Drawing cave systems
Sorpaw
Newcomer
There are a lot of problems with cave systems, like backgrounds, fills, multipolies, branching tunnels, establishing visual constrast, etc. Did anyone try this with CC2 Pro? I am looking for someone with experience with doing this in CC2 Pro. My computer will not handle CC3.
Sincerely,
Sorpaw
Sincerely,
Sorpaw
Comments
To add a background, the caves should ideally be polygons, since these can be filled and overlaid the background, which means that you can draw the background as a huge simple rectangle behind the cave system. Otherwise, the background poly would need to follow the outline of your caves, which is a hassle. The drawing tools do have a trace functionality which makes this possible though, enabling you to draw a polygon that precisely follows existing lines in your drawing.
If the caves were drawn with the cave tools, they should already be polygons, so it might be as simple as changing the width of your caves to zero (entities with a zero width are filled entities, entites with a non-zero width have only a filled border the size of the width, and no fill), and optionally changing the fill style to a solid color, then finally add a background behind the caves.
But all of this is just speculations without knowing the details about the entities. Maybe if you were could post your .fcw file here, we could have a closer look at the entities in the map.
The problem is that the lines are not contiguous paths - they are a multitude of invidual lines, with many of them doubled up (double entities). Unfortunately I don't see a way to recover these withiut major effort and make a multipoly out of it. My suggestions is to redraw the caves using proper poylgons (e.g. with the DD3 drawing tools).
~Dogtag
GIMP is a bitmap image manipulation program which is not able to directly import .fcw files, as far as I know. The .fcw file format rather is vector-based, because Campaign Cartographer is more a CAD software, which GIMP is not.
So, in short, I guess if you want to get a map from CC into GIMP, you'll need to export it from CC as a bitmap file (JPEG, PNG, TIF) and then open it as an image in GIMP.
Nils
I have exported it to a .bmp file (which I think that I posted) but manipulating the image seems to be the problem. Opening it does not seem to be an issue. The immediate problem is WHAT THEN? All I want to do is tint the background for contrast purposes. Is there an easy way to do this, that you know of?
Sorpaw
Sorpaw
ok, so I read the whole thread now and I think I understand. ;-)
If you want to modify the background of the map without redrawing the whole thing in CC, you could indeed turn to GIMP (or any other image manipulation program, just as Monsen said in this thread. (Maybe the threads could be combined to avoid double postings?)
As Monsen said over there, you can use the flood fill to change the areas outside of the cave system with a different color or pattern. What I just tried on a small area of the image is to select the background with the magic wand tool (selection based on pixel color) and remove the selection (middle panel - the checker board means that there is nothing there but transparency). I then added a new layer below the cave, and completely filled it with a different color that only shows where the top layer is transparent.
Whatever approach you take, I guess the main part will be to make sure that there are no holes in the walls, as Monsen said, because either flood filling or selecting with the magic wand depends on closed areas. In any case, have a look at the documentation over at the GIMP website, you will find lots of info there.
Nils
I will give it a go and try what you and Monsen mention - I'll let you know how it goes. This is just one of three cave systems in this location (below ground) as well as a manor of at least four floors and full grounds. The grounds are a joy - paths, formal gardens, out buildings, etc.. (think large French or English estate). It has kept me busy updating old plans.
Sorpaw