Color maps, Any advice?

[Nation]

well, I don't really any map making experience when it comes to myth. I'd like to know, is there any good advice with making color maps?

I'm starting from scratch, and I have photoshop. I'd like to know how to get the rich fine details with the map itself.

Thanks

[Death's Avatar]

Good places to look are the "grass tutorial" stickied on this forum, and Clem's tutorial (I'm not sure were to find that, but I'm sure vinylrake does).

-DA

[GizmoHB]

I got tons of advice for ya...

1: make a sketch (on paper or in PS, verry quick layout of your map, flag, team and model positions, terrain types, water etc etc)

2: get the size right, before you start designing your cmap make sure you have a large enough canvas to fit all your stuff (and of course the map size being a multiple of 256) and not to large that your units have to walk half an hour to get to the action...

3. dont use to many different terrain types or u'll experience indexing problems later on, dont think you can make a red lava meets happy green grass meets indoor blue/pink kitchen tiles map...its gonna be hard to index (remember only 240 colors total)

4. dont over detail your map, myth is an old game and using to much detail makes grass look like rocks...or just crap

5. use lots of different layers...and name em (I never do, and i always end up with 150 layers or so, no matter what im designing)

6. experiment and test, try different things, import your map into loathing everytime u do something to see what it looks like, dont expect it to look good because it looks good in PS, and make sure you check it with map shadows (this makes a big difference in color)

7. be creative and have fun...

...thats all for now...

...Giz

[gugusm]

I don't know if it's possible to have fun when making colormaps

[Nation]

Yeah, I realized my color map looks like crap when I imported it, so now I have to remake it I guess.

now I'm wallowing in this land of fustration.

This is what I did:

I went into the Warcraft Map editor (I made maps on warcraft before, I figured I could take the easy way out and design the color map with that program)

I designed the map using that program, then I took an overhead screenshot of it.

I imported the image to Photoshop, changed some of the dimensions to fit loathing's specifications, then imported the color map into loathing.

what I got was a very crappy ugly somewhat pixilated looking terrain.

I tried using Photoshop to clean it up, but it didn't really help much.

Now I have to start over from ground zero...

I'm okay with making grass, I figured out my own way to make it.

This is what I'm having problems with.

I need to make the following types of terrain:

Gravel

Bricks

Marble

Stone

and decent looking walls i guess.

[carlinho]

always remember a texture may look amazing in photoshop but once you downsize it to fit the scale of myth units it may look horribly pixelated

try always using textures that don't pixelate too bad when you zoom in or when small.

[:) Da Cid (: McCl]

Remember also that creative use of the shadow map can help your colour map look much better. For instance, if you wanted to make the ground around a campfire much lighter, the solution isn't to edit the colour map, but to make a big white spot on the shadow map. It doesn't affect indexing at all, and creates the same effect.

Not that I can talk. All the colour maps I make look like balls.
-TGP-

[Eddaweaver]

The best thing for things like gravel, bricks marble and stone is to obtain textures of those and integrate them into your effort rather than trying to make them yourself.

[GizmoHB]

Well mb they way you did it (using the warcraft editor) wasnt such a bad idea, atleast now you know your layout and terrain types you want, which usually is the hard part...

read the grass tutorial on this forum, as a start on how to use textures

then go looking for the ones you need (u might be able to get em from other games, or game resource sites) or 3D related websites

make sure they're scaled properly and not to hard (sharpened, unless this is an effect you're going for, could work for some types of rock for example) and that they're tilable, also using a bit of noise (1,5 to 2,5) on your finished cmap could do miracles and help with the indexing...

...Giz

[Graydon]

As some other guys have said here.... it's best not to attempt to make your own textures unless you're an extremely good digital artist. It's best to leave that type of art to the professional texture artists, and instead download them from a site (I like to use www.limefly.net ..... it has some excellent myth-esque textures) and use your own art skills in photoshop to blend those textures into a terrain you can comfortably look at while playing a game of myth.

Once you've got all your textures you should make seperate layers in photoshop, one for each varient of texture...... if you get fancy, often you'll have multiple types of one texture, like grass.... for the more natural look. You can make something called a Layer Set, and put all your textures of one type into that layer set..... this is just purely for organization.

Once you've got all your textures layed out in their layers, a good method (used by most colourmappers to my knowledge) is to create layer masks..... White is 'on' and black is 'off'.... you can paint your textures and erase your textures, without actually messing with the texture itself. This will make more sense when you play around with it.

That should get you started on your way of making a solid colourmap. If you've got more questions, you know where to come

[vinylrake]

Good places to look are the "grass tutorial" stickied on this forum, and Clem's tutorial (I'm not sure were to find that, but I'm sure vinylrake does).

-DA

Lots of mapmaking articles to be found at the Myth Graveyard [link] - many of which contain basic info about creating colormaps. some more specific than others - the grass tutorials linked above are also mirrored at the myth graveyard.

If you are looking for just colormap articles mb try one of these.

Clem's colormapping Guide [link] (probably the best single color map making guide)

Clem's indexing tiptorial [link] (or why your colormap looks like crap) (not your's personally)

The rest of the colormap making articles can be found here [link] and some other colormap related tips/q&a's (ditto link again) here [link].

ps. the Limefly site appears to be dead.

[Nation]

thanks for the help guys. In case if you wanted to know what the color map i made looked like

well here it is

http://sevengates.cabspace.com/Cmap.bmp

I'm gonna have to do some major modifications to it.

If you wonder what it looked like in warcraft, you can check out the site I made for it.

http://sevengates.cabspace.com/FMWB.html

btw vynal, I downloaded the walkthough on that myth graveyard site, when I unzipped it, it told me the file was corrupted and it couldn't unzip

::edit::

ah but the online pdf sure does work

[carlinho]

hey gray that limefly link goes to nowhere...what's the real link?
it sounds pretty interesting, as myth textures are always more than welcomed!!! hehehe