The Neighborhood Has Just Gone To The Wolves

[Mouse]

Oh yes - favourite tool in the box is CC3, for me

I like the way it handles roof shading automatically in city maps, and does a pretty good job of actual lighting effects in dungeons... but you have to have City Designer 3 and Dungeon Designer 3 to see both those things in action

I really like the way the architecture has been designed to allow the user to create an entire new style of their own if they wish, and I like the sheet effects, the built in ready made symbols, styles, and textures... pretty much all of it really.

CC3 is a very powerful tool - but then so are a lot of other apps.

For myself I tend to use CC3, GIMP/Krita, Sketchup, Blender, Vue, Genetica, and anything else I can get my hands on - all in combination to get the best of everything

That, to me, is the secret behind getting to be a reasonably good mapper - to be able to control a wide range of tools to make the map in my head come into existence on the screen, rather than allowing myself to be limited by what one app in particular can do for me.


What kind of mapping apps are you thinking of using?

EDIT: wow! Ninjad twice over! LOL! Really must learn to type faster

[twowolves80]

So far, no captcha for anything. Let's see if that trend continues...

Wanna buy my CC3? lol Seriously, I have tried to follow the tutorials, and the only way I can describe the feeling is to compare it to throwing spaghetti at the wall in the rough shape you want something, and hope it sticks and forms everything right the first time. The learning curve is nearly a sheer cliff. I can do everything that CC3 does by hand (and I'll prove it with this first map).

You say the secret to finding a reasonably good mapper--the problem is, I've yet to find one that is intuitive and doesn't allow manipulation the same way as something like Photoshop does. That's because it's vector-based, and vector-based software is 1,324 times more difficult (don't ask how much tax payer money was wasted coming up with that figure) to use as a result, unless you have a strong background in auto-CAD.

Currently, the only mapping app I'm using (just like always, apparently, since it's too much to ask for software to be intuitive--seriously, the Creation Kit is easier to use than CC3! And that's not an easy feat to accomplish!) is my hands and my head.