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elanastarsHaving been bit quite hard by the hyperfocus bug, here's my next mapmaking update.
When we last left this project, I had overlaid the city layout over my base map, and started the process of cutting off the excess background and blending in the edges.
This took. A while. I think about 3-4 hours, which...ideally would have been spread out over time but was instead the work of one afternoon. Ow, my hands. But, here's that part done:
That done, I had a problem. See, this map came with a bunch of plazas. Now, some of them could be courtyards and could be paved--I could lay a cobblestone texture on top of the existing map. But some of them have trees and are probably green space instead. I'd like to texture the ground texture as grass, but there are some issues.
As far as I can see, Inkarnate's layers are ordered like this, from bottom to top:
So, the problem is that the top layer will always be above the assets, but the foreground will always be below it. The town map is a custom imported texture, so it's got to be painted onto the foreground, background, or top layer. Currently, it's painted onto the top layer. We ideally want to be able to have the plazas cut out so I can paint the foreground to texture the ground. We can do the same thing we did in the previous step buuuuuut there's an issue. The trees overlap with the roofs. (Sidebar--why is it 'roofs' and not 'rooves'? We say it like that and it would match the rest of our f-to-v plurals, like hoof to hooves.)
Anyway, the upshot is that I want to texture underneath the trees in the plazas, my choices are:
I chose Option 2, not least because the original tree graphics look flat and if I make any zoomed-in maps from this master, it'll be pretty obvious.
I place tree assets where the original flat trees are. Then, on the top layer, I can erase the plaza interior, and the space around the trees where they overhang the roofs (including anywhere its shadow falls). After that's done, I paint the town texture onto the foreground layer, which creates the illusion that the roofs are underneath the tree assets (since the shadow falls onto them). This is still finicky, but actually less so than tracing around all those trees would be, since you don't have to be so precise.
I did restrict myself to a couple of hours for the sake of my hands though, so I'm calling it here for the day at about 2/3 done. Here's today's progress:
I actually really like the effect of changing out the trees. It really adds depth, and I think it will look amazing one it's been textured properly. That said...OH MY GOD THIS IS SO MUCH WORK, WHY ARE THERE SO MANY TREES???
On a totally unrelated note, I tend to listen to sound mixes (either ambient or brown noise), both at work and when working on a project like this. I tend to find it hard to focus when I listen to music, and I have to work in an open office at work (boo). I really like the mixes on this site: https://mynoise.net/--the guy who hosts it is pretty obsessive about going out and recording sounds for it, so the quality is a lot better than the ambient stuff you get on YouTube. My two favorite mixes right now are Glacier Chorus (for the sort of deep water noises) and Irish Coast both for the low undertone and the fact that it works pretty well to drown out ambient noise in the office. (Today's map work was done to the Medieval Village mix, but with the bells turned off.)
When we last left this project, I had overlaid the city layout over my base map, and started the process of cutting off the excess background and blending in the edges.
This took. A while. I think about 3-4 hours, which...ideally would have been spread out over time but was instead the work of one afternoon. Ow, my hands. But, here's that part done:
That done, I had a problem. See, this map came with a bunch of plazas. Now, some of them could be courtyards and could be paved--I could lay a cobblestone texture on top of the existing map. But some of them have trees and are probably green space instead. I'd like to texture the ground texture as grass, but there are some issues.
As far as I can see, Inkarnate's layers are ordered like this, from bottom to top:
- Background (generally used for things like water--generally acts as negative space)
- Foreground (generally used for things like land--generally acts as positive space)
- Asset layers, levels -5 through 5 (I don't know why they did that instead of 0 to 10, as it doesn't appear to me that any asset can be below the foreground, for example)
- Top layer (always appears above all other layers)
So, the problem is that the top layer will always be above the assets, but the foreground will always be below it. The town map is a custom imported texture, so it's got to be painted onto the foreground, background, or top layer. Currently, it's painted onto the top layer. We ideally want to be able to have the plazas cut out so I can paint the foreground to texture the ground. We can do the same thing we did in the previous step buuuuuut there's an issue. The trees overlap with the roofs. (Sidebar--why is it 'roofs' and not 'rooves'? We say it like that and it would match the rest of our f-to-v plurals, like hoof to hooves.)
Anyway, the upshot is that I want to texture underneath the trees in the plazas, my choices are:
- Really carefully trace out around the trees so I can texture behind the ground underneath
- Erase the trees and replace them with stamps, so that I can paint under them properly.
I chose Option 2, not least because the original tree graphics look flat and if I make any zoomed-in maps from this master, it'll be pretty obvious.
I place tree assets where the original flat trees are. Then, on the top layer, I can erase the plaza interior, and the space around the trees where they overhang the roofs (including anywhere its shadow falls). After that's done, I paint the town texture onto the foreground layer, which creates the illusion that the roofs are underneath the tree assets (since the shadow falls onto them). This is still finicky, but actually less so than tracing around all those trees would be, since you don't have to be so precise.
I did restrict myself to a couple of hours for the sake of my hands though, so I'm calling it here for the day at about 2/3 done. Here's today's progress:
I actually really like the effect of changing out the trees. It really adds depth, and I think it will look amazing one it's been textured properly. That said...OH MY GOD THIS IS SO MUCH WORK, WHY ARE THERE SO MANY TREES???
On a totally unrelated note, I tend to listen to sound mixes (either ambient or brown noise), both at work and when working on a project like this. I tend to find it hard to focus when I listen to music, and I have to work in an open office at work (boo). I really like the mixes on this site: https://mynoise.net/--the guy who hosts it is pretty obsessive about going out and recording sounds for it, so the quality is a lot better than the ambient stuff you get on YouTube. My two favorite mixes right now are Glacier Chorus (for the sort of deep water noises) and Irish Coast both for the low undertone and the fact that it works pretty well to drown out ambient noise in the office. (Today's map work was done to the Medieval Village mix, but with the bells turned off.)
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Date: 2025-06-29 05:25 pm (UTC)Also yeah, mynoise is a favorite resource of mine too! I used be more able to write (and read) to music, television being on, basically whatever... Not so much anymore! So mynoise is a lifesaver lol
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Date: 2025-06-30 01:04 am (UTC)