Playmats Using Actual Heroscape Terrain

[BeardBeyond]

I've been seeing playmats for Heroscape for some time. The community has made some truly lovely mats and there are also a few etsy sellers that make great mats themselves. I love what they've all done with their mats, and I know why we would not want to do what I'm about to propose (Hasbro can be awfully protective with their intellectual property down to even images of them), but I reeeeeally want to make mats that match the aesthetic of the terrain that will go on top of them. I have access to a reasonable quality scanner for any terrain that doesn't have decent scans online. I've sent requests out to a few etsy Playmat sellers and at least one has put forward a willingness to work with me.

Here's the deal, I'm thinking of trying to make a few custom mat designs for Heroscape that use the terrain itself (rather than a placeholder image of grass/water/etc). I know there are already quite a few very viable alternatives, but I'd like the ones I make to more closely match the aesthetic of the tiles that will rest on the mats. Before I invest the time and effort it will take to make these designs, I wanted to reach out to a few individuals who produce such mats and see if they'd be willing to work with me on this endeavor. I am not looking to make money off of the design work I'll do nor do I need any sort of credit, I just want to purchase these mats for myself but am more than willing to let whoever wants to do so sell the mats made from them as they see fit afterwards. I wanted to go with Grass and Road (and Water, but most alternatives for Water are already really close) to start off with and work outward from there (if financially feasible). We could easily add Sand, Rock, Lava Field, Molten Lava, Snow, Ice, Swamp, Swamp Water, Dungeon, Shadow, Asphalt, and Cement (all the official terrain types) as well as various custom terrain types. I am looking to print them 3'x5' if possible (for my specific set-up) but the files for them (once complete) could easily be used to print any smaller size necessary. They will be designed such that they can meet edge to edge and repeat infinitely. I'd like to look into the viability of double sided with different terrain types on each side, but the more I think about it the less likely it is to be worth doing so since the mat designs will maximize their value by having more mats (since they'll be designed to meet edge to edge). With Heroscape's inevitable return next year, there will likely be more people looking into such products than ever before.

Credit to Master Roshi and Muskie. If I had not seen the wonderful work they did on their playmats, I likely would not have taken up this project.

 

[BeardBeyond]

A seller has agreed to work with me and will be sending me the hex grids they use. These are the scans I've got thus far and they will be plenty high quality enough for my purposes. A couple of design decisions going into this I have to decide on are:

-I have 3 tones of snow (some combination of age, material, sets they were released in) so do I go with the bleach white, the off white, or the yellow snow, I'm partial to the bleach white (as it simply looks better) but does the average heroscaper have more of those or the other two? (I know I certainly have less of the bleach white than the other tones). Road has color differentiation too, but there's so much of it that it sort of creates a nifty look. Sand (not scanned yet) is the next most noticeable, but that's an easy pick since the whiter sand doesn't pop as much as the browner sand.

-Do I photoshop out all the points at which the tiles connect or leave them in? This isn't really a big deal either way but will involve quite a bit of effort. I do think it will create a cleaner look, but I may have to do it on a case by case basis as there are plenty of terrain types that mostly have only 1-2 hex variants. (As an example the road spaces look fine using only singles, but the grass spaces look more earthquake-y using anything less than 7-24 hex.)

-Do I go for single sided or double sided? This is a big one because your average Heroscaper won't have this same issue, but I like making living room spanning maps, so if I have say 6 3'x5' maps I can make a much bigger 1 level than I can with 3 double sided (which would also lead to me having to pick and choose which terrain types to use more often).

For the moment I've only got the 3 test scans because I didn't wanna bring a whole bunch of terrain to work and then the scans not look right, but now that I've confirmed that they will look good, I'll be scanning EVERY other terrain type soon to begin design work on playmats.

UPDATE: Added an alt for Road using the larger castle pieces. Added Rock, Sand, Swamp, Lava Field, Concrete, Asphalt, and Snow (though I'm not big on how the mix looks for this one vs Road so I'll likely edit them to all be white). Also added Water, Swamp Water, Lava, and Shadow.

Grass

Rock

Sand

Road

Road Alt

Swamp

Lava Field

Snow

Concrete

Asphalt

Water

Swamp Water

Shadow

Molten Lava

I do not have the sand terrain exclusive to the Magic the Gathering sets but could easily alter one of these scans to pretty much be any color terrain we'd like it to be.

