Heya everyone!People keep asking me how I go about making the streets in my battlemaps, and end of last year I said I'd do a little Tutorial about it (and honestly forgot about it in between with the Tower grind, but now want to keep my promise to you!).So here we go!
Since I think it's a bit silly to give you a tutorial but leave the tools behind a pay wall, I've also decided to share my “modular streets” Dungeondraft pack with the community for free (for personal use), so you can try it out for yourself! (Most of the Assets I am using in this Tutorial are from this Pack, so with that one you should be able to create your own street scenes with ease :))
You can download the modular street pack and the free Dungeondraft packs where you can find content I used additionally as an attachment to this post - or find it with my other free Dungeondraft packs on the free part of the a day at cloud in the subfolder “free dungeondraft packs.” With those you should be able to recreate a street like in this tutorial without having to sub to my Patreon :)
I hope this will be useful for you! If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask!In this Tutorial I am using Dungeondraft.
But now let's get to it:
Option 1: Using modular street tiles
If the streets are more of a "side gig" in your map, or if you just have little time and want to create a street in almost no time, I can recommend using my modular street tiles - these are exactly meant for those situations:
[The content from the modular streets content pack are all tagged "[ADA]MODULAR-STREETS_... so you can easily find them inside Dungeondraft (DD)]
The Video is fast forwarded and just meant to give you a little insight into how easy you can place the modular streets tiles, but the overall process of putting those together took only a minute in total.
The result from that minute was that:
The modular streets snap onto the grid and are seamless so you can easily drop them onto the canvas. (Don't forget to turn the object shadow off for seamless results!) The ones in the modular street pack are a bit smaller and meant for low traffic areas or if you don't want to clutter your map with huge streets that take away from your main focus... But with those you have an already somewhat detailled base that you can keep on working on (talking about more street equipment and so on in the Option 2 part of this tutorial).
Sidenote: There are a few bigger modular streets in my very first content pack #1 - a day at the streets (that is completely for free btw and can also be found on the free part of the a day at cloud), those don't have many options and are a bit outdated though but might be a good fit for your use case anyway XD
Well, these modular street tiles might be a good fit for fast and more simple ways to create streets, but might not always fit for what you had in mind for your own scene. That brings us to:
Option 2: creating streets from scratch
For this I am just showing how I personally go about it with my asset packs. I don't think there is really a "wrong" or "right" way to do it but I hope my personal workflow will help you anyways...
So, following showing you the steps I take when I make streets...
[a] sketching (out the general idea):
You don't necessarily need to sketch out your street (or map), but for me personally sketching out the (whole) map beforehand makes the workflow inside Dungeondraft much easier...For that I usually use Affinity and sketch it by hand. But you can easily use any other program or pen and paper and these don't need to be super detailled. You can also just use some rough (vector) shapes to help you define where goes what....
But before sketching I would like to share with you some small "rule of thumb"s:
The more traffic, the bigger and broader the streets are and the more lanes you'll have
The faster the traffic, the bigger the radius for curves (so very urban and slow traffic can have smaller curves while highways will have much wider curves for example)
Narrow lane widths and a more "complicated" road layout is often used to slow down traffic - and vice versa.
Streets in many cities are rarely the same size. For example, you can consider where the main road runs and adjust the street layout accordingly and mix smaller and wider streets depending on the surroundings or add one way streets to mix it up a bit and making it feel less generic.
The surrounding usage (often) defines the street, not the other way around. You could see what uses are taking place around it, and establish parking spaces or change the routing accordingly.
Roads are an important part of the infrastructure for e.g. drainage and sewer pipes underneath. If you integrate drains and manhole covers into the roads, it will intuitively feel more authentic.
Parking in general is a whole other theme and I feel that one deserves it's own tutorial someday, so I won't get into it in detail in this one. But for the sake of completeness I would like to mention the following about parking:
If you want to park somewhere, you need space to maneuver the car. So if the street is only half as wide as the parking space, it becomes difficult. As a rough guide, you can say that the area / street next to the parking space should be about the length of a car.
