Hello all

[NeonKnight]

Nope, shouldn't be an issue with lots of clicking.

Possible it looks the way it does dueto scaling issue of the size of the map. Did you apply an effects to the map?

[eleran]

Yes, at the very end I followed the tutorial and applied effects and played with the glow effect for the text. I can email the fcw file if you want.

[NeonKnight]

Yes, at the very end I followed the tutorial and applied effects and played with the glow effect for the text. I can email the fcw file if you want.

That should work. email to:

neonknight@telus.net

[NeonKnight]

OK, I've looked at it, and fix a couple of things. I'll post a message momentarily about what I fixed and how I did it in a few moments

[eleran]

I look forward to it, and thanx again

[NeonKnight]

OK, When I viewed you map and applied the Sheet effects, I was at first saying...it didn't do anything

But then I looked and saw that, AAAAHhhhhhhh, the reason some of the effects did not appear to do anything was:

1. The assests weren't on the sheets I expected them to be on.

2. The default effects are set for a map approximately 10 times larger than your own map.

Also, as I was adjusting the map with the Sheet Effects appropriately, I notice afew othe things on your map. The most important being the forests. Now, this is not a complaint, as this is a learning method here, and I am going to show you one of the coolest things about CC3. When you look at your forest symbols, they are kind of all over. Some that should be behind are on top, etc. The symbols of this particulr CC3 catalog, Isometric, that is, they are not a top down view, but supposed to give the illusion of depth. That said, the symbols at the 'top' should be at the 'back' while the symbols at the 'bottom' should be at the front.

To help in this, when you are laying down the symbols for your mountains, forests, etc, you should start at the top and work your way down. But, if you don't, and you find an area that you missed or want something else in there, amybe half hidden, CC3 has a tool to help you. Under the SYMBOL menu, you will find the option SORT SYMBOLS IN MAP. CLicking on this will allow you to now select symbols, either individually or with a click+drag option. Select the symbols you want to sort, and CC3 will put the symbols at the top to the back, and the symbols at the bottom to front. I made another post about this a while back, and I will locate the thread to show in detail how to do this.

Now, as to your sheet effects.

You could change the light blue coast outline effect and change it from SEA to SEA (CONTOURS) sheet. By doing this, CC3's default CC3 overland effects will apply a slight blur to the sheet, and make it look a little 'cooler'.

The effects for the RIVERS sheet are all unchecked. Check to activate the GLOW effect, and the select edit. Level the strength as 1, but change the radius to a much lower number, like 1. The default of 84 meant the glow radius was SO large, the only way to see it would be zoom out of you map until it was tiny. Play around here to see what looks nice to you. The sheet effects is probably the biggest boon to CC3 over CC2, and makes for some really cool maps.

As to you map's river's appearing 'dashed' it was as I suspected, a scaling inssue because of the JPEG options used to save the map. You made no errors there, and just an unfortunate effect of the computer.

Here is an image of you map with the above mentioned sheet affects appiled

[NeonKnight]

OK, took me a while to find the post

http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...25&postcount=4

That shows in good detail the 'sort symbol' feature of CC3

[eleran]

yeah, the trees got messed up because i decided to make a forest fill the space between desert and mountains, so I put a bunch of forest blocks in, then filled around them with small blocks and individual trees. I didnt even think about the top down thing. I will try your suggestions and repost the result.

[jaerdaph]

Thanx Bryan. I will try that when I resume the tutorial after dinner tonight.

So, just to clarify, if I have a river on my map that I envision as a quarter mile across I want to set the width of the line at 0.25?

Hi eleran!

Glad to see you're enjoying CC3. Your map is looking very good.

I thought I'd mention a few things about scale in CC3 overland maps. First, standard fantasy overland map templates in CC3 don't have any set units. A distance of 1,000 can be 1,000 miles, 1,000 kilometers, 1,000 Klingon kelicams or what ever you desire. Compare this to the dungeon or city map templates that can have units of feet or meters.

Also, the fantasy style maps like the one you are making are not exactly proportional (I think that's the word I want?). A tree symbol with a size of 1.0 is not a 1 mile tall/wide tree - it just looks good on the map at that sizing. So while yes, if you are assuming that a unit of 1.0 in your map is equal to 1 mile, than 0.25 would be a quarter of a mile. But don't worry about being exact, because all the mountain, city, forest etc. symbols you are using are way out of proportion to reality - again, they just "look good" scaled at that size. So use whatever line widths you think "look good" on your map for rivers as well.

CC3 is still a CAD-based program so you can get exact, precision distances if you want them. If you were making a modern style topographic overland map, for example, with contour lines and all that, you would want to exactly map your river width.

I hope this is helpful and makes sense. Glad to have another CC3 user here.

[eleran]

OK, I used Neonknight's advice and changed the effects around and it does look much better. Still not happy with the rivers, but I will keep playing around with it. Will be starting my campaign map today. I am going to starta WIP thread for it.

For some reason it wont attach itself this time. grrrrr