New cheap gaming mats.

[Morticon]

Hey all. 

So, I'm wanting to make some cheap gaming mats for my club back home - between 10 and 20 of the things.  I've found a place that prints on a really durable material - and while its not as slick, smooth and squishy as the standard neoprene + cloth cover, it really is simple, long lasting and affordable. 

Thing is....how do i get designs to print?! 

Any ideas on what to do for this? 

Thanks! 

[Rik Lightstar]

Satellite views of map areas maybe, they can be really high resolution and you just zoom to the point where you're happy. For Grassland, Plains and Desert you can't get much more authentic than those.

 

Rik

[N1SB]

So, I'm wanting to make some cheap gaming mats for my club back home - between 10 and 20 of the things. I've found a place that prints on a really durable material - and while its not as slick, smooth and squishy as the standard neoprene + cloth cover, it really is simple, long lasting and affordable.

Hey Brother, thanks for asking, and I've some ideas/1st-hand experience related to this and would like to hear from others as well.

Long story short: awhile back I bought some very cheap gaming mats online. The material was basically like a very thin mousepad (the type you could fold in half or roll up). Then we looked at the "battleground" and we could tell it was basically photoshopped from several overhead images of dirt and rocks and grass, blurred together. It wasn't the most hi-res HD image...but that was actually fine because it's just supposed to be the background and not the focus, and was totally functional for its purpose.

Having seen that, I always wanted to make my own 40k ones, just never sat down and did it, so I gave it a try and here's my findings. It's not even a prototype, just a proof of concept:

The image is actually in a 6:4 ratio, like a gaming table, 1728 x 1152 only BUT that's actually what it was like for our mat, and it's just background so doesn't/shouldn't be a sharp image. Took me about 20 minutes to do and actually writing this up will take more time I think. A quick explanation:

1. I sourced some free public domain images of the ground overhead (example: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=13858&picture=cracked-earth-texture )

2. I sourced some free public domain images of grass from overhead (I also used the above link, just searched for grass)

3. I then went to GW/FW sites for a touch of 40k on the background. Could be terrain, but here I used a Tau Flyer, like it crashed into the ground and got covered in sand, etc. I found an overhead image.

4. With those components, I edited them together, in my case using Microsoft Powerpoint, in about 20 minutes.

Just a quick description of what I do with these images in Powerpoint. I adjusted the dimensions of the image in Page Setup 1st to be in a 6:4 ratio, you might want to outright go 72 in x 48 in. Then I basically insert all the images (there's only 3 images here really) and I start mucking around with them like a presentation. The ground image, I stretched it out and added an Artistic Effect. The grass I basically formatted a Soft Edge Picture Effect. The Tau Flyer was a picture from FW, I had to Remove Background then also add a Soft Edge Picture Effect. Played around with it until I got this.

And now that I did it once as a test, it is pretty quick to make. I'm going to ask my friends in my meta (many are school teachers with plenty of printing needs) if there's a similar commercial printing company that can do this and follow your lead.

My question is, has this printing company told you exactly what they need in terms of the image quality, etc.? They'll always ask for more hi-res, but for us we actually don't want it that hi-res because it'll steal attention from our miniatures, the real stars of the show.

[Morticon]

You, sir. Are a HERO!! 

Printing company hasnt asked anything yet! Still in first stages! 

[NiceGuyAdi]

Also go to cgtextures.com. There are tons of textures there, freely downloadable (some are paid), a lot of which are tileable, so you can repeat the pattern without having an unsightly join, and get as high a resolution as you like.

[Panzer]

I was actually thinking about getting some street pieces made so I could turn any desert or forest or similar nature mat into a modular city mat. Still have to find a place to get those done lol

[Morticon]

I was actually thinking about getting some street pieces made so I could turn any desert or forest or similar nature mat into a modular city mat. Still have to find a place to get those done lol

 

Tel me more? 

[Panzer]

 

I was actually thinking about getting some street pieces made so I could turn any desert or forest or similar nature mat into a modular city mat. Still have to find a place to get those done lol

 

 

Tel me more?

What more do you want to know? That's pretty much all I have so far. :D

[Morticon]

 

 

I was actually thinking about getting some street pieces made so I could turn any desert or forest or similar nature mat into a modular city mat. Still have to find a place to get those done lol

 

Tel me more?

What more do you want to know? That's pretty much all I have so far.

 

 

How would you do it? Got any examples? 

 

 

Also, if anyone is interested in sharing ideas of maps, i'm getting some test printed!! So, share away, and ill share the results! 

[Panzer]

 

 

 

I was actually thinking about getting some street pieces made so I could turn any desert or forest or similar nature mat into a modular city mat. Still have to find a place to get those done lol

 

Tel me more?

What more do you want to know? That's pretty much all I have so far.

 

 

How would you do it? Got any examples? 

 

 

Also, if anyone is interested in sharing ideas of maps, i'm getting some test printed!! So, share away, and ill share the results! 

 

 

Basically just small mats with a street motive. A few inches long. Some cross sections as well. Then just put those street section mats on top of the actual mat to build the streets. Put buildings and ruins where no streets are. Et voila modular city map with a different biome depending on the big mat you're using.

That's the idea at least. :D

[Tyriks]

I think FW used to make resin streets like what you're describing. I've been looking for something like that but hadn't thought of tiny battlemats.

[thewarriorhunter]

There was a kickstarter recently for mats. Their pricing was ok but their shipping to the US killed the deal. What they did 'wow' be with was a bunch of 24 x 24 inch mat sections that could be put together. I love the idea of being able to set up a 24 x 48 board for kill team, a 48 x 48 for smaller games or board games, etc.

