!

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## egdcltd

Don't worry, I didn't take it harshly!

I'm trying to get a sort of shelf-like piece of rock sticking out. The standard drop shadows don't really account for that though. I'll have another go with them later.

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## Mouse

I think the shading for that lies within the rock shape itself more than the grass.

On your drawing you wouldn't see the face of the rock, but you would see the shadow coming up over the roll-top edge of it - like a bevel, or the edge of a roll-top kitchen surface.

That's what I was trying to describe.  You will have to paint the shadow on rather than use any effects (I think).  Try starting with a dark shadow in a thin line along the very edge of the protruding part of the rock, and fade it out really quickly away from that edge - inwards across the stone.

EDIT:  You may then need to add a suggestion of highlight immediately behind that shadow to bring the corner back out again.

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## egdcltd

I think I understand what you mean. Although I am beginning to think the easiest way of seeing how the shadow would fall would be making a physical model!

Edit: Here's one of the rocks altered, although it looks like I need to move the shadow line to the left. I think it's too close to the middle for the effect I wanted currently.

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## wdmartin

Make sure you keep the shadows going in the same direction.

Take a look at your first rock example again, not the most recent one.  In the right-hand side, you have shadows falling to the right of the rocks (from the drop shadow effect).  But if you look at the hill that the rocks are sitting on, the LEFT of the hill is in shadow, and the RIGHT of the hill is lit up.  So in that example the rocks and the hill have to contradictory light sources.

You can obviously HAVE multiple light sources in an image, but generally those sources should affect every object alike.  There is some artistic wiggle room on this -- ambient occlusion shadows are a thing -- but in general it helps to keep consistent lighting throughout.

I often make a blank layer on top of everything else and just draw in some lines denoting the global light source and which angle it comes from, and blotchy blobs of color showing weaker, local light sources and how far out they extend before attenuating.  I name the layer "Light Reference" or "Light Ref" and just hide and show it any time I want to check if my shadows are falling in the right direction.

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## egdcltd

I hadn't really thought of the shadows on the hill as being shadows, as they were there to denote the slope. I don't think there's any way around using shade there, as only part of the rise is depicted, so using a combination of shadows and highlights might be tricky. Perhaps simply altering the global light position might be better (I suppose that's an advantage of Blender - you don't need to guess where the light is coming from).

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## Mouse

I think there may be a slight blurring of the line between relief shading and shadows here.  And I can't blame you because I find this one a bit tricky to grasp myself.  

The land is relief shaded, in that its form is described by how much light is hitting the surface, given the position and angle of the sun.  Relief shading is not a true shadow, but a sort of 'reflected light intensity map', if you like.  So if the sun is fairly high in the sky the slopes, especially the steeper ones, will reflect less light than the flat surfaces, which is why you have a relief shading shadow on the face of your steep grassy slope _even though_ its facing the general direction of the sun.

The relief shading also affects all the smaller objects in the map, so that the vertical side of anything will be darker than the top.

[EDIT: except at sunrise or sunset, when the flat land will be darker than the slopes on the sunlit side, but that's just complicating the explanation here so please ignore...]

I think you've got the right general idea of shading the stones in that very last image you showed us, and that you are also right in that the dividing line between the shadow and the highlight within the stone needs to be move way over to the left, so that most of the stone is seen as flat.

...

Moving on to the shadows themselves...

Once you have got the relief shading sorted out the shadows should be easier than before, because the relief shading will enable your eye to interpret the land form in a more 'solid' fashion.  

Well... that's the theory anyway  :Smile:

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## egdcltd

One problem I'm having with shadows is that I've been doing them in bands, and decreasing the opacity. Unfortunately, this means there's an overlap where the opacity is higher. I've attempted to make a gradient brush, but that hasn't worked out so far.

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## Mouse

LOL! now you are talking way over my head.  I'm a CC3 mapper with only very scratchy understanding of GIMP.  So far, helping has simply been a case of talking at a higher level than the software itself, but now your getting all technical on me and I'm sorry, but I just can't help with that.

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## wdmartin

I am so confused right now.  I swear I posted here about an hour ago, but my post is not here.  I wonder if I just hit Preview and then closed the tab?

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## Mouse

Evidently.  I hope you hadn't just spent an hour trying to write it!

