Merelan City is a map I've been working on for a while. It goes with the novel I've 3/4 written, although the map is only about 2/3 completed at this stage.

The map has 130 Sheets and approximately 3-400 sheet effects in operation. I am using the CD3 building symbols with several of the fills from the Bogie Mapping Objects collection and about 5 of my own fills (the rocks, seaweed, smoke, ground vines on top of the island and the wood for the frame that I haven't rendered in this image.

Hey Nacon4 - thank you :)

I'm no master. I've only been working with CC3 for about 5 months, and on this particular map for just over a month.

I also have a trees thread (the name of which I've forgotten), but that's not really about maps :)

I cannot tell you how happy I am to see this map.back up and running Sue!!! It's looking fantastic, with the new symbols and bitmap fills.:-D

You know... In some ways, I think I like it even better! It looks a lot more put together, now, more natural? No...more cohesive, I would say. Anyway, I am so looking forward to this map being complete!

Getting better with every version!

Posted By: LoopysueI'm growing increasingly keen on the idea of being able to start something new. City building in a hybrid city/dungeon style like this isn't something I plan on doing again any time soon. Those I have in me waiting to come out will be a lot more simple and quicker to draw ;)

A lot of folks are waiting to see what will come.

Posted By: VintyriGetting better with every version!

Posted By: LoopysueI'm growing increasingly keen on the idea of being able to start something new. City building in a hybrid city/dungeon style like this isn't something I plan on doing again any time soon. Those I have in me waiting to come out will be a lot more simple and quicker to draw ;)

A lot of folks are waiting to see what will come.

Thank you Vintyri :)

A lot of the appearance of the map is down to the very fine qualities of the Bogie Mapping Objects collection of fills. In fact, take away the two grass fills and the sand fill that I'm using here and there wouldn't be much of a map left to look at. I don't actually have more than 10-12 textures in the entire map, including the five of my own that I'm using. Most of the colouring is done by HSL effect on different sheets. This is definitely going to be a bit of a shocker when I render it 'with and without effects' to show off to the PS community over at the Guild when its done. Hehe! I don't think they realise just how powerful CC3 really is.

Posted By: MedioGood to see you got back to the map! Some points.

- The vineyards job is fantastic. They really look great.
- The new windmills size makes them harder to notice. Maybe they´re more realistic but depending on what size you´re watching the map, it misses sharpness.
- The label works better than the old one, as it doesn´t disturb the spectator as much.
- The walls are also fantastic. If so, maybe the western part of the wall should be lighted as the sun would hit it (considering your shadows).

All in one, this is one of the best city maps i´ve seen, and surely the most detailed one. Keep up the great job Sue!!

Thank you Medio :)

There are certain limits on image size on this forum which make the larger maps a little tricky to present - and I never do small maps. If you want to have a look at a higher res image the identical but larger version to this one can be found over at Cartographer's Guild here:

https://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=34721&page=25&p=313040&viewfull=1#post313040

This one here is 1250x1250 pi, the one on the Guild is 2500x2500 - the maximum on both sites.

(To avoid any confusion, my name over there is 'Mouse'. I chose Loopysue at a time when I didn't think very much of myself or my life, so went for something different over there when I joined, but I'm ok with it.)

The windmills haven't been reduced any more than the buildings, and should perhaps be even smaller now that I've shrunk all the manmade features. I decided to reduce everything to emphasis just how big the temple really is, and to make the island itself big enough in comparison to the buildings to warrant the relief detail I've given it. I'm hoping to sweet-talk a certain Guild friend of mine into making one of those web maps out of it that you can zoom and pan around like a Google Earth map, but we'll see if the closer detail warrants that kind of inspection when we get there (thinking here of the trees I have yet to draw, and which still look so much like grey modelling clay when you zoom in to 'fill a screen' size) ;)

As for the walls - the city wall is a graphic I drew for myself and is done in a 'universal' way with internal shadows to distinguish the battlements from the walkway, but I've just noticed that I seem to have lost the directional shadow effect for some reason. I'll go and have a look see where its got to. The compound wall on top of the island is a Bogie texture... Brick 08 I think, drawn as a line and given width of about 10 units then bevelled. There is a difference between the two sides of the bevel, its just that you can't really see it in this map.

Off to add a few more houses now... TTFN

Posted By: JimPNo master ? I disagree. I could get all convoluted in my response, but that will do.

