Dungeon Walls

[NetArc]

Out of curiosity how do you get your dungeon walls to look like good brick-work? (like all vertical walls have horizontal brick lines while all horizontal walls have vertical brick lines like it should)
So far the walls seem the hardest to get to look good trying to do this myself in PS

[CSP Kris]

You mean like these?

www.enworld.org/CrookedStaffProductions/plans8.jpg

If so, then the way I went about it was to draw each brick/stone individually. It's slightly tedious and takes some time, but it gives a reasonable result.

If you wanted a more uniform look (like that of a modern house for example), and are using photoshop, I'd probably draw a basic brickwork grid and then take it from there (i.e. distort the pattern slightly or add some noise and then select the area between the brickwork grid - make a new layer out of that and add a few effects to it using various styles - bevel/emboss for example).

I hope that makes sense.

[NetArc]

I did understand what you meant, thx for that explanation. But I shouldve gave a reference to an example of what I meant.

i95.photobucket.com/albums/l159/csp_kris/rift.jpg

those walls there are cool looking, was curious how you achieved that?

[CSP Kris]

Sorry - I totally misunderstood

In truth, I start all of my images in some basic vector graphics software called 'Greenstreet Draw 4' (it's basically a poor man's version of something like adobe illustrator). I think there is something available for free called inkscape that is similar.

Anyway if you take a look at the following image...
i95.photobucket.com/albums/l159/csp_kris/example01.jpg
...the first image is roughly what I draw with this 'Draw 4' software and then export as a bitmap. If you look carefully you'll see that I have drawn all the lines for the 'wall bricks' with a thin green line. From there I open the image in photoshop and then add all the textures and stuff to make it look pretty (image 2). Then finally I'll add bits of debris etc. (image 3).

However, the whole process of drawing the 'brick lines' is a bit of a chore, and so recently I have just been playing around with the bevel/emboss option on the walls and have come up with something like this instead.
i95.photobucket.com/albums/l159/csp_kris/50_dungeon.jpg

...it's not perfect, but I think it looks somewhat like small irregular stone blocks, and it's a whole lot quicker to draw

[NetArc]

Ahh, I will admit its been interesting to try and get walls to look as good via the bevel & emboss + texture metod. But i do agree that its much faster

Thank you for that helpful explanation, it shall help improve my own tile making

[CSP Kris]

No problem.

If you ever have time to post an example of the style you settle on, then that would be cool.