Current trends tend to favor making cities more pedestrian (and bicycle) -friendly. However, if you design a map in which cars play a completely different role, this will probably be reflected in the streets you create. I think as an european myself I tend to make streets and parking spaces smaller than they probably are in other parts of the world... If you're planning a map where roads play a central role, I can definitely recommend focusing a little more on the road layout during your next walk or car ride. You'll often notice things that you wouldn't normally pay attention to in everyday life. Looking at satellite images of roads that have a similar layout to what you have in mind is also very helpful.
However, in the end you are creating a battlemap for YOUR setting, not planning the new street around the corner, so in the end do what feels right for the use case you want your streets in the map to be...
Well, here is my sketch for the street tutorial map:
It has a 90x15 grid size and I tried to cover some different situations but also didn't want to make it too complicated for this tutorial.
Generally for sketches I recommend using a 100x100 pixel per grid resolution and activating a grid inside your drawing program in that size too so you have that as guideline for the future map grid. In DD you can then import your sketch via settings > trace image - choose your image file > set the size to 2.56 so it has the right size (since one grid in Dungeondraft are 256x256 pixel natively)
[b] Define the main shape of the road with paths
The next step after I imported my sketch is mapping out the main shape of the curves and road layout since it's making all steps after that so much easier:
For that "main frame" I use the "[ADA]STREETS_Curb_2_..." paths from the modular streets pack, but you can easily use other (curb) paths.
You can create smooth curves by holding down Shift on your keyboard.
Sidenote: I like to use the brownish paper texture from the floorplan pack as background image when tracing my sketches for a better overview.
I recommend to make sure that you are happy with the main road layout with this step, because otherwise it will be a lot more work to adjust it later on...
So here's what my map looks like after step b:
It doesn't really feel like a complex street yet (and also isn't one really), but of course it's easier to start smaller and once you have a feel for it, you can venture into more complex forms.
With that as our main shape we can go on to the next step:
[c] Textures (& blending)
First I choose the textures I want to use. When creating streets from scratch I like to mix and match different tarmac textures. I also chose some grass textures for the green island for later on. In case you wonder: for the walkways I will use the pattern tool later on, but more about that in later steps.
So for the streets I use 3 different shades of tarmac from the modular streets pack, a very bright one from the #1 pack, one from the #5 a day at the desert pack and a broken street texture from the #13 a day at the back alley pack (I am afraid this one isn't in one of the free packs though, but it's also not necessary, I just feel like it's giving a bit more "lived in" atmosphere that you can also achieve with the finetuning part later on...)
These many different textures might feel a bit like overkill and later on it won't feel like that many, but the minor different shades can make a good difference later on (although it's not necessary to use that many).
Also I toggle smooth blending on and unlocked more slots, but if you are "on a budet" slot wise you can easily just use 2 tarmac textures (But I recommend using at least 2 so it doesn't feel too "flat")
So, what exactly am I doing here:
First of all I don't follow my own advice and had to add curb paths (oops!)
Then I start with the darkest tone and add the other textures with a transparency on top
The main goal is to break up the pattern of the tarmac a bit and have a general colour that you want to achieve
Then I am starting to do just a little bit of finetuning:
parts of the streets where almost no cars ever drive (so the sides of the streets) get a little darker tone
following the lanes I use a brighter one to highlight the parts of the street where car's are driving often, following the street design I made in my sketch.
when you use less textures we will also break up the pattern a bit in the finetuning step later on
So here is how the map looks right now:
looks a bit strange, but starting to feel like a street with actual traffic...It will get a bit more lively with the next step though:
[d] Street markings
Those really help bring the street design together. For those I use the street lines paths from the modular streets pack.
Our street now looks like this:
Already looking a bit more like an actual street...I decided to go for the orange lines to bring in a bit of colour...