+1

Posted By: LoopysueHey Nacon4 - thank you :)

I'm no master. I've only been working with CC3 for about 5 months, and on this particular map for just over a month.

I also have a trees thread (the name of which I've forgotten), but that's not really about maps :)

I'm not buttering you here. I can only imagine the hard work you must have done to make a map like that; and I am in awe of it

... on a laptop.

Ummmm.... I'm not quite sure what to say - but thank you :)

I sit here in envy of a great many of your maps, so I am... most definitely... not alone here - whatever I am ;)

EDIT: Oops - that was directed at everyone, btw - Storm included :)

Witches of Eastwick? Oh yes - I remember now - the Vintyri Beta test team :)

I have always relied very heavily on the advice and suggestions given to me by others here on this forum, and it has occurred to me that none of you can see the problems I'm having with this map, so I've done a couple of enlarged sections to show you.

The first image shows the tiny land-locked bay near Somnee. To me the land STILL looks like its floating above the sand, but I'm wired a bit different to 'normal' and have a strange way of processing what I see, so it may or may not be the case. The irony here is that I once spent a lot of time trying to create a floating island, while here I'm trying to ground one! Any advice would be welcome.

The second image shows the fuzzy road problem. I've tried all different kinds of ways to make the roads look good at close quarters, but I think that glow (in this case) isn't really working at anything other than medium zoom. All advice welcome.

The third image shows the unnatural appearance of the vines at close quarters. I'm working on a transparent fill for this problem - one that works a bit like the seaweed fill, but its taking a while. When I've done it I will upload another close up shot of the vines and ask you what you think.

Hmmm... The land and sand seem to me to be different pictures. Not floating, but well descriptive words fail me at things like this. But I'll give it a try.

For the sand and land: Its like two different pictures are placed next to each other, without the frames, and of way different scenes. There is no sand on the land, and no rocks out in the sand. Wind alone would move sand onto the rocks.

I'm not familiar with effects... but could the blending be too much ? Have you tried less blending ?

Danke.

As I said, I'm unfamiliar with effects. But I have done a bit of them. How about the width of the effects on the roads/paths ? The paths look blurry to me. So, I'm not sure how to explain it otherwise.

Yes, the sand does zoom out onto the land... I did spend a few decades living near Biloxi, Missisippi. They had miles of beaches. When it gets windy, lots of that sand winds up a mile or more inland. Most of it lands on the coast highway and people's yard for around 500-1000 feet from the beach. That scattering of sand is what I was more refering to. Its not a wave of sand coming ashore, but patches of sand. So I don't think an effect will fix the look. (I hadn't eaten when I first posted and I have now, along with some exercise.) My suggestion would be patches of sand on the rocks and a bit past the rocks. Some with glow, and some without.

The funny colours are just temporary, by the way - a visual guide so I don't have to think about which of the six levels I'm adding houses to once I've zoomed in to sort out the business end of this job. I then only have to worry about whether each house should go on the shaded sheet for that level or not (They don't cast shadows where the shadow of the relief shading is already present, or it causes problems with transparency acne)

Thanks for your suggestions Jim, but I have too much else going on in this drawing to fractalize anything if I don't have to. I'm trying to keep the number of nodes down just a bit. The map is 5000 x 5000, has 131 Sheets, and about 3-400 effects. There are 8 layers of rock and double that of grass - another 8 of roads and tracks, and so on. There are already waaaay too many nodes in this map without adding any more :)

The paths are drawn with a variety of tools depending on the size and function of the road. Footpaths are drawn with the hand drawing tool with a width of 3 or 5 map units, while town roads around the harbour are drawn as straight lines and the big roads wrapped around the island are curved lines, all with a width of 10 - the biggest of 25 or 30.

With the roads Its not the straightness of the edge but the definition. I need the edge of the road to blend into the grass, but giving it either an edge fade or a glow causes the texture of the road to look fuzzy in comparison with the grass and houses at close zoom levels.

I'm working on it, and I'll let you know how I did it when I find the solution ;)

We'll see ;)

Thanks again.