 

[Myriadite]

These look fantastic! I have had a similar desire to scan some tiles for the purpose of playmats, but it has never been more than a passing thought. Really nice samples!

Personally, I like the tile joints on the grass mat, and the varied road tiles look very nice. I am not sure what to say about the snow tiles. If I were to scan them, it might be nice to create a more random layout using both the single and double tiles; see how it looks. Another option, if possible, is to scan a field of 7-hexed concrete pieces (from the Marvel set), and then turn them white using Photoshop.

I am curious if one double-sided playmat would work out cheaper than two single-sided playmats. I expect single-sided would be more practical to own.

 

[BeardBeyond]

Ice is a more complex matter (since there's the choice of what to put under it). It (along with the other 0 height tiles) also takes a lot more effort to scan since I have to build it upside-down on the scanner (most 1 height tiles I can pre-build and just flip). As the other 0 height tiles aren't see through, I got a nice variety on scanning what was placed behind the ice (so that I won't have to do it again). I'm personally partial to Ice + Water, but here are my results.

Just Ice

Just Ice Alt

Ice Water

Ice Snow

Ice Grass

Ice Rock

Ice Sand

Ice Dungeon

Ice Road

Ice Asphalt

I do intend to edit the holes (along with any misc. debris) out and convert any of the cracks where the tiles meet that appear darker to be more consistent with most of the rest that appear in an icy blue.

 

[BeardBeyond]

Since the scanner I'm using is not quite big enough to capture a whole 24 hex with a standard repeating pattern, I've scanned 24 hexes individually (surrounded by as many other 24 hexes as would fit on the scanner). For these it's not important that the ones surrounding the center 24 hex be the same type so long as the color of the connecting parts match (since this will only be used if I decide to keep the cracks in between connecting hexes in). I'm only uploading these for others' purposes, because I'm pretty sure I intend to edit the cracks out, but others may like to use these scans to create a consistent 24 hex repeating pattern. If this is something anyone is interested in let me know, it would not take much work for me to digitally edit 24 hex Sand, Snow, Road, Lava Field, etc repeating patterns if that would somehow be helpful.

Grass 24 Hex Centered

Rock 24 Hex Centered

Dungeon 24 Hex Centered

 

[BeardBeyond]

Thanks for your input and kind words Myriadite! Haven't had quite enough time to get them all in, but concrete will be next and once I start on digital design work I'll try a few methods of generating consistently colored snow (making tiles white is a lot easier than most of the rest of the stuff I'm gonna try doing). My water tiles have a similar problem, but I have so many of them that it was easy to cover the entire scanner with just the bright blue (non yellowed) ones and still have some left over.

I believe one of the other two scapers I mentioned as inspiration had info in their thread that indicated it was actually more expensive to go with double sided than it was to simply make 2 single sided mats; but I think that all comes down to the seller/producer. Regardless, even if it somehow ends up a bit cheaper to go double sided, I'm still gonna lean towards one sided because I love huge maps (and this opens up the possibility of even bigger maps if we can walk on the playmat parts).

P.S. For anyone hoping (unfortunately) I traded my sparkling waters a loooong time ago as they stood out like a sore thumb vs the rest of my water, so I won't be making scans of sparkling water.

 

[Sherman Davies]

Good luck with this project - asphalt mats would be great!

 

[Myriadite]

This reminds me of @Scaperuncle's terrain creation tutorial (link). It would be pretty neat to use these high-resolution scans for printed terrain.

 

[Muskie]

I've been seeing playmats for Heroscape for some time. The community has made some truly lovely mats and there are also a few etsy sellers that make great mats themselves. I love what they've all done with their mats, and I know why we would not want to do what I'm about to propose (Hasbro can be awfully protective with their intellectual property down to even images of them), but I reeeeeally want to make mats that match the aesthetic of the terrain that will go on top of them. I have access to a reasonable quality scanner for any terrain that doesn't have decent scans online. I've sent requests out to a few etsy Playmat sellers and at least one has put forward a willingness to work with me.

