Our next map is nearly ready for upload and will follow in a few days… but first, we wanted to show a glimpse of the map’s final 3D view. In an earlier entry the “raw” model, built in L3DT, can be seen. And now look how a bit of gardening does wonders;-) All the greenery was planted in Artlantis, and the roads were paved in Photoshop. Of course, there was some overall heavy Photoshopping as well, ending finally with our “comic layer”, a finishing touch to take too much hint of reality away again of the sometimes astonishingly realistic looking maps and to give them a more adventurous and fun-to-look-at style.
For our landscapes are fictitious, fabricated solely for role-playing needs! That means we don’t start with aerial photos or suchlike as the basis for our topographies, but think of typical situations in RPG and what kind of landscapes we encountered in all kinds of campaigns. These landscapes are built as computer models and then it’s about how to green and develop them further (all of which is done by Heiko’s ecomancy, including most of the original thinking).
Of course, we look a lot at real landscapes, to get inspired and see what works, for example, what kind of vegetation is needed. But it’s more about looking through the eyes of a GM and thinking about drama, and what additional features could be included, like the landslide this time, and a cave.
