I always look forward to putting together the month’s collection of user maps from the ProFantasy forum. It’s always a parade of beautiful and interesting maps. Let’s have a look, shall we?
KenG really took my breath way with his Cistern Caves. The pipes and cisterns look extremely lifelike and were something I hadn’t seen done in CC3 yet.
It’s time again to admire all the user maps that have popped up in the ProFantasy forum during the last four weeks.
Taking up a recent Annual issue (Pär Lindström’s regional style), Modric created this beauty of the Dwimmerheim region.
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We’ve just released the March Annual issue: Flavio’s Myrr Overland style is now available as a download for the Annual subscribers.
His beautiful and unique overland style is based on intricate bitmap texture and shaded contours, as you can see from this sample:
You can subscribe to the current Annual here.
We’re a bit earlier this time around, so I don’t have a full month of user maps to round up. The tally is still very impressive, as well as the skill and imagination of our users.
Krom continued his series of Diorama buildings created from DD3 resources, with this beautiful village temple.
KenG drew this beautiful floor plan of some manor house stables, including artwork from DD3, the CSUAC and the Dundjinni forums.
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[Ed’s Note: Let us know if you like this style, and with Flavio’s permission, we’ll create an Annual from it]
My fiancée recently asked me if it would be OK to make a Viking character for my Al-Qadim campaign. I thought about the role playing possibilities for a moment: Viking gets lost at sea en route to pillage and plunder; Viking gets shipwrecked in hostile desert environment; Viking PC makes for a very interest game indeed. I then thought about where such a Viking would come from in my world and set about creating a map of his home.
Myrr is a semi-arctic region largely inspired by Scandinavia, Iceland, and Alaska. I spent a great deal of time looking over maps of their fjords and river systems in the hope that I could create something similar and believable in my own map. After an hour or two tinkering around with the fractal line tool (adding a river here, indenting land mass there, etc), I finally had a landmass and set of islands I could be happy with.
The next step was to create the mountain range. I first drew the main ridge of the mountain and all the little ridges that branch off of it with the smooth poly tool. This is what the looked like without effects on.
I gave it a rather long and dark wall shadow, a deep edge fade inner (with 75% inner opacity), and a large lighted bevel effect (so that the two sides of the bevel met in the center of the polygon). I then added a Mountain Hills sheet that encircled the range with a smaller edge fade inner and lighted bevel effect. Next, I added a Mountain Base sheet that encircled the Mountain Hills (also with a smaller edge fade inner and lighted bevel effect.) Because I wasn’t thoroughly happy with the colors that were coming out, I finalized it with a Mountain Cover sheet. This shows the details of the effects:
And this is the final mountain range:
As you can see, I also used the Mountain Base sheet to layout my hills. I further added a Hills Base sheet that encircle these hills and had a deep edge fade inner to give the illusion of height. From there I added some forests (very subtle), rivers, text, (about a dozen assorted sheets to get the ocean, landmass and desert looking right) and called it a day. All of the textures came from Herwin Wielink annual and CGtextures.com.
This map was a great deal of fun to make and I learned a new technique for mountains in the process. Of course, the best part is now crafting a history about this region to help fill in the gaps of my fiancée’s character’s back-story. Although I’m far from done, you can check what I have so far (along with a full resolution version of the map) at my blog.
We’ve gone into 2013 and our community shows no sign of letting up with the barrage of wonderful user maps. Here’s the roundup for January!
KenG was inspired by KROM’s wonderful close-up maps/paintings done in the Herwin Wielink overland style. The result is this beautiful local map.
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[This map was created and this article written by forum user anomiecoalition.]
Mapping has become one of my favorite escapes from the drudgery that is graduate school. Whether it’s developing a mystical environment from scratch or recreating a classic adventure, I look forward to spending a few hours playing around with CC3. Lately it’s been the latter, and I’ve found quite a few gems mining my mini-library of TSR adventures.
This particular map is a reproduction of a “Buried Temple” encounter in the “Master of the Desert Nomads” module (X4). Our adventures leave the comforts of a desert oasis to investigate a recently unearthed buried temple – Once inside they’ll discover all manner of nefarious creatures, but should they survive, the rewards will be well worth the effort.
The most challenging aspect was trying to find a way to depict areas that are both above and below ground on the same map. I spent a great deal of time (and got lots of great suggestions from others on the Profantasy Forums) messing with my underground section. After creating my underground walls, I multipolied the area outside the walls and placed that shape on my Background sheet (which sat below my wall sheet on the list). From there I applied a subtle edge fade inner effect so that the sand was slightly covering the wall. I then multipolied the area inside my underground wall, applied my sand fill to that shape, and then added a transparency effect to that sheet. My hope was that these two techniques would give the view the impression that this area was underground.
After that, it was just a matter of dressing my dungeon utilizing various symbols from the CSUAC and textures from CGTextures.com. I also created a bunch of sand dune sheets (edge fade inner and glow effects) to muddy up the background. I’d be lying if I said that I was completely satisfied with the final product, but I think its human nature to demand more of yourself. I made a lot of mistakes with this map, but I learned even more. ..And I can’t wait for my next opportunity to start the cycle all over again.
