Questions from new user:
Okay, as a long-time Dundjinni user, I realize I have to relearn how to do a lot of things that I did in Dundjinni (not complaining), and I'm actually focusing all my efforts on figuring those out before I start trying advanced maps. I do mostly interiors for VTT programs, and I'm looking for some help with:
1) When rotating a .png I made myself (a stair shadow) there when I flip it one direction, it draws a line where the edge of the shadow used to be. I'm curious if I make sure there's nothing on the edge of the .png, will it fix that? I'm going to try, but I'm not able to get out of my SWSE game to try it.
2) Is there any place online that has a clearer definition of all the effects? Some of them aren't in the helpfiles. The Wall Shadow, Point of Light, for example, would be awesome if I could figure out how to work it. But when I try to change the light or shadow color, nothing happens.
3) Is there any way to erase just part of a symbol? I'm guessing no, which isn't a big deal, I can edit the .png in PSP then use it, but I was curious about that. I'm slowly using every tool, and haven't gotten to tackling that, yet.
4) Am I correct in understanding that to "flood fill" you basically need to select the boundaries you wish you use, copy them, then make a multi-poly, right?
I think that's all my main questions right now... mostly I'm having to just experiment with the effects, and sometimes I have no idea what it's supposed to do, so it's kind of hard to play with it. As a current example, I can't figure out if there's any way to keep these two light sources from combining and making a weird bright patch: Overlapping light from a campfire and candle.
1) When rotating a .png I made myself (a stair shadow) there when I flip it one direction, it draws a line where the edge of the shadow used to be. I'm curious if I make sure there's nothing on the edge of the .png, will it fix that? I'm going to try, but I'm not able to get out of my SWSE game to try it.
2) Is there any place online that has a clearer definition of all the effects? Some of them aren't in the helpfiles. The Wall Shadow, Point of Light, for example, would be awesome if I could figure out how to work it. But when I try to change the light or shadow color, nothing happens.
3) Is there any way to erase just part of a symbol? I'm guessing no, which isn't a big deal, I can edit the .png in PSP then use it, but I was curious about that. I'm slowly using every tool, and haven't gotten to tackling that, yet.
4) Am I correct in understanding that to "flood fill" you basically need to select the boundaries you wish you use, copy them, then make a multi-poly, right?
I think that's all my main questions right now... mostly I'm having to just experiment with the effects, and sometimes I have no idea what it's supposed to do, so it's kind of hard to play with it. As a current example, I can't figure out if there's any way to keep these two light sources from combining and making a weird bright patch: Overlapping light from a campfire and candle.
Comments
That will give you an area that is 'flood filled'.
1) I would have bet someone a lot of money that the redraw wasn't getting rid of the line, but presto-chango, when I pulled up the map next time--no line.
2) Still haven't found any type of thorough details on the effects. The basic ones are listed, but a lot of them don't really explain what the variable affect. I'd particularly like to understand the Directional and Point of Light Wall Shadows! I don't really understand what setting the direction to 0 means. When I set it to like 270, there's no effect, and I thought that would make the light come from the "west". And the light intensity on the Point of Light is really throwing me for a loop, too.
3) It really seems like the answer to this is no, as I can't find any way to do this. However, it's not like cropping a graphic in PaintShop is terribly difficult, either.
4) I did figure out that part, I was thinking more in terms of, I draw out the walls of this really irregular cave on the map, and now I want to drop a floor in there that fits it. I drew the walls with a fractal, so it's not like I can just click the same path. Seems like the best way to make that floor, though--is to just copy the walls, paste them down to the side, and make a multi-poly floor out of them, like in the video tutorial with the "Temple of Terror" map.
MultiPolys can work well for this, but they can also lead you into trouble if you copy & Explode them, and have a few other quirky behaviors. I try to avoid them if I reasonably can. As an alternate, rather than doing an mpoly with your copy of the wall, you could just connect path with the paths, then close the path to get a simple polygon -- again avoiding an mpoly.
Steve
1) hide sheets and layers until all you had was the wall line
2) copy that line to anouther sheet
3) hide the original sheet
4) make sure that the fill style is the fill you would like, also that the line width is 0.
5) type ltp2 at the command line and select all of the line parts. If you have any voids inside the line you need to use multipoly instead. Also you may need to undo and go looking for line joins that are not perfect. As others have said try and stay away from multipolies!
You'll need to EXPLODE it, maybe more than once, then use the TRIM, BrEAK, and/or SPLIT commands to remove the parts you don't want, then rejoin the symbol's parts by adding new lines and combining the extra ones.
It's hard to be specific, since every symbol is diferent.
Usually when someone wants to remove part of a symbol, it's usually because it overlaps part of the map border. In those cases, I find it easier just to create a white (or other colour) poly on the outside of the map border, on the topmost sheet, so that it hides anything outside the map border.
Is that what you wanted?
Wall Shadow, Directional
Will apply a shadow to the objects that have been copied/moved to that sheet. The options are as follows;
Length: The length of the shadow cast.
Opacity: How see through the shadow will be, the higher the value the stronger the shadow.
Blur Radius: The radius for the transition from the straight shadow colour to nothing (blending as such)
Global Sun: You can set the direction for a global sun by right clicking on the sheets button and selecting global sun.
This then lets you set the azimuth (vertical angle), Inclination (I think the horizontal angle) and the intensity of the light. I played with the values to get the shadow on my map which is found in another post here : http://forum.profantasy.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=83&page=1#Item_1
Wall Shadow, Point Light
Will apply a single point light positioned at the x,y co-ordinates that you specify. Again the effect is applied to objects on the sheet you have selected.
This effect I gather would be best to simulate torches by the looks. The first window lets you add light points and also lets you select the colour of the light and the colour of the shadow (I am still working on the colour thing as I haven't seen it show a specific colour on the buildings etc I've been experimenting on), the transparency is how dark areas in shadow will be. The lower the number the darker the shadow. So for multiple lights I'm assuming it would be cumulative, so you would set one to a low number eg 25% and the rest to 100% transparent, or every light to a setting of like 95% transparent.
Double clicking on a light source will give you the following options;
Identifier: Just the name you give the light.
X Position: This is the X co-ordinate of the lights centre.
Y Position: As above except for the Y axis.
I found this relates directly to the number given if you use the info/co-ordinate tool in the drop down menu at the top, allowing it to be placed exactly on a torch
or some other object you have on the map.
Intensity: Light Intensity, The lower the intensity the softer the light cast, above about 10 the radius tends to become quite solid. Set to 1 it's quite soft.
Max Radius: The light radius out from the light sources origin (X,Y co-ordinates set above)
Hope that helps. Things to note;
The effect only applies to objects that are on that sheet. This will mean that you need to move or copy the object to the sheet, as it has no effect on a layer (this is as per help topics from memory) there is a good file floating around explaining this somewhere on here. This may be where you may be running into problems. If it still isn't working change the order of your sheets as the order they are applied will effect what you see. Also make sure that they are not selected as hidden in the sheets area.
I hope you don't take the last paragraph as a lesson in sucking eggs, it's just as a newbie to CC I had to play around with those things and they were little mistakes that I found out by trial and error.
Cheers
Corey
The problem is that when the lights overlap each other, the effects feel rather unpredictable, and usually end up with these distractingly bright patches where they overlap. It also appears that higher intensity lights will completely cancel lower intensity if they overlap. And as far as changing the light or shadow color, it doesn't appear to do anything at all. Future patch, I guess.
Work in Progress (Crag)
This is a work-in-progress I'm doing right now, I used directional shadows on the plateau with a global sun. I really need to find the CSUAC files, I need more textures.
Just some thoughs.
Cheers
Jetdriver
Save the fill style you are using for the grass texture as a new bitmap fill. Then modify the "scaled width" to something like 20 x 20 or even 40 x 40. This will make the tiles look less tiled. Experiment with the scaled width until you find a setting that works well for your map. Make sure you save your new fill style. Now go take a look at the fill styles that have a T Bitmap suffix. If you create fractal polygons with those fill styles and place