The street line 1_1 path already has dashes if you want to make the process a bit faster. But you can also use the 1_2 line and create your own dashed lines or use it for solid lines.
Now adding signs for a better overview:
You can find the arrows and crosswalks in the [ADA]MODULAR_STREETS_STREET-MARKINGS Tag. To change the direction of the arrows you can mirror them by pressing "a" on your keyboard. For the arrow on the right side I used a path and added a straigt arrow to it.
For a better overview we are now adding the main surrounding patterns and the other textures:
Again, you can create smooth curves by holding down shift when using the pattern tool as well. If you want your sketch to stay visible over the pattern I recommend putting the floor texture on level -100 (Below water). (I used the "[ADA]#13_Pavement 2_1_3" texture for the main surroundings and the "[ADA]#13_Pavement 1_2_1" one for that little island.)For the grass I used textures and paths from the a day at the museum content pack.
With those added the overview where the street starts and ends becomes a bit more obvious:
But also looking a bit more boring XD With the next step we will change that:
[e] Street equipment
With this step we are adding street drains, manholes and street lamps (those can be found in the "[ADA]MODULAR_STREETS__STREET-EQUIPMENT" Tag)
For the sake of the tuorial I didn't go into too much detail on how I place the content so the video isn't getting too long XD
Essentially I am:
adding drains regularly on the side of the road
side note: Roads usually have a very slight slope from the center to the sides so that water can drain to the sides.
adding manhole covers
side note: Ever wondered why they usually appear in pairs and increasingly at intersections? There is usually one shaft for fresh water and one for waste water, and the manhole covers lead to these accordingly. And since the shafts usually run parallel under the road and also cross at intersections, there are often inspection shafts at these crossing points.
adding street lamps at regular intervals (on layer 4)
adding traffic lights for cars and pedestrians, extending them where necessary on wide roads (on layer 4)
adding shadow below the lamps and traffic lights for more depth with the shadow shapes from the shadow 2 pack
Here's what our street map now looks like:
Feeling a bit more alive already right? But we can do better! As last step for the street we do one more:
[f] finetuning
Depending on how "alive" you want your map to look this step isn't really necessary, but especially if you used less textures it is a great way to break up the textures and just add a bit more "aliveness" into it.
For that I use the overlays from the modular street pack and dirt overlays from the #20 - a day at the wrong side of town pack. It is not much but it makes your road feel a bit more used. Depending on how "broken" you want it to look like you can use more or less overlays. The dirt overlays are great to break up the patterns a bit and to add some subtle nuances. Since those are colorable you can change the colour and transparency as needed.
So now our map looks like this:
No huge, but subtle changes... But with those empty surroundings it still looks a bit off... So next one we are taking a look at:
[g] surroundings
For this step essentially I:
added trees and tree shadows (from the desert outpost pack)
added modular roofs for the surroundings buildings (from the a day at the city center pack)
added shadows around the buildings (from the shadow 1 & 2 packs)
added a different texture for the square below
To make the walkways a bit more interesting I then added trash bins, benches, dirt overlays and some variations of the used patterns that include moss. So it looks more natural I use the "Blurred edge pattern" mod:
As final step I am changing the overall atmosphere of the map with ambient light (Hex colour #62776433) and added lights:
It's not a masterpiece, but I hope this tutorial has given you a little insight into how I go about creating streets!
You can download the resulting map as an attachment here from the post.
And here it is again, rotated so you can see the details a little better:
I hope this if of use for you!If you feel like you are missing information to go on / create your own streets please say so that I can add it!
If you have specific themes where you say you could benefit from a tutorial like this one let me know in the comments!
.As always:If you have troubles, suggestions or just want to be up to date - you are always welcome on the a day at Discord Server! Or you can DM me here, on Discord or via mail: [email protected] .
Lot's of fun creating street scenes!Greetings from Ana