caeora
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Dungeondraft Pack Updates
🕑 Added 2021-10-25 17:31:33 +0000 UTCHello all!
Not exactly a content post today but hopefully one that is quite exciting to those of you using my assets with Dungeondraft! I’ve had a few comments over the last few months asking why my assets are blurry in DD and I wanted to both address those questions and fix the packs to some degree.
Now when I make my assets I make them to my own standard of size, I don’t draw my assets for DD specifically, it has its own standard of what an asset size should be and what a finished map should look like, but I do things differently. Each asset I draw is drawn on a 110-pixel square grid and made to look good at that scale. Why did I pick that as standard? Well for a few reasons:
110 pixels for me, is a great scale to view a large chunk of a battlemap (100 is easy to remember and +10 for extra detail) and play on it during a typical TTRPG game. To put that in perspective below is one of my maps with the 110pixel grid at 100% zoom. None of the details are blurry and the map has space for multiple tokens for an encounter. You would probably even play most encounters, even more zoomed out than this to see ranged attackers and work out the distance for ranged attacks etc.
Now if we look at Dungeondraft you can zoom all the way to the scale below.
As you can see, you can maybe see about 6 squares of the battlemap when zoomed in this close. I would argue that no one actually plays at that level of zoom in any virtual tabletop. Maybe if you were trying to show off hidden objects on a custom map, but during an encounter, space and positioning is important, you need to see where the enemy is, where you can move to and so on. So from a player/user perspective, I don’t think DD has a great handle on how people actually play in a virtual space.
With those thoughts aside you could also argue that having as much detail as possible is preferable, detail is nice and battlemaps look better with more detail right? but as an artist, there are also several downsides.
Drawing super high res assets would take much longer to start with. My style of artwork already takes quite some time to finish anyway as I don’t use textures or premade artwork, I hand draw the line art, and then hand colour every piece, adding texture with my pen. If I increased the detail or pixel size standard it would mean each pack takes longer to make and I wouldn’t be able to make as many assets for each pack, which is not great.
Another major downside is that more detailed assets = larger files, and larger files load more slowly over slower internet connections. While that may improve in the future for everyone hopefully. It’s still nice to use smaller files for faster scene loading.
Finally, and perhaps the most personal point, I think my assets and tokens look great precisely because of how I draw them and for many years I’ve struggled to find a consistent look. It’s only relatively recently (within the last year or so) that everything has fallen under a certain standard of quality and I’m very happy with how everything looks and works together.
New Additions!
So with that out of the way, I understand that not everyone is going to agree with my opinions on this matter and that is totally fine!
This is why I played around a bit with the assets (Below: Middle is the original asset, on the right is the sharpened asset and the left asset has sharpened edges) and used sharpen in PSD to make the tokens look just that little bit less blurry when zoomed in. This looks pretty good in Dungeondrafft and fixing some of the issues people have been asking me about.
So as soon as this pack goes live, all the previous packs have been updated on the Patreon. You can grab those new files right now. These new downloads include a lovely readme file that explains how to use the pack, what’s included etc. The new packs also have a new sharpened option to use in DD for those that do want extra detail when zooming in!
New packs will include this feature as well :)
So despite my own thoughts and opinions, I do think It’s important to offer as many options as I can to people using my work to make their own maps!
So have fun, let me know what you think (also let me know if I broke anything) and I hope everyone has a great day! :) <3
~Caeora
PS: Here are the links to all the current packs below!
Comments
LOVE YOUR STUFF!!!! any chance we could have your map assets for dungeondraft?
Josh Chunick
"Manipulation at higher zoom levels has nothing to do with the resolution of the assets." While I agree with you here (remember, 25 years working in Photoshop), I have to say that in reality people believe it does. It seems that's the crux of the issue, as you've described it and as I've understood it is: "People feel that when they zoom in to your assets in DD that they look blurry." (please, correct me if I'm wrong; I accept that I could very well be misunderstanding it). I have had to discuss this very issue, many times, to both users of DD and Wonderdraft about how things can look blurry when zooming in and why that is. However, when you transfer users' experiences to "I don’t think DD has a great handle on how people actually play in a virtual space." that's where I disagree because it seems rather self-evident how DD functions as a software program that allows people to make encounter maps for various output devices, be them VTTs, 4K TVs or print, all of which have different ppi's, ie. roll20 defaults to 70ppi, Foundry is best at around 140ppi (IMO), HD TVs range from 80ppi to 180ppi, and print is up to 300ppi. So, setting it to be 1" = 256ppi to cover virtually all output cases seems to me to be rather reasonable.
James Long
Mmm.. Just FYI: VTT maps SHOULD be at about 140-150PPI. That keeps file sizes down, but allows the players to zoom in once or twice to see more detail with a minimum of blurriness or visual artifacts. VTT top-down tokens should be at 200-250DPI. There's no sense going overboard, but since the token is the players center of attention for most of the game, there's no harm in allowing it to have sharper detail. Print maps should be at 300DPI. That will allow tabletop play, and everything will be perfectly sharp. Those people who invest in large format printers can occasionally make use of 600PPI maps, but the rest of us will never need them. Don't forget, today's screens are getting exponentially better and bigger over time. Roll20 moving to 72dpi is completely idiotic. That's ensuring that your digital assets are virtually useless when they're brand new. In just the last few years we've gone from HD to VHD to 4k to 8k to...? You get the idea. Expect people TODAY to be using your maps on a HD 19" laptop screen. Don't be surprised when they report using them on a 43" tabletop VTT monitor. Also, kindly label anyone claiming that the term PPI is outmoded as a heretic or a lunatic. They are out there, and they make about as much sense as you would imagine. KISS. Just keep everything on a 1" = 5 feet basis. 35 years of backup assets to use don't lie. ;)
I just appreciate you providing DD packs. I’ve figured out how to make them myself, but when you provide them it makes my life easier I haven’t had many issues with “fuzziness”, but I appreciate the accommodations. I became a backer because you put out good art in DD format. Keep it up and don’t let the haters get you down!
Caeora
While I see where you’re coming from and print is something to consider as well, I disagree completely regarding DD's ability to print. Unless you are using a different 5ft grid = 1-inch scale to print your maps which is the standard for most TTRPG's, you won’t see any noticeable difference at all between one of my maps/assets printed onto a piece of high-quality paper, or one from DD. Manipulation at higher zoom levels has nothing to do with the resolution of the assets, you can manipulate my assets in PS or DD just fine when they are slightly pixelated. It’s the result at the end that matters.
Josh Chunick
It's great to see support for Dungeondraft, so thanks for your extra work in supporting it. However, I'd like to point out a misconception: "Now if we look at Dungeondraft you can zoom all the way to the scale below... So from a player/user perspective, I don’t think DD has a great handle on how people actually play in a virtual space." <-- this is not the reason why you can zoom in 800%. It's a tool for creating encounter maps for both VTTs and for printing. It uses a base of 256ppi per grid square so the resolution is at print quality for printing high resolution maps. For digital maps that are, say, displayed in a VTT or on a monitor inserted into a gaming table, well you certainly don't need all that resolution and DD specifically has export options for displays that reflect this. Zooming in to 800% also allows people creating encounter maps to manipulate things with a high degree of precision. Take Photoshop, for instance, which allows you to zoom in 12800%... when compared to that, DD doesn't even hold a candle to it. Now, I've been using Photoshop for over 25 years and I don't think I've ever zoomed in much beyond 800% myself so that's a good zoom value in my books.