Here's the deal, I'm thinking of trying to make a few custom mat designs for Heroscape that use the terrain itself (rather than a placeholder image of grass/water/etc). I know there are already quite a few very viable alternatives, but I'd like the ones I make to more closely match the aesthetic of the tiles that will rest on the mats. Before I invest the time and effort it will take to make these designs, I wanted to reach out to a few individuals who produce such mats and see if they'd be willing to work with me on this endeavor. I am not looking to make money off of the design work I'll do nor do I need any sort of credit, I just want to purchase these mats for myself but am more than willing to let whoever wants to do so sell the mats made from them as they see fit afterwards. I wanted to go with Grass and Road (and Water, but most alternatives for Water are already really close) to start off with and work outward from there (if financially feasible). We could easily add Sand, Rock, Lava Field, Molten Lava, Snow, Ice, Swamp, Swamp Water, Dungeon, Shadow, Asphalt, and Cement (all the official terrain types) as well as various custom terrain types. I am looking to print them 3'x5' if possible (for my specific set-up) but the files for them (once complete) could easily be used to print any smaller size necessary. They will be designed such that they can meet edge to edge and repeat infinitely. I'd like to look into the viability of double sided with different terrain types on each side, but the more I think about it the less likely it is to be worth doing so since the mat designs will maximize their value by having more mats (since they'll be designed to meet edge to edge). With Heroscape's inevitable return next year, there will likely be more people looking into such products than ever before.

Credit to Master Roshi and Muskie. If I had not seen the wonderful work they did on their playmats, I likely would not have taken up this project.

One problem that I had to overcome when making the maps orientation. I originally was making 2x3 maps, but quickly realized that maps can go either direction. I ended up making them square so it would work.

 

[BeardBeyond]

Yes, I did test scans in both orientations to see which would ultimately be better with consideration to the fact that most tables would be longer than they are wide. Mine in particular is 3' x 5' so I would like to fill it with a single mat (as it's just 1 ft shy of allowing two 3'x3' playmats.) With the way I intend to design them, the repeatable pattern will be able to be printed in any size and shape (square, rectangle, circular, hexagonal, etc) but I am only going to try to make it so that sides align with the print size I intend (as bleed and minor print differences will already make it unlikely they will align exactly). It's not a huge deal because I can simply cover where they meet with terrain, but I'd still like them to be as close as possible. I've got some test paper prints done already (and they look fantastic) I just haven't had the chance to set some terrain up on top of them to show the results.

 

[BeardBeyond]

This reminds me of @Scaperuncle's terrain creation tutorial (link). It would be pretty neat to use these high-resolution scans for printed terrain.

Everyone is welcome to use my scans however they'd like, I'd even encourage people to post pictures of their results here to show how they can be used!

 

[BeardBeyond]

They aren't exactly the right size yet (I have to print out more prototypes and make minor scale adjustments with the actual terrain) but I've got the repeating pattern down now (which should make it easier to reiterate on with most terrain types). I don't know that I'll continue to produce both a with cracks and without cracks version (as it takes twice the effort). I'll more than likely make all 1 height terrain without cracks and all 0 height terrain with cracks.

Grass:

Rock:

Sand:

Pardon the compression, the actual file is much bigger/higher resolution.

 

[Myriadite]

Again, these look really good! The seamless version is very impressive!

 

[Master Roshi]

Very cool!

 

[BeardBeyond]

Here's where the 0 height Terrain Spreads will go:

Sorry again for the low res; imgur limits file sizes but the actual file is much larger/higher res.

 

[BeardBeyond]

Higher Quality Smaller Scale Samples:

 

[BeardBeyond]

Just got laid off from the job I've been at for 8 years (which is where I would do most of my custom work in my free time) so I'm not sure how I will proceed from here. Chances are whatever new job I find will not exactly bolster the same favorable condition for such hobbies, but only time will tell. If anyone would like access to the files themselves just message me and I'll see what we can do. I did still end up producing 24 hex version of all non zero height terrain types pictured in my samples above (except road as it simply looks better like this to me) but it is unlikely I'll get around to posting them any time soon.

Terrain Types Unfinished: Sparkling Water, Swamp, Swamp Water, Shadow, AotP Sand

 

[itsbuzzi]

Very interesting work. I really love the seamless design and upon looking at them not sure if a carrier with the design printed on it would be of use.

When I bring maps places I bring cardboard to carry them on, would be neat if the cardboard was reuseable and had a design on it, more for esthetic purposes and less useful in that manner.

Thinking of work I only really have access to a copy scanner and a plotter for just large paper sheets, nothing that would be of use to you but it did help me produce the high quality card scans I boast in my signature below.

Would be neat to have this project get finalized in some manner. Great work!