Small Outdoor Battlemat
Shessar
🖼️ 34 images Mapmaker
I needed a quick battlemat for this weeks game. Shadows are off a bit and I could have cleaned things up a bit more, but I was in a hurry. Meh....my players will be too involved in the ambush to worry about map discrepancies. 
Comments
Thanks for sharing, and especially for sharing the FCW!
~Dogtag
I see the ill-famed red crosses even in something as basic as 'Water Sludge 5'
DD+
Don't trouble yourself.
If I use it I will simply take the png.
It is a beatiful map.
I like those rocks showing partially through the water, I think the technique was described elsewhere before.
I saw you used quite a lot of Edge Fade, Inner.
Unfortunately, I cannot see the actual settings. Must be the DD3 vs DD+ thing.
See, I am always interested in the application of the effects.
What I never achieve is shadows of a ramp, e.g. a way up those cliffs you have drawn, so the PCs can take the fight to the ambushers.
I suppose one could create quite afew sheets to include Wall Shadows with declining length, but I think there must be a better, easier way. One that eludes me comoletely, though.
Nyway, thanks a lot for sharing and allowing the option to retro your effects-usage
And I don't like it half as much and probably took 5 times as long.
I cannot really manage the 3D feeling.
The green is too strong on the attempt of the rise, I'm having a hard time to get the right colour for the transperancy effect.
Also, the attempt to show the river water churning around diverse rocks I find lacking...
Any suggestions of improvement highly appreciated
I'll try to help by giving a few tips. Let's start with the stream.
The wall shadow on the southern bank - Objects don't cast shadows on water, they cast reflections. The wall shadow makes the stream look like a solid surface. Try using a black glow around the rocks instead.
The Rocks in the stream - Water should cover the rocks partially. Use another sheet above the rocks with the water bitmap drawn slightly over the edges of the rock. Set an edge fade inner and transparency to make it look like the rock is slightly below the surface.
The rocks look like they have a white glow? They should not. If you are trying to imitate white water, remember that rocks act like a dam. There is a deeper pool before the rock and the water turbulence comes after the rock.
thanks for the input.
Hmm, I picked the Wall Shadow to indicate that it was actually a rather deep ravine and not just a typical river bank at more or less the same niveau.
The reflection hint is a good one, though, the shadow is indeed too dark.
A Black Glow would imo 'clash' a bit with the White Edge of the river itself which is supposed to indicate flow speed and not shallow depth.
Edge Fade on partially submerged rocks is a very a good suggestion. Do note the water actually has a transparency, but the setting is obviously too high as the submerged rocks cannot really be seen. I tried that effect with another water polygon, but the edges were just too obvious, so I skipped on the partial submerged rocks.
Hmm, if water rushes with speed at a rock there should be some turbulance upstream, no ? The river flow is supposed to be from left to right. Seen that in the Temple of the Sea of Ralf, too. But the quick picture above is a clear proof
Thanks a lot for your comments.
Much obliged.
Ask away!
Oh, it may take me a day or two to get back to you at times because, life.
I begin by deleting all of the Template's Sheets and then add my own sheets as I build up the map. MAybe what I'll do is show and explain sheet by sheet what and why I do what I do. I'm considering doing this in a separate thread as a tutorial. Let me twirl this in my head for a bit to figure out the best way to explain it all.
*raises mine*
OK. I'll do tutorials for streams and cliffs. It will take me a couple of days to get all of the screen captures set up.
Oh, on a side note... I did download some of your beautiful artwork! And one or two of them I believe would really work well here, but I have no clue how to import them into cc3+ and more importantly, I don't k is what to do with them once I import them! I mean, some of them are obviously terrain fills, a couple of them maybe bitmap background fills( the wood floors)? And a couple I'm not sure what to do with! Lol
This is powerful software. ProFantasy has done a great job of making it useful to all skill levels of users but some things need more skills or experience to master. Keep your current enthusiasm going and you'll have it figured out in no time.
Or are you talking about the fact that the Sheets dialogue can be accessed from both the Status Bar and the Sheets and Effects Button? It is the same dialogue, just two ways to access it.
Heh. I'm not sure if I've answered your question.
It's the aspect of the layers in cc3+ that kind of confuses me... using the anatomy drawing as an example, I'm trying to figure out where the layers come in, how they work. I understand that for cc3+ the layers are categories... and that lakes, rivers, streams, oceans and seas belong in the 'water/rivers' layer(or category), cities, ruins and bridges would belong to the building/structures layer, trees, bushes and plants belong to vegetation, etc...
What I don't understand is how do the layers(categories) affect how cc3+ works? How do the layers affect how we draw our maps within the program? On top of that, the layers themselves can get confusing, because some things can belong to more than one layer, or category. Take oceans and seas for example: an ocean or a sea can belong to two separate layers - the coast/sea layer, and the water/river layer. Bridges could go under the stucture/building layer or the roads layer. Terrain fills could go under natural features, vegetation, or even backgrounds, depending on the type of terrain fill you are using. Then there are the symbols, that could usually reasonably go on several different layers depending on what symbols are being used.
So how do the layers matter? I mean, what would the difference be for putting my bridges on the structure/buildings layer as opposed to the roads layer? How do we use the layers in conjunction with the sheets? Or do we at all? Are my questions making any sense?