I think I have, but not in the usual way ;)

The real problem was that although a nice sharp dark inner glow works pretty well to define the roads and sink then into the ground, my roads and tracks are on 8 different sheets, so when I try to join them you can see the join around the end of the road that's on the higher Sheet (lower in the list). What I've done is create another sheet (132) with the same HSL settings as the other 8 road sheets, but with no glow on it whatsoever. This "Junction" sheet is set highest of all above all the others in the map, and can be used to 'blend over' the join with smaller lines - like stitching the roads that are on different sheets together. Its a lot of work, and its not something I'm going to do until the rest of the map has been completely finished, but at least I know how to solve it now.

I know I said there wasn't going to be a map today... er, this morning (its 4.30 am here), but In this version I'm showing the process of planning the road structure on an area of map where they have not yet been defined. These are the thin white lines in the south west of the map. The strange colours on the land beneath them are a temporary transparent markers that help me see at a glance which of the sheets I need to place the roads and houses on when I get to the point of making everything final.

All these marks are just an idea, since many of the roads are in ridiculous or impractical places, but they help me think where I'm going when I have the snaking end of an actual road attached to my cursor, and I'm laying it down on the land - one click at a time :)

Version 48

Buildings, textures, roads and paths all finished as far as I am concerned. There may be a long wait for the next version, since now I have the trees, tents and boats to sort out.

Just beautiful. I think Ralf should use your map as a representative of just what this program can do.....People need to see that quality photorealistic maps CAN be made with CC3+ and look just as if not better than some of the maps made in PS or GIMP!

I have every confidence that this map will be brilliant when it's done!

It's been 55 minutes since the last compliment, so now it's time for one from me. This map is really awesome and I've been happily following it's progression. The contours and shading are incredible. It looks like something that has been done in photoshop and has taken at least a year to make. Shows how good CC3 is and indeed how good your mapping skills are. Once again...Awesome :)

So incredibly beautiful. Where is the real estate office? I see a nice villa I have my eye on!

Awesome job!

Ok, with that reply, now I need the novel that goes with that story!

Posted By: BillOk, with that reply, now I need the novel that goes with that story!

Sorry Bill, I haven't finished it yet, but I'll let you know when I do. Map and novel have somehow managed to become melded into one thing in my head - a bit like conjoined twins, but in such a way that the map has to be completed before I can complete the book ;)

Posted By: tonnichiwa

Posted By: LoreleiJust beautiful. I think Ralf should use your map as a representative of just what this program can do.....People need to see that quality photorealistic maps CAN be made with CC3+ and look just as if not better than some of the maps made in PS or GIMP!

I agree. I've known it could do this stuff for a long time now as I went to school for Computer Aided Drafting and Design, which uses FastCAD. And this program is based off of the FastCAD engine. Knowing what FastCAD engine was capable of, I just knew that if someone wanted to put in the effort, CC3+ would produce fantastic results as FastCAD is an incredible program by itself.

Thank you Sue for being the one to prove it. I love how far you've come with this and the results you have gotten from it. I haven't wanted to track all of the sheets and effects, nor experiment with them for fear of somehow breaking my maps, so I'm glad you had the courage to do so.

Now I am beginning to wonder what it can do with maps that are not photorealistic. I've been partial to cartoon art for years but I still like photorealistic as well. Maybe some experimentation is in order.

Thanks Tonichiwa :)

Think outside the box. That's the most important thing. And don't start a map by thinking about what you can't do, but by imagining how you want it to look, then striving to achieve that goal, because as you have already said FastCad is unbelievably powerful.

I don't know how much of a shocking revelation this will be to you, but there is at least one thing that PS users find quite difficult to emulate, and that is the Edge Fade, Inner when its set to anything other than the default settings. My ocean, with its fade from 15% opacity to 80% opacity, is far easier in CC3 than it can ever be in PS, and I know that much because I tried really quite hard to help a PS user get to the same point with only limited success - that user being one of the DeviantArt members over at the Guild ;)

The best bit is I haven't even worked with quite a few of the effects. The bravest I've been so far is to use the RGB Matrix Process to colour the seaweed, which in reality is a partially transparent black and white bitmap ;)

I'm going to have a go with the lighting effects in my next map, which will be of the ruins of Urrowan Palace, where the bi-coloured, shape-shifting were-hawk Zorrani live in exile from the other 4 peoples of Ethran. It's the home of my second protagonist - Astra.

That should be quite an interesting experiment!

Here are the effects I haven't yet explored, highlighted in yellow:

Great job, Sue!!! Much improvement from the first :)