15 - [Inner] The Ward of Erahum [Mouse]

[Mouse]

Straf is correct about reserving enough system memory. Allocating too much RAM to GIMP will slow down your entire system, including GIMP. So it would basically be a lose-lose-scenario. I once read about using approximately 1/4 of memory to GIMP to be on the safe side, but that was ages ago. I'm currently using 2/3 (so 2 GB of my whopping 3 GB) and it seems to be alright. But then again, I'm on Linux and I don't use that many applications at once. If I were you, I'd start with using 2 of your 4 GB for GIMP and see how it goes.

Rongar! I missed you with all the guys talking tech!

Thanks for all your help and support

All this memory allocation stuff is confusing for me, since CC3 (my main mapping tool) is very economic with system resources. I think it uses far less than half my RAM, and only 1-2 processors, even though I can work on a map that is infinitely bigger than the GIMP or Krita versions without any upset. I think it has something to do with the fact that CC3 only references the graphic source files, rather than actually importing them.

GIMP is coping well now I've made a very slight adjustment to the balance. Krita seems to be far too hungry for power, so I probably won't use it for anything other than tiny maps or for making new symbols now.

[Redrobes]

How did the PSU blow up and how did it fry the HHD's? Did it surge the power to them when it fried? That sounds expensive.

I was sat there then BANG and the magic smoke that makes the elves work so hard came out and then the elves went on strike. Even when I housed those striking elves in a new facility they didnt want to go back to work. And yes, hiring some more elves was quite expensive. But they were quite old so I found some younger ones who were willing to work hard so long as I provided them with a cold bath.

LOL! I've never had the money to have more than one functioning PC before now, and something similar happened to my last desktop. The cooling fan failed when I was sleeping through an 18 hour render of a Blender animation scene. I too had smoke, and nearly set the flat on fire!EDIT: As for the current situation with data storage, I might reconsider the suspicious regard with which I view all Cloud arrangements, since that would be the most permanent way of protecting it (even if its not the most secure) I will see about putting it into action later today

You can get a raspberry pi for £4 now. Alright, you need a keyboard and some leads and maybe a monitor if you dont have a TV compatible etc but thats pretty cool. I have been buiding up a couple this year and last. Ok I dont think they would work with Gimp on a large map all that well and I would not recommend them for a laptop / desktop replacement for any number of reasons but they are cool bits of kit. I have been porting my app to linux and I have run my dice app on them ok, VDale has a ways to go but it runs under wine ok but you need the desktop environment for that. But more generally, PC prices have come down to amazingly low levels and the memory prices per Gig is really low. I think its only the Windows bloat that means you need a 16Gb ram machine or whatever. 4Gb should be enough for most things as a 16K pixel square image uncompressed is 1Gb. But other people seem to do things differently to me so YMMV.

Encrypt your zip file and load it to dropbox and you will be fine. No security issues then. I personally dont use cloud storage either but if I was stuck and needed to back up data that is what I would do.

[Redrobes]

All this memory allocation stuff is confusing for me..,I think it has something to do with the fact that CC3 only references the graphic source files, rather than actually importing them.

I think CC3 works the same as my app. There is no giant bitmap which is holding all of the map. The tokens are bitmapped so it has to load them in but every time it uses one its referencing the single copy of it. I expect that CC3 draws the screen update from scratch instead of rendering a section of a bitmap like Gimp.

[Mouse]

You can get a raspberry pi for £4 now. Alright, you need a keyboard and some leads and maybe a monitor if you dont have a TV compatible etc but thats pretty cool. I have been buiding up a couple this year and last. Ok I dont think they would work with Gimp on a large map all that well and I would not recommend them for a laptop / desktop replacement for any number of reasons but they are cool bits of kit. I have been porting my app to linux and I have run my dice app on them ok, VDale has a ways to go but it runs under wine ok but you need the desktop environment for that. But more generally, PC prices have come down to amazingly low levels and the memory prices per Gig is really low. I think its only the Windows bloat that means you need a 16Gb ram machine or whatever. 4Gb should be enough for most things as a 16K pixel square image uncompressed is 1Gb. But other people seem to do things differently to me so YMMV.

Encrypt your zip file and load it to dropbox and you will be fine. No security issues then. I personally dont use cloud storage either but if I was stuck and needed to back up data that is what I would do.

I always thought a raspberry [and apple] pie was something mum made for Sunday dinner dessert! Never heard of them before in the PC sense. I will have a look at that page and see if I reckon I need to splash out a bit

Thanks for the tip on using Clouds

I think CC3 works the same as my app. There is no giant bitmap which is holding all of the map. The tokens are bitmapped so it has to load them in but every time it uses one its referencing the single copy of it. I expect that CC3 draws the screen update from scratch instead of rendering a section of a bitmap like Gimp.

CC3+ has a FastCAD heart, and FastCAD (as I understand it) is like a lightweight but very powerful version of AutoCAD. I've no idea if the adaptation of referencing bitmap files rather than importing them was something FastCAD did anyway, or something that Profantasy made it do.