 

Sine I saw that I've toyed with the idea of having a bunch of 12 x 12 or 24 x 24 mats printed local to me. If the costs made sense I think that a modular game mat would be ideal, at least for me.

[Burni]

I'd never even thought of doing my own mats! I looked it up online and there's a few companies that will print them out on neoprene cheaply (much cheaper than buying a pre-done one anyway).

 

I can easily sort the artwork myself. Might even take a photo of the tread on my AT titans and do some foot prints on the terrain. If I get around to creating it, I'll post the artwork file for others to use.

 

Great idea and good luck with yours!

[Morticon]

I'd never even thought of doing my own mats! I looked it up online and there's a few companies that will print them out on neoprene cheaply (much cheaper than buying a pre-done one anyway).

 

I can easily sort the artwork myself. Might even take a photo of the tread on my AT titans and do some foot prints on the terrain. If I get around to creating it, I'll post the artwork file for others to use.

 

Great idea and good luck with yours!

 

Cheers dude!!!! 

[Claws and Effect]

This is actually a really great idea.

 

At home we generally lay everything out on the living room floor, which gets tedious because we have to measure out and mark the edge of the battlefield with string (taped down so the cats don't bugger off with it midgame).

 

A 6x4 mat we could just unroll for games would be perfect for our purposes, as we wouldn't need big, bulky boards we have no place to store.

[madscuzzy]

GW essentially just photographs the terrain they have already painted with parts cut and pasted.  Taking photos of textures and compositing them is basically what is done.

[N1SB]

Update: got a pic of the actual mat I previously bought, as a sample. I keep it at a friend's place where many of us play. The material is "neoprene", which i previously called a mouse mat material, but it's more well known for being used for stuff like diving wetsuits and stuff. Very strong yet flexible, but has a minor flaw:

I took a pic of a novella I was reading and put it on top of the mat, to compare. The neoprene mat has this weave to it that inherently makes it look grainy. The printing's high quality, but that graininess immediately makes it look like a lower res image than it really is, like when you're trying to zoom into a small image. I show this to point out it actually doesn't have to be a very hi-res image even though you're printing something quite large. There's always going to be that graininess for this sort of material.

But now we zoom out:

Really can't tell from this distance, it's perfectly functional.

I bought this one from China's Amazon, Taobao. It's not a recast or ripoff or anything, it was just made by a frugal gamer for other gamers...as you can tell from the relatively simple but functional photoshop. It was probably about 200 RMB or so. The term they use is "地形毯", "terrain mats". They've actually got some really good ones now for a bit more.

[Morticon]

Cheers mate! The stuff im having done will run at around 80/90 RMB.  So, just need to get some high quality pics.  
 

[Arkhanist]

Cheers mate! The stuff im having done will run at around 80/90 RMB.  So, just need to get some high quality pics.  

 

 

If you want some cheap dark industrial terrain to go on those, there's still 5 hours left in the metro morph kickstarter. It's basically like the original card necromunda terrain, but better :) You can lay it out flat too so it's spacehulk like - would work for roads and building bases on a printed mat if you didn't use them as buildings. It's designed to get put together repeatedly in different configurations.

[Morticon]

For those that are curious, you can check some of the pics of how the gaming mats came out.....

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/353688-ba-dw-tournament-feedback/

[Exilyth]

Some could be scaled a bit differently (the cracked earth and wire mesh ones), but that aside the results are looking great.

 

 

btw.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources

has a load of links to free images.

 

For textures specifically, https://opengameart.org is a great source - just browse -> textures (and limit the license to cc0).

 

 

If I was doing a mat, I'd use gimp, load as layer the textures and then paint around on the alpha channel to do the blending.

[Morticon]

 

 

If I was doing a mat, I'd use gimp, load as layer the textures and then paint around on the alpha channel to do the blending.

 

Sounds amazing! But I dont know what any of that means    

[Exilyth]

Sounds amazing! But I dont know what any of that means    

 

 

The gimp is an open source tool for image manipulation - available for free on https://www.gimp.org/

 

Gimp uses image layers, e.g. you can put background and foreground on different layers and can put single images (e.g. buildings) on separate layers, so you can manipulate them individually without affecting other parts of the image. You can think of this as if you paint on multilple sheets of transparent foil and then put the sheets on top of each other.

By loading images as layers, they become layers in the current image instead of being opened as a new image.

 

Images have a number of color channels (usually 3: R(ed) G(reen) B(lue)), but can also have an alpha channel - which determines the transparency of the pixels. By manipulating only the alpha channel, you can e.g. make a hole into a layer on the top so the layer below can be seen. Using e.g. a rock texture on the bottom with a grass texture on top, you could make holes in the grass texture to let the rock show through. Using brushes with gradients, the transition between opaque and transparent parts can be very smooth.

 

So, you could stack some terrain textures, cut some holes into the upper layers to have different terrain in different places, then place objects like buildings, wrecks, rocks and other stuff above.

 

A big advantage of working with layers is that it gets very easy to e.g. make a winter version of a mat by just replacing terrain textures with snow textures, or replace intact buildings with craters and ruins for "pre orbital bombardment" and "post orbital bombardment" versions. Ofc. just moving stuff around, adding some and removing some to get a different layout with the same terrain is also possible.

[Morticon]

(I appreciate that, thanks!! That was really concisely explained!!)

[Panzer]

And now Morticon understood how Photoshop works. :D