PDN Map Making Tutorial

Shading Now we are going to add some shading. There are a few ways of doing this. • Quick Shading You can quickly add a layer and use the cloud effect with a low roughness. Make the layer mode overlay and lower the opacity on the layer to make it less extreme. • Manual Shading The manual shading takes much longer but I think that it is also much better. Add a layer and put it in overlay. Now select the paint brush tool. Now shade in the map using just black and white (this should be done with a size 50-25 brush). It will look sloppy. Now blur (Gaussian Blur, Average Blur) it until it looks good (remember that it will be a bit extreme so you will have to lower the opacity of the layer). Texture This is the part of map making that shows the style of the map maker. Here are a few different sites with textures that you can work off of: http://www.texturegear.com/index.html http://texturemaker.deviantart.com/gallery/ http://www.grsites.com/archive/textures/category/5/texture/0/ http://www.textureking.com/ http://mayang.com/textures/ http://www.texturewarehouse.com/gallery/ http://texturez.com/textures/stone?page=1 These textures aren’t the greatest. Sometimes they work but you might want to try some different effects on them. But before you add these to your image you need to resize them to the right size and also make them black and white (I have an adjustment for this). You can also make a ton of textures with different effects. I strongly encourage that you try to make a few textures without any image for help. Once you have finished making your texture you can add it to just one area or many. To pick the area that you want to use the texture for you need to select the color layer. Now use the magic wand (Tolerance 1%) on the areas you want the texture. I normally have a texture for the water, the land and one more that covers the whole image. Now go into your texture layer and click “Delete Selection” (Edit). Make sure the texture is easy on the eyes by adjusting the opacity of the layers. The textures should blend with the map otherwise it stands out too much making the map look sloppy, extremely unrealistic and cheesy.

Territory Circles Here is a territory circle: http://www.dominating12.com//image/site/large_circles/6.png Place one of these in the center of each territory border. Text Fonts are the most important part of the text. Normal fonts are normally easy to find and are good for a map but I have listed all the cursive and cool fonts that I could find on PDN. • Here are some fancy fonts (Cursive): Androgyne (Downloadable) Brush Script MT Brush Script Std Flemish Script BT Freestyle Script Giddy up Std Kunstler Script Lucida Handwriting Mistral Segoe Script Vivaldi Vladimir Script • Here are some cool fonts (good for titles): Algerian Bauhaus 93 Chiller Charlemagne Std Colonna MT Cooper Black Dolphin (Downloadable) Harlow Solid Italic Jokerman - Jokerman Lucida Blackletter Magneto Old English Text MT Ravie Rosewood Std Regular Harrington Kristen ITC Kunstler Script Lithos Pro Regular Lucida Calligraphy Matura MT Script Capitals Monotype Corsiva MV Boli Papyrus Poor Richard Tekton Pro Tekton Pro Cond Tekton Pro Ext Tempus Sans ITC Terminal Trajan Pro Vijaya Viner Hand ITC

• PDN Text Problem The biggest problem with PDN is that you can’t edit your text. This creates a big problem if you want to change the color, size, font or effects of the text. There is an editable text effect but there is a problem with that also. You can only do one editable text on each layer. So if you want to do multiple names than you have to use the “enter” and “space” keys and that still doesn’t fully fix the problem. • Placing Your Text Type in the names of each territory as neatly as you can with the text tool. I prefer making my text white so that the text doesn’t blend into the territory borders but you can use whatever color you want. Make sure you don’t misspell any names otherwise you will have to go back and erase the name and retype it. • Outlines The next biggest problem with PDN is that they do not have a black outline around their text. This makes text hard to read against another image. So we are going to make our on black outline. Once you have finished placing your text you need to duplicate your text layer. Select the lower text layer. Now select the recolor tool and put the tolerance at 100%. Change the brush size to 500. Now select the color of the text and black. Recolor the lower layer’s text to black. Now use the “Gaussian Blur” effect at 2. This should make the text stand out a bit more. If the text looks really dark now than duplicate the white text layer to fix the transparency problem.

Glow Creating a glow is very simple. Make a new layer. Put the mode in overlay. Use the paint brush and paint white around the place you want to glow. Now blur it until it looks good. Keep in mind that you can lower the opacity of the layer. Title & Name Don’t forget to put a title on the map. Your username should also be on the map but a username is not required. Fine Tuning Now you should post your map and see what people think. You will probably have redo various parts of the map for certain reasons. Once you finish fine tuning your map a cartographer or a user with map access will upload your map onto the site. YOUR FINISHED! Congratulations you have finally finished your map! You will receive free premium for a while but you might want to start another because it won’t last forever. Once you make one map people expect more so expect questions like “Can’t wait for your next map, when are you going to post it in the forums?”

Wow pntbttr I am somewhat experienced with paintnet so I can't check it like you wanted but good job it's explanatory and well written. How long did this take you!!!!

I just noticed I forgot the region bonuses...and I saw something like !@#R@#$ before one of my sentences...wonder what that was about

wow great job man. seriously though how long did this take you?

a long time...I started making the tutorials a few months ago I think...Ask leedog when I finished the first version of the how to use PDN...I sent it to him and he told me how to improve it, I didn't like the whole thing so I started over again...

when you say (downloadable) give the link to it cause you can go forever trying to find it! This will give new map makers pause...wow! In Paint.net can you add fonts to your list? I will read more of it later...I see some improvements can be made..some programs you my not know paint.net has, updates. I just skimmed over it ...what a nice starting place... can't wait for pictures to go with it!

I don't really know how to do the pictures with it...

Yeah finding the download for paintnet takes forever

Ask Vexer He can help ...if not to busy...or maybe Fendi...or Matty.

Sorry I forgot the links...I can put them in the finished version... I can email the full version (instead of chunks of it in different forum posts) to anybody that would like to check it...same goes for the how to use PDN tutorial...