If you’re not tired of my Desert Maps, you can see more in full resolution on my blog: http://drunkennerdery.wordpress.com/
I’m a bit late – due to the holidays and the release of the new Annual – but I don’t want to keep December’s beautiful new creations of the Profantasy user community from you.
Moskva very slightly missed the November round-up, so the first draft at his nice Hurland Country Map didn’t make it last time. This is kinda fortunate, because you can now see it in full detail!
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[This map was created by forum user anomiecoalition.]
After a rather lengthy hiatus from the world of fantasy and roleplaying, I recently convinced a few friends to give it a try and set about constructing a world that would keep their interest. Along the way, I stumbled upon Campaign Cartographer 3 and was amazed at the maps that people were producing with it and the possibility that it provides to even the artistically challenged (like myself). After a short couple of week tinkering with the program and learning a great deal from the tutorials available I constructed Brightstone Keep.
The map and its back story are loosely based on a free adventure provided by Wizards of the Coast. The keep protects a mining operation that has been overrun by a variety of nefarious creatures. The symbols utilized can be obtained from the CSUAC.
The first step in creating this map was to establish the basic layout. I depicted a mountain wall running from the top left to bottom right corner for which I used three separate sheets and shapes. Then I added cliff running left to right towards the bottom of the map on another sheet.
I began by drawing a rough outline of the mountain wall and filled it with a dirt texture. I learned that it is a good idea to draw beyond the map border on these shapes to ensure that if I applied any edge-fade effects, they wouldn’t appear on the border side of the map. Using effects I then applied a slight blur and two black outer glow effects – one with strength of 0 above another with strength of 1. I then created two more shapes and sheets to go above this mountain wall and utilized different dirt textures. To these sheets, I applied a slight blur and an edge-fade-inner effect.
Depicting the cliff was a bit simpler – here I just reused the dirt texture from the background but constructed a separate shape on a separate sheet and applied a similar setting as that use on the first mountain wall sheet (but with an inner glow). The final step was to add some hill overlay transparencies to add some character to the terrain. I applied these symbols on a separate sheet and varied the size/orientation to achieve the desired effect.
In constructing the walls of the keep, I created four sets of sheets and shapes. I began by drawing some solid gray lines (width of 6 – adjust to scale) to create the outer wall. I then applied a texture sheet effect (stone texture of your choosing, Intensity 1, size 15); on top of that a black outer glow (strength 1, blur 2); a wall shadow (length 15, opacity 65, blur 5); and finally a bevel (length 1.5, strength 35, and fade 1). I next wanted to create a walkway for that wall. I copied the image to a new sheet and reduced the width to 3. I then applied a texture sheet effect (with a different stone texture but same settings) and an inner black glow (strength 1, blur 2). I followed the same procedure to construct the towers/ramp and placed those shapes and sheets on top of the wall. (The ramp actually required that I draw in a black shadow on the right side to give it some dimensionality.)
The last step was to draw in some roads and tracks. I laid down a road (added a texture, blur, and edge-fade-inner sheet effect) and then drew in the tracks according to the instructions provided in the Jon Roberts Special Issue of the Annual. From there it was just a matter of placing some vegetation, rocks, buildings, and text to complete my map.
I had a great time making this map and was amazed at how easy it was once I familiarized myself with the program (the video tutorials and assorted blog entries are invaluable.) I just hope my friends enjoy playing with this map as much as I enjoyed making it.
*I plan on posting more of my maps on my new blog
Mark Wolnik, a fresh member of the ProFantasy community offered to write a few sentences about his initial experience with the Campaign Cartographer 3 and we gladly accepted. Here are his words. Thanks, Mark!
Since my youth, one of my favorite parts of reading fantasy books and playing fantasy games over the decades, has been poring over the maps that add that extra amazing amount of immersion. I would marvel at the skills needed to draw something in a manner that looked like a gifted and patient elven hand was at work here.
On Xmas Eve I treated myself with buying CC3, the SS1 Overland Fantasy Symbol set, and the Tome of Ultimate Knowledge. With my rudimentary skills, I set out to create a map for my guild.
By watching the tutorial videos, and following selected parts of the manual, CC3’s powerful mapmaking system features became easily understandable and useable. Within 3 days I had my first finished map, that although was far from perfect, I felt was reasonably presentable – I was hooked!
The next day (Dec 28th), wanting to improve my map making abilities, I decided to buy the Annuals package. There was a glitch from my end with Paypal, and accidentally 2 orders were placed – I was a little aghast since it being between Xmas and New Years, and my prior experiences with online merchants and financial transactions have been dubious at best, I thought it would be several weeks at least, before I could hope to see a return of the additional $249.00 accidentally billed.
Much to my surprise, and delight, my email to Ralf was answered that day (it was around 8pm his local time) with reassurances that all will be made good – and indeed the additional transaction was credited back immediately.
My experience with ProFantasy has been nothing short of excellent on every level – be it the high quality of CC3 itself, the explicit and helpful manner in which the tutorials are created, and the commitment and service in looking after their customers.
Thank you so much!
Mark Wolnik
And as a special treat, here is the very first map that Mark created with CC3:
