Bronze Age Settlement

[Dune]

Another project I'm working on, unfinished yet. It needs cows, more sheds, fences and different crops, and much less trees.

[inkydigit]

another fascinatingly detailed scene, looking forward to the next iteration!

[domdib]

The ground cover is, as usual, superb, and complemented by the lighting.

[airflamesred]

Fine work Dune

[Henry Blewer]

It the purple on the left side lilacs? I really like the fields, paths and stream. Your work always makes me want to use image maps; I am not very good with them...

[Dune]

Thanks guys.

@ Henry: No it's supposed to be blooming heather in September, interspersed with tough grasses. We have some heathland very close by which is (in some years) astonishingly purple.

[ra]

This is very impressive work... again. You can see each second invested in this project. Great!

[inkydigit]

forgot to say, I love the heather!

[Dune]

Our heather, one mile away.

[freelancah]

Stunning work. Looking forward on seeing more!

[Henry Blewer]

Thanks Ulco. I really enjoy your work. I have been looking at the bw image in Plugs and Pixels, trying to figure out how best to make a good image map for my own work.

[Dune]

Well, the BW image in Plugsnpixels was a PS screendump with all layers open, so seemingly extremely complicated. I now make a few empty layers above a map or a crude drawing of the map layout (may be RGB to easily read the map), with the first layer being 50% black, so that you still see the underlying map. Then on a layer above the black I start drawing in white. Make little black marks in the corners first or you won't copy the whole layer. When satisfied I make a new image, totally black in greyscale tif, same size as the other, name it 'woodmask_terrainX.tif', and copy the transparent layer over that, make it one layer and save. Resize smaller if crude is good enough.
For another mask I open the first one, make it black, copy the next transparent layer over it and save under another name! For me that's a fast workflow.

[Henry Blewer]

Ok. So the first image is a 'crude' quick sketch of the layout. The next layer can take care of the trees or creeks or paths maybe. If the image is black and white, doesn't the white area mask the area without alpha channels?
This is great advise, sorry for trampling on your image thread...

[Dune]

trees or creeks or paths

Each gets one layer in the PSD-base. And I think there's a misunderstanding, as this PSD-base with all the layers is just a working 'base' from which I extract the final masks as separate files. Every time I change a mask, I do this in the layered PSD where you can see all the other layers, then copy this over the old mask, and reload in TG2. And I don't use the alpha channels, just plain gray scale Tiff's for the final masks. Where obviously white is yes and black is no, and all in between. Tiff's because I can then see how big they are, and JPG's will be bigger once loaded anyway. Masks for trees can be really reduced to 1000x1000 or even 500x500 or so (or 200x1200 if that's what's needed for your terrain). In these rough masks I also hardly use greys, but tiny dots and clusters of dots of white, and set up a gradient that way. I get the impression the file size is smaller then, but now that I write this; I must check that out.
The paths and creeks are really fun to make, as you can use all sorts of brushes and textures.

[Henry Blewer]

I have had success with streams. When I add a mask for say grass coverage (Surface layer, not objects), it does not seem too work right. I'll get it though.
Thanks for the great advise!

P.S.> Image maps expand into the full memory required for the image. This is the way Blender and Lightwave (when I had it) work.