[Southern Crane]

Thanks Red

You are definitely right about the lack of contrast problem. I've seen it for what it is now that I've come back to upload the next experiment



Thanks Kacey

LOL! The more I look at it the more I reckon I was subconsciously thinking of District 59...

I've been messing around with the idea of drawing everything again, and I totally agree about the trees. The more I look at the last post, and compare it with experiment 3 (below), the more I go off the idea of doing it that way (experiment 2 above)... but it will take me forever to do it as an actual drawing like below (I know - what the heck do I think everyone else is having to do?!)

I'm a CC3 mapper - everything I do is supposed to be fast



Thanks THW

It was your lovely cliffs that made me restless about the bevel I was using before this - made me start to really think about how I was going to make it look better.

I've been working on another alternative since the one above....

This is experiment 3:

Attachment 92360

I got carried away with it, and completely failed to notice that it was totally out of scale. Those crags are tiny in comparison with the 12 foot road. I really should be ashamed to show this, but I need to know if I do it again (but larger) would this look a bit better?

Thanks all of you for taking the time to look at and analyse Experiment 2 for me - I'm really grateful for your help

Really enjoy this shading and very inspirational. I keep going back to scratch to make everything myself but I am not nearly this good at cliff making.

[Mouse]

Thanks Southern Crane

I'm not really that good at it either, as it turns out - that was a pure fluke!

I've been working and working on the base map in GIMP, and apart from crashing GIMP several times (yes, guys - GIMP is more crashy than anything CC3 has ever done to me) all I've been able to produce is this, which isn't anything like the last test piece.

There's no relief shading or shadows on this piece yet, though, so it may improve significantly when I figure that out

### Latest WIP ###

Errahum_05.JPG

The other thing - the long grass texture is way too big here, but most of that will be covered with city and trees, and anything that's left shouldn't look too bad. The reason I got it so wrong was because I created the texture sheets that I used in GIMP by exporting rendered areas from CC3 and importing them into GIMP to work with. I will do better next time

[johnvanvliet]

Crash ???

even on my old almost antique 16/17 year old Pentium 4 box gimp almost NEVER crashed , even on MicroBpeep's XP
and has NEVER !!!!!! on my newer 5 year old computer

Gimp 2.6 and 2.8 have never once crashed

now a few times I( all me ) forced a hard kill do to something taking more time than i had

Now on a windows operating system i DO expect windows explorer( the desktop manager) CRASHING once or twice EVERY DAY

as to shading , are those plateaus and mesas ?

they are a bit easier than mountains

[Mouse]

Well... it crashed. Twice in the last 5 hours, and at about the same point each time. Mind you, each layer was about 3 GB

The thing is, that what I've done so far is actually doable in CC3+ - all except the highly variable fading of the stone through to the grass, and none of it would have crashed CC3+

I'm trying some extremely rough shadows drawn directly onto the GIMP background in CC3+ here:

Shadow sample.jpg

Those are plateaus and mesas - mesas where the edges of several levels of plateau coincide

[Rongar]

Good morning!

It's early and I'm just about to finish my first cup of coffee, so whatever I say right now can be affected by morning dumbness, but ... 3 GB per layer? What the heck, lol. That doesn't sound right, to be honest. Maybe the whole project is 3 GB? I usually import textures worth 3-5 mb and that's what I'd consider pretty huge already. 3 GB would be pure madness. I think a project roughly the size of 9000x9500 (that was about the resolution you were working at, right?) with just a few layers (10-20?) can be roundabout 3 GB big, at least that's what GIMP tells you. The actual .xcf-file would probably be about 800mb.

Anyway, the texture blending of the grassy areas looks good, the transition from grassy to stone seems a bit abrupt, though. If you're working with a layer mask (and I know there's nothing you love more than layer masks ), you can select the mask and apply a gaussian blur to make it blend more seamlessly. Or you can use the smudge tool and "blur" the transitions by hand, which allows for more freedom. The stone texture looks like it's set to overlay, by the way, which kind of corrupts your line work. If the line work is on a separate layer with an alpha channel (meaning the layer consists only of the line work and nothing else), you can move the layer above the overlay layer and it should be solid black again.

[Mouse]

Hey Did I forget to say that I am... completely and genuinely... totally mad?

not quite 3 GB.jpg

Note the 2.6 GB down at the bottom for just one layer. And this is the trimmed down version I created after the previous version crashed. I had to give up with the 7 layer version!

EDIT: I haven't shaded it yet, but the abrupt edges are cliffs. I have been staring at loads of satellite imagery of a karst area in southern France. The vegetation goes nearly but not quite up to the edge most of the time, but the cliffs are visible by the emergence of the stone, and then the abrupt edge of that stone. I'm hoping to improve on everything as I continue to work on it - once I've got the hang of NOT crashing it! LOL!

Thanks for the tip with the Gaussian blur. I shall try that when I need it. All this is still whirling around in my head at the moment - trying to find a place to settle among all the other bits and things of 50 years learning

The actual file is 800 MB. The one that kept crashing was 2.6 GB

Oh yes! Good morning to you too! (Though I've been up all night trying to master this, and will be going for a nap soon