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## egdcltd

> LOL! now you are talking way over my head.  I'm a CC3 mapper with only very scratchy understanding of GIMP.  So far, helping has simply been a case of talking at a higher level than the software itself, but now your getting all technical on me and I'm sorry, but I just can't help with that.


I'm actually using PS CS2, not Gimp. Does that help?  :Very Happy: 

I bought CC3 many years ago, and never managed to accomplish anything with it. I'm impressed with what you've done using it!

@wdmartin It's a pain when a post you write disappears. Especially if it's a long one.

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## Mouse

> I'm actually using PS CS2, not Gimp. Does that help? 
> 
> I bought CC3 many years ago, and never managed to accomplish anything with it. I'm impressed with what you've done using it!


No not at all!  LOL!

I think people who are equally conversant with vector and bitmap graphics packages are some kind of mentally ambidextrous.... a polymath or something.  It seems that most of us are one thing or the other, but only very rarely both  :Wink: 

And I am impressed with what you have learned to do since the beginning of this thread  :Smile:

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## egdcltd

Thanks! Currently building planets - I decided to create illustrations for every one in something I just finished writing. This may have been a mistake - according to what I've written, I need 13 planets, 5 of which are definitely not terran, a gas giant, a nebula, an asteroid and a black hole.

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## Mouse

How are you creating them?

If its by hand, I would be tempted to use Fractal Terrains 3 for that kind of job, but I'm not terribly experienced in its use, other than as a source of convincing planetary land mass coastlines  :Smile: 

I know that doesn't really help with the gas planets, but you could have most of those 13 taped in a matter of hours.

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## jfrazierjr

Honestly, the best solution for this would be to change the light source to be from the right and it just looks natural when you change the rocks and trees to accommodate.

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## egdcltd

I'm using a combination of several different tutorials, including one found here. Here are two I've done (although the one on the right has too much bright atmosphere on the night side; I may have to redo that). The one on the left is highly polluted.

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## egdcltd

> Honestly, the best solution for this would be to change the light source to be from the right and it just looks natural when you change the rocks and trees to accommodate.


Sorry, missed that, think you posted whilst I was doing the same. Yes, I think that's going to be the easiest option.

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## egdcltd

Had another go at the shadows again as a break from planets. The one on the left has no shadows; the one on the right a drop shadow on the bush and a hand drawn one on and around the rock.

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## Mouse

I think it might be improved if you move that shading within the rock much closer to the edge and make it follow the line of the edge - like the brown margin you have there already in the unshaded version.  Take out the drop shadow and alter the relief shading a tad so that there is a clear change in angle in the slope that lies on the same line as the angle change in the rock.  

I'm thinking a bit like this (sorry to have borrowed your image and reposted it, but I can't seem to describe it well enough)

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## egdcltd

The shadow from the rock isn't actually a drop shadow - it's hand drawn - but you're suggesting to remove it completely? I think it might need heavier shadow on the left side of the rock, if perhaps not as wide, as I'm trying to give it the impression of sticking out of the hill.

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## Mouse

I don't understand why you think it should have a shadow, when its facing the sun.  The rock needs _shading_  (which is not the same thing as a shadow) on the vertical face to indicate that it is vertical, rather than horizontal like the top of the stone, but it doesn't need an actual shadow, does it?

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## egdcltd

I'd moved the global light so it comes from the top right. Finally thought to do a rough mockup in Blender (should have thought of that earlier, when I was talking about models!). Here's the slope and rock viewed from three directions; the sun is in approximately the same place as it is on the battlemap. The top down view if the one that would be seen on the battlemap; the others are for reference.

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## Mouse

Then the shading you have given it must be correct  :Smile:

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## egdcltd

I wish I'd thought about using Blender earlier - I was thinking I would have to construct physical models to see how the shadows fell! Far easier to do it this way.

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## Mouse

If you are willing to spend the time learning how to model things precisely enough you could almost make the whole map in Blender.  A warning though - its nowhere near as fast as just drawing it!  LOL!

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## egdcltd

> If you are willing to spend the time learning how to model things precisely enough you could almost make the whole map in Blender.  A warning though - its nowhere near as fast as just drawing it!  LOL!


That was actually why I started learning Blender! I noticed someone was putting out quite a lot of battlemaps using the programme, and I thought I'd give it a go. It's not easy, though.

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