Polygons With See-Through Fill Patterns and No Visible Border?
Hey, All,
I am trying to create a style of map that features patterns to indicate different types of terrain coupled with different colors to show various types of vegetation. So I have polygons in several shades of green for different types of woodland, brown for heath, yellow for plains and croplands, etc. Then I have a polygon with a lightly filled dot pattern for hills and a denser pattern for mountains. If you are familiar with the large poster map of Harn, I'm trying to duplicate that style.
In order to make this work, I have tried a couple of different things, but I am running into trouble.
If I create a fill-style polygon on a higher layer (as in it gets drawn later than the vegetation), it covers up my vegetation, because it is treating its white background as an opaque field. If I turn on transparency, the colors underneath show up but are muted.
However, if I move the fill-style polygon to a lower layer (drawn before the vegetation), with the vegetation set to 50% transparency, I get the effect I want, except for my near-white ICE AND SNOW layer, which is one of the last to draw and has no transparency, because otherwise, it picks up the color from the base layer, cropland, which is yellow and fills the whole map.
I have contemplated a few different workarounds for this, but what I'd really like to do is find out if there is a way to make my terrain polygons both "see-through" (so that only the pattern is opaque) and borderless. I went hunting in the help index and in these discussion forums and didn't find anything.
Is this possible?
Thanks,
T
I am trying to create a style of map that features patterns to indicate different types of terrain coupled with different colors to show various types of vegetation. So I have polygons in several shades of green for different types of woodland, brown for heath, yellow for plains and croplands, etc. Then I have a polygon with a lightly filled dot pattern for hills and a denser pattern for mountains. If you are familiar with the large poster map of Harn, I'm trying to duplicate that style.
In order to make this work, I have tried a couple of different things, but I am running into trouble.
If I create a fill-style polygon on a higher layer (as in it gets drawn later than the vegetation), it covers up my vegetation, because it is treating its white background as an opaque field. If I turn on transparency, the colors underneath show up but are muted.
However, if I move the fill-style polygon to a lower layer (drawn before the vegetation), with the vegetation set to 50% transparency, I get the effect I want, except for my near-white ICE AND SNOW layer, which is one of the last to draw and has no transparency, because otherwise, it picks up the color from the base layer, cropland, which is yellow and fills the whole map.
I have contemplated a few different workarounds for this, but what I'd really like to do is find out if there is a way to make my terrain polygons both "see-through" (so that only the pattern is opaque) and borderless. I went hunting in the help index and in these discussion forums and didn't find anything.
Is this possible?
Thanks,
T
Comments
Thanks, JMunsonII, for the suggestion. I'm playing with Blend Mode but not having complete luck yet. According to the Tome of Ultimate Mapping, brush patterns are supposed to already be see-through, so I'm not sure why mine isn't working that way.
I will keep hunting. . . .
However, I created a new sheet to hold a brush pattern poly, created a poly on that sheet, etc.
I filled it with "waves."
I added to the sheet a Blend Mode of Multiply, and it works just fine. Do you have sheet effects turned on?
EDIT: Those patterns with no backgrounds are scalable - different class of fill altogether...
I see no way to change that transparent color setting on the "Brush Patterns" tab, so this may be the only way to do that.
Anyway, thanks for your help! :-)
T
I can make a brand new high res transparent fill for you - if I know what kind of pattern you want?
I use Genetica, and can probably do most simple patterns in a matter of minutes, with a similar resolution to the standard PF texture fills.
Just give me a rough description (ie how big these dots are and whether they are diagonally or vertically aligned, or not aligned at all) and I'll rustle a couple of alternatives up for you.
That is very generous of you. Thanks!
T