Photoshop

[DMdomination]

I have Photoshop extended CS3 and i saw a lot of people say its the best for designing maps. I am willing to put in the time to make the maps but I have no experience with photoshop and was curious if anyone know a good completely tutorial on how to for example build a grid so i could make a same dungeon for FGII. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, Thanks guys.

[devinnight]

What kind of maps do you want to make?

I could help you in creating maps like the kind I make.. which are simple kind of old-school maps. I use Illustrator and PS to make the final image.

Also look for any PS tutorial, anything you can do or use PS for outside of gaming easily translates into stuff you would use it for, for gaming.

-D

[Sorontar]

A plague be upon all with an artistic bone in their body, curses on you all :p

[DMdomination]

In the short term i want to convert a maze i drew for my campaign from graph paper to a program. I have a horrible time laying the grid for FGII over actual graph paper which i have always used to draw maps. After that i'd like to learn to use PS to the point where i can draw maps for everything on there. That map you have there is outstanding. I dont wanna take any of your time away i just am not very PS savy only had it for a few days.

[devinnight]

I'm posting a SS of the PS preferences.
In there you can set up a grid.. I think 50x50 pixels per square is about standard... but don't quote me.

Then scan in your map. You might need to go to the view tab on the top and under the drop-down list choose show and then grid.

In the layers pallete make sure the layer your map is on is unlocked.. usually double cliking that layer will unlock it.

The use command-T or control-T to resize your hand drawn map to match the grid you set up.

Create a new layer, on the layers pallete near the bottom are options, hover over them to figure out which one is the create new layer option.

From that point you can use the brush tool to draw lines, holding down the shift key and clicking a starting point then and clicking and ending point will draw a straight line form one point to the next.

Once you have all the line work you can use the brush or paintbucket to fill in all the negative space.

To make it look nice, in the layer tab choose layer style and add a bevel and a drop shadow... little ones for now. Create a new layer below the negative space layer and put a subtle texture of ground or flooring.

Lastly someplace off the important part of the map trace a square as closely as possible to the grid. Once you save this map then in FG you can use that area to set-up the in-game grid.

If none of that made sense.. then I would recomend finding a basics of PS tutorial, also I can elaborate on each step as you reach them if needed.

-D

[docplutonium]

Here is the PS article that started me off on my Map Making mania:

https://forums.rpghost.com/showthread.php?t=42788

It's relatively simple but more than enough to get you going. Without it, there was no way I'd ever get as far as I am now.

I've attached some of my earlier maps...See ??

Anyways, follow it and good luck, come back some time and let us see how it's going!
Doc

[DMdomination]

Thank you for the help, everyone. That explanation helped a lot i got the map completely built in photoshop and will be using this weekend hopefully. If any of you need any help with anything let me know I'd be glad to return the kindness.

[devinnight]

Great looking maps Docplutonium.
-D

[docplutonium]

Thanks Man!

Means alot coming from someone who does great work such as yourself!

Me, meh... I'm just a hack. But I try to give my players interesting environments and fun maps to adventure in.

Thanks!
Doc

[azbo]

Doc,

do you use some sort of tile set (the trees in your map are cool but they appear to be a stamp/tile which is fine I'm just wondering where you got them).

Devin,

Your maps look very professional, suitable for publishing. I'm not sure I have the time to make all my campaign maps look this good but your examples are certainly worthy of aspiring to. Did you make the "floor background layer" yourself using filters? It almost appears to me as if you started with a layer and applied an inner bevel/emboss with a negative aspect and then cut out the rooms to give an engraved look. I like it a lot, though at the bottom of the first room it appears that you covered something in a flat brown color as opposed to the smoky brown border and thus there's a visual clue that another room might exist on the other side of that wall as you remove the layer mask.

Just one more question that I was personally wondering about. Is that an underground river with a bridge over it? All the rooms off the north shore of the river appear to have that same brown line re-separating the secret rooms from their neighbors (like you painted back on the layer with the cutouts and thereby moved the inner bevel top hide the secret rooms.

It appears that both of you leave blank space/gaps for your secret doors is this correct? I use photoshop and add all the secret stuff in a layer set that I turn off to make a player friendly map.

[devinnight]

Thanks Azbo.
I created the floor texture then embossed a grid on top of it.
The files have several layers, the bottom-most is the floor.
I have a layer above it with the grid that I can turn on and off.
I have a layer for items.
I have a layer for the upper walls and ground area. Yes I just cut out the negative space and have a bevel applied to that layer.
Then I have the blue parchment layer that I erase to reveal the dungeon area.
Then a layer for text and anything else.

I do some of the work in Illustrator and bring it into PS. Saves trying to make intricate masks.

Yeah that's an underground river, and thos flat brown areas are a slightly different stone than the hall so I left them solid. As far as secret doors since this is the player map I leave the area blank ans just carefully unmask that area, the gap should be big enough that you can do it loosely in game and not have a bunch of loose lines and then one very precise one along one wall. :)

-D

-D

[azbo]

I'm a web developer and while I'm pretty good with photoshop I'm not a graphic artist (I really mostly do backend programming and database apps now) I've probably built 500+ websites so while I think I could reproduce a similar product I'm a little too lazy to produce maps like yours though I was blown away by how good yours looks.

Did you make the parchment layer yourself? I like the watermark on the parchment just one more cool detail. I'm tempted to steal your floor for my own maps you could even throw an adjustment layer ontop and change colors from dungeon to dungeon.

Cutting out the rooms in negative space from the bevelled layer was another nice touch that give the image depth and substance.

Personally I would put all the items in a layer setas opposed to on one layer so I could move them individually, turn them on and off with one click and also so I could drag em' to future maps.

I never use illustrator for some reason though back when I used to do a lot of flash I always supposed I should learn illustrator at the same time because of the vector based tools.

Really sharp work, many kudos. I would love to see the psd file if you don't mind sharing but I totally understand if you don't want to do that.

[devinnight]

My original PSD file is quite large. I can make a lower-res one and send it to you or load it to my FTP site.

I'll include the floor layer so you are welcome to use it.

Illustrator and PS work so nicely together now that it helps a lot to know both apps.

Send me an email to [email protected] and I'll send you a link to the file when I get one prepped.

-D

[docplutonium]

Here's a map that I did for the 4th edition D&D adventure the Sleeper's Crypt. It's not exact, but close enough for free...

I kept the map but totally threw away everything else about the adventure for a home grown 3.5 D&D adventure.

Total Time... Maybe 12 hours all told.

Thanks
Doc

[devinnight]

Awesome job.
The textures and everything looks great.
The background is distracting but if it's masked the players will never see the whole thing including the background.

-D