Hills Drawing

Hi, new user here.
Could somebody point to an explanation on how to make good looking hills top views on a battlemap? You tube video tutorial mostly help making cities with no nearby hills.
I have been trying to do it with City Designer and Dungeon Designer, but the result was mediocre. I made a few city maps and love the effects considering my own limitations. Now I´m trying to do a battle map of an airless planet for my campaign of Elite Dangerous RPG, and cannot find a way to draw a top down view of terrain with differente height levels. Hope I was cleare enough.
Any video or written tutorial would greatly help. Thanks in advance.

Alx

Comments

  • Hi Alx

    Welcome to the forum

    Try this:
    Create two new sheets (or just use the existing hill sheet and add one that you call 'hill top' then move it right below the existing hill sheet in the sheets list).

    Draw an entity in the shape you want for the hill or hills. Make sure it ends up on the hill sheet.

    Now, add an 'edge fade, inner' and a 'bevel, lighted' effect.
    Now, set bevel size to at least 10% of the longer side of the map. But you might as well set it to 100% of the longer side of the map. Anyway, set intensity to 20% and leave the other values as they are. This will make the hill look like a mountain.
    Now edit the edge fade effect, where you have to find out yourself what value to enter for edge width. Just try out until the food of the hill looks smooth. You can also edit the inner opacity, if you want the hill to be a bit transparent.
    Now, we are going to make the hill look a bit rounder. Use copy to sheet (right click on the copy button on the left side of the screen, then select copy to sheet) to copy the entity to the hill top sheet.
    The ''mountain'' will now disappear, because it is covered up by the entity on the 'hill top' sheet. But we're going to fix that by adding an edge fade inner effect to this sheet. Now set the edge width to a significantly higher value than the one you chose for the hill sheet.
    This way the top of the 'mountain' will be covered up, making it look like a nice, smooth hill.

    Cheers

    Hadrian
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
    Check out Dogtag's replies in this topic, contains good information.

    Joachim de Ravenbel also made this tutorial on the Blend Mode effect, where he, among other things, makes hills using it

    Posted By: Alejo68campaign of Elite Dangerous RPG
    Nice. I picked up my copy on the Frontier Expo a few weeks ago, but I haven't gotten to play it yet.
  • Hadrian, Monsen, Thankyou very much!

    Guess the next few hours will be completely devoted to get my hills looking properly.
    It is sad I decided after a long time (and I mean long) to get this software a chance. Many said it was difficult to learn how to use it, and that they literally abandoned it due to that. The truth is just seeing a few tutorials helped me make a couple of maps that I trully like. I really can´t but heartedly recommend it.

    Thanks again, and I will surely abuse of your knoledge again in the near future.

    Hey, Monsen. Lucky you having the ED.RPG book. Mine is the pdf Rules. Anyway I usually travel to USA, so I hope to get the printed version of the rules there.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
    edited October 2017
    Posted By: Alejo68It is sad I decided after a long time (and I mean long) to get this software a chance. Many said it was difficult to learn how to use it, and that they literally abandoned it due to that. The truth is just seeing a few tutorials helped me make a couple of maps that I trully like. I really can´t but heartedly recommend it.
    Great to hear (The last part, anyway).
    CC3+ (and its predecessors) is a great program, but it doesn't work the same way most other windows software does, nor is it particularly intuitive. But it isn't that difficult to get into, as long as one is willing to spend a little time doing a few tutorials, from the manual or otherwise.
    Hey, Monsen. Lucky you having the ED.RPG book
    I was apparently able to pick up the only collectors edition version they had managed to bring to the convention (#003/150)

    Good luck with your hills. Don't hesitate to ask if you have problems, we're here.
  • There is also a shading technique that is either a part of the CSUAC2 or the Dundjinni Archives, I can't remember which one exactly, but I think it's the DJ archives. It's an elevation shading, and some of them are done in the shape of hills. Both the CSUAC and the DJ archives are free downloads, and I know the CSUAC2 can be found here on these forums, I believe the DJ archives can be found here too. Both have been made available for cc3+
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