Line artifact won't go away

Hi all,

I've worked my way through the exercises in the "My First Map" section of the manual, and now I've set out to do my own first map. I decided to start relatively small, with a 100 x 80 map, and created it as a brand new map using the steps in the manual. I've only done the landmasses so far, because something odd occurred I wanted to ask about. Below is a .PNG of the map, and I've attached the CC3+ file.

Ardea Coast

If you look at the southern shore of the large bay, you'll see a straight light blue line. This is the line of the coast as I originally drew it. I wanted to practice with the Edit function, so I edited that portion of coast into the path it now follows. But, that blue line stayed there, cutting straight across. If I draw a Zoom Window on that area, the line vanishes, but it always comes back after I click Zoom Extents. Redraw does not make it go away, and shutting down CC3+ and reopening the map doesn't help either.

Is this some sort of bug, or did I miss a step I should have followed?

Thanks in advance.

Comments

  • seycyrusseycyrus Traveler
    edited February 2015
    Not much help, but I noticed that this artifact shows up on the "coastline" sheet. Hide that sheet and it goes away. Maybe re-draw the coastline?
  • Or I might be able to erase that section on the coastline sheet. Thanks. I'll give it a try.
  • I'll take a look tonight if nobody else does, and try to fix it for you.

    If successful I'll let you know what the problem was.
  • More info for those debugging...

    After digging around in this map and trying a number of different approaches, I think the problem is with the Fill Style. If you redraw the coastal outline and apply the Color 70 and a line-width of 0.10000, you get pretty close to the other islands. As soon as you apply the "water lightest bitmap" fill, the artifacts return.

    By removing the coastline and redrawing the outline and then changing the color and line-width, I can completely remove the artifact.. However, each time I apply that bitmap, the "artifact" returns. Another interesting tidbit: Nodes 58 and 59 of the large landmasses coastline are "off" with regard to their coordinates in comparison to the coordinates of the nodes 57 and 60.

    For those who don't know how to find the nodes, you use the INFO > LIST menu item:

    1. Select "List" from the "INFO" menu.
    2. Click the coastline of the large land mass. Make sure you only pick up "2 entities".
    3. Right-click. Do it.
    4. You should see an info listing for two entities. Scroll down to the second entity. Take note of the Entity Tag. It should be #10052. While you are looking at the info list, take a look at Nodes 58 and 59. Notice how the coordinates of those nodes are way out of sync with the rest of your nodes. Not sure how it happened, but I'm pretty sure that is why you are seeing these artifacts.

    Now we want to remove the problem coast line:

    1. Click the "Erase" button.
    2. Right-click. More > Entity Tag #.
    3. Type 10052. Enter.
    4. Right-click. Do it.
    5. Redraw.

    Your coast-line and your artifact should now be gone.

    Now we want to add back in the coast-line. I took the approach of first outlining the coast, and then changing the properties of the outline:

    1. Click the "Outline in Black" button.
    2. Select the large land-mass.
    3. Right-click. Do it.

    Your coast-line is now restored in black. So far so good.

    Now we need to adjust the properties of the coast-line.

    1. Select "List" from the "INFO" menu.
    2. Click the coastline of the large land mass. Make sure you only pick up "2 entities".
    3. Right-click. Do it.
    4. You get an Info List again. Scroll down to the second entity. Take note of the Entity Tag.
    5. Click the "Change Properties" button.
    6. Right-click. More > Entity Tag #.
    7. Type the Entity Tag # from step 4 and hit Enter. 1 entity, the black coastline, should now be selected.
    8. Right-click. Do it. The Change Properties dialog should be presented.
    9. Click the box by line-width and change the line-width to 0.10000
    10. Click the box by Color and type 70 in the box.
    11. Click "OK".

    You now have a coast-line in the appropriate color. Everything *looks* correct. If you can live with this, you are done.

    The reason I say that the coast-line only looks correct is because it is actually put together a bit differently than the smaller islands which use both the color technique above *and* the bitmap fill.

    -------------------------------
    R A Jacobs
    Learning CC3+ @ Funny-Shaped Dice
  • Dang it. Close but no cigar. The bitmap fill is needed to fill in the line...if you zoom in on the coastline, there is a problem with the technique I use above...will keep digging...

    -------------------------------
    R A Jacobs
    Learning CC3+ @ Funny-Shaped Dice
  • Hi,

    Those kind of lines sometimes appear when you use a line width greater than 0 and the line segments make very sharp angles.

    This is howerver not the case here and I really can't tell what the trouble really is, apart that depending on the zoom level, the line appears/vanishes.

    I exploded your coastlines (the big island and the small one top left also had such a line each, at least on my system), and I closed them again bit by bit. The map looks clean now on my system but is it the same for you?

    I think it comes from the order the line segments are added to the path but why?
  • Sorry, I can't provide any more help than the others already have.

    I hope Joachim's file fixes the problem for you, on my system it fixes the original line that you posted about, but I actually still get two lines on the larger island .

    Weird...
  • Posted By: RaikoI actually still get two lines on the larger island .
    Did you open the file with CC3 or CC3+?

    Funny thing, with CC3 I have no lines, with CC3+ I have lines...
  • Posted By: Joachim de RavenbelDid you open the file with CC3 or CC3+?
    CC3+

    Barliman's original file actually crashed CC3 (not plus) on my laptop every time I tried openning it. Your file opens in CC3 though.

    On CC3 I still get the top line on the island, but not the bottom one!
  • edited February 2015
    Posted By: RaikoBarliman's original file actually crashed CC3
    Same here. I hade to launch CC3 first an then open the file. Very weird...
  • Well, first I want to thank all of you for digging into this! If I have time tomorrow, I'm going to play with this some more. One thing I'll note: I tried a simple erase command, but I could not select that straight line across the southern shore of the big bay. I kept getting "entities selected [0]" and the option to draw a selection rectangle. I had no problem selecting any of the islands or the main coast and erasing them, but not that line.

    Raiko: I saw a line similar to what you saw across the large island in a zoom, but not in zoom extents. Now it's vanished. Video driver problem? (I have an Nvidia GeForce GTX 745)

    Joachim: On my system, ArdeaCoast2.fcw appears completely free of artifacts, regardless of zoom.
  • edited February 2015
    Posted By: BarlimanI could not select that straight line across the southern shore of the big bay
    This is due to the width of line that creates sort of an offset on each side. You might already experienced troubles when selecting a very broad line: it only get selected on the parts corresponding to a line width of 0.

    On the picture below, I've drawn the same angles with a line width of 0 on the top row, a a line width of 1 on the bottom row, changing the color to grey so I could add a copy of the line width 0 angles from above.

    When the angle gets very sharp (near 0°) , the apex of the outside offset is quite far from the apex of the line width 0 angle, and you cannot select the entity on the part not covered by the black line.

    I suspect you have even sharper angles on your map, making the apex of the offset even farthest away. This explains (I hope) why you cannot select the entity by clicking on the artefacts.

    Usually, I get rid of such lines by using the Node Edit command, once I found the node responsible. I however failed to find the culprits on your map...
  • Posted By: R A JacobsAnother interesting tidbit: Nodes 58 and 59 of the large landmasses coastline are "off" with regard to their coordinates in comparison to the coordinates of the nodes 57 and 60.
    JDR, did you take note of the odd coordinates for nodes 58 and 59? These nodes seemed to be "off" but when I deleted the nodes via DELNODE on the command-line it didn't seem to help the situation. :). Thoughts?

    -------------------------------
    R A Jacobs
    Learning CC3+ @ Funny-Shaped Dice
  • Posted By: R A JacobsJDR, did you take note of the odd coordinates for nodes 58 and 59?
    Nodes 58 and 59 are just the corners of the map border.
    The coastline is a copy of the landmass polygon, but because the coastline has a line width >0 it looks like a contour. It goes along the map border because most drawing tools have their restrict to map border check-box checked. If you hide all the other sheets you see that the coastline follows the map border to the right.

    Posted By: R A Jacobsbut when I deleted the nodes via DELNODE on the command-line it didn't seem to help the situation.
    DELNODE works fine but removes the right angle edges but changes nothing from the rest of the coastline. Again, try it with all the other sheets hidden. You should see how DELNODE works then.
  • Okay. I see what you mean now. I just didn't quite put together what I was seeing when I deleted those nodes previously. Thanks.

    -------------------------------
    R A Jacobs
    Learning CC3+ @ Funny-Shaped Dice
  • edited February 2015
    Reading through this thread, there's some interesting odd behavior here. First, I can open my file in CC3 just fine - no crash.But, when I do, the line artifact across the southern shore of the large bay is much longer, almost to the eastern map edge. But not in CC3+ Weird.

    JDR, thank you for the cleaned-up file (Ardea2.fcw) I can continue my mapping exercise on that. I'll save the original to work on to see if I can figure this out. Just did the node-editing exercises last night and I might noodle around with R A Jacobs' method: nothing like being a total neophyte and diving right in. :)

    Meanwhile, I'm going to file a bug report about this, with a reference to this thread. I'd be interested to see what Simon and Ralf think of this issue.

    Thanks again, folks.
  • So, I thought I'd revive this almost-dead horse for another beating. :)

    Today I downloaded a couple of maps from the library to have examples to dissect. One of them was "Europe Blank.FCW," which I guess was made in CC3. Well, I opened it in CC3+, and what do I see? One of those line artifacts that showed up in my Ardea Coast map. But I didn't create the Europe map, nor did I edit it in any way, unlike Ardea Coast. As you can see in the graphic:

    Europe line artifact

    The line runs from Denmark off the eastern edge in Russia. Note that the line is blue when crossing land, but the color of the landmass fill when crossing water.

    Again, the artifact vanishes when zoomed in on, only to reappear in "Zoom Extents." And this happens in both CC3+ and CC3.

    I've attached the file for interested folks to examine.
  • A few of the DD3 tutorial maps in Tome v3 have a line artifact in them too. I noticed the other day that runs in one part of them.
  • 1 year later
  • Was a fix ever found for this? I ask because I am getting it.

    New install of CC3 and CC3+
    It only happens in CC3+
    Happened on the first map I created following the instructions in the tutorial vid (great vid btw)
    Artifact shows up in the settings box (see attached screen shot).
  • I don't think a true fix for this was ever found. My solution was to hide all sheets except for (IIRC) the coastline sheet, then delete the coastline. I then use some glow and fade effects to make a shoreline that, at least in my opinion, looks better than the original sky-blue line.
  • 10 days later
  • To be honest, given the price of this software, I am not sure that is acceptable. But given there was no official response, I guess the dev's don't care what I think.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    Is a badly placed node a software issue? I'm not sure I follow you on that one. Surely its more to do with the map itself?

    Just asking :)
  • It could be on the list of things to fix. One the few instances I had such an artifact, I deleted the outline and redid it.

    Could be the coastline is looping back on itself.
  • Posted By: justablokeTo be honest, given the price of this software, I am not sure that is acceptable. But given there was no official response, I guess the dev's don't care what I think.
    On the other hand, I'm pretty sure this occurs only in that one style. At least, I haven't seen it in others, and I've tried recreating it in several.
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