Welcoming Commitee

[Blakjak66]

Greetings Everyone

I just received CC3 and DD3 from Pro Fantasy for Christmas. I've always wanted to try may hand at using software to create all those places I've created in my head. Well the voices up there say I should. Hopefully I will be able to grasp the basics in order to form my questions intelligently. Good Luck to me. I am going to search for tutorial information as one of my first steps. I am glad that this forum exists or I most likely would flounder.

[Gamerprinter]

Welcome Blakjack66! You have found the true path to map enlightenment and nirvana...

I'm kind of a newbie with CC3 as well, but as has been told here by those that know... follow the tutorial in the little start-up guides. If you've never used a CAD app before, it can be a little daunting, however, if you follow the included tutorials you should get up and running fairly quickly.

I'd say DD3 is a bit tougher than CC3, but do the tutorials, get a feel for it, then visit here frequently and post your questions. In a very short time you should be well on your way to creating awesome maps.

Once you get the hang of it, its just learning the whole system overtime to expand on your mapping skills. That's my 2 cents!

[The Cartographist]

Welcome to the Guild, Blakjak. Sounds like a fruitful Christmas--at least cartographically speaking.

This is a great place to learn the trade, ask questions, and talk to people who love mapping.

I'm sure that you'll enjoy your stay.

[NeonKnight]

Welcome. As others said, follow the tutorials. Don;t be discouraged, and you will soon be good at CC3 and DD3. Ask questions, a lot of us here are somewhat pros with those programs.

[ravells]

Good luck with your new software, Blackjak. CC3 is capable of producing some stunning maps. What you can't do with CC3, you can probably use GIMP (which is a free open source version of photoshop) for, and it might be worth learning the two together. Oh, and welcome to our little corner of map-dom!

[Blakjak66]

Thanks Everyone
I am an artist in my own mind. It will be nice to see how this translates to the screen. Is there a method for transferring pen & paper projects into the software via scans?

[RPMiller]

Indeed there is... sort of. You can scan your image and save as a bmp. You then insert the bmp as a background layer and trace over the top of it. I believe there is a section in the Quick start tutorials that walks you through the process. Of course you can also look in the Help topics where you'll find a ton of great information and as the others said, do the tutorials, they really are invaluable.

[NeonKnight]

I forgot I wrote this up: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=896

It is a tutorial on how I convert my Pen-n-Paper maps to CC3/DD3 maps.

You should find this quite useful and helpful.