Newbie Cartographer - Overwhelmed

[Doom Crow]

Hello everyone! I have been a member here for a little while but I've only read posts and not actually posted anything until now. I have been a D&D player and DM for a long time and so when I decided to create my own world I decided to become an aspiring cartographer. I bought CC3, Fractal Terrains Pro, Dungeon Designer 3 and City Designer Pro last year and have been practicing mainly on Fractal Terrains.

I have viewed a lot of tutorials and have tinkered with the programs for so long I lost track of how many hours I've spent on them. I am still struggling with a lot of the features and have run into many road blocks, but Im not one to give up easily, especially after having made an investment in my campaign setting.

My biggest weaknesses are exporting maps and Importing FT Pro maps into CC3, dealing with some of the visual bugs that pop up in FT Pro, and being satisfied with my results

I'd appreciate any help you fine people may wish to offer when I voice a concern or finally figure out how to export one of my maps to fit the Guild's map posting parameters.

Cheers and thanks for your time!

[Valarian]

The biggest advice I can give is to go through the tutorials in the quick start guides, step by step. There's also the full Cartography suite manual available from the registration page (where you enter your license keys). It's a link down the right hand side. The quick start guide tutorials will introduce the features one by one and allow you to build up a map.

You can ask questions here when you get stuck. There's a few of us using CC3. There's also a Yahoo group cc2-l and the Profantasy forum (http://forum.profantasy.com/)

[Gandwarf]

Welcome.
You watched all the video tutorials for CC3 and DD3? They helped me greatly.
This site also has several tutorials for CC3, DD3 and CD3.

[Steel General]

Welcome Aboard!

[Immolate]

I had Photoshop, but like you, I went out and bought FTP, CC3, DD3, CD3 etc. I knew that you could make a map with Photoshop, just like I know you can build a house with a forest and a jacknife. What I didn't know was that my Photoshop could do many things just as easily, and many things that the other applications couldn't do. So at this point, I either do it all in Photoshop or I use CC3/DD3 as the palette and Photoshop for creating the objects.

I have seem some nice stuff done with CC3, but generally, few of the best maps from CC3 are in the same league as the average map done here. There are a few exceptions of course. Gandwarf does some excellent cities using CD3 and an exhaustive knowledge of the apps capabilities, but those are exceptions.

In the end, you should use what does the best for you, and if you really love the maps that CC3 can produce unassisted, then it would be silly for you to use anything else. In any case, you'll find plenty of support and assistance here and I hope you do.

Good luck and happy mapping!

[Doom Crow]

I've watched the video tutorials for FTP and CC3 only, and I'll need to rewatch them again, the last time I saw them was in December 2008. Thanks for all of the encouragement, I will look into Photoshop as well and see what it will take to get that possibly, but I still want to continue using the ProFantasy software I have.

[Gandwarf]

... but I still want to continue using the ProFantasy software I have.

There's no reason for you not to. I have seen some amazing maps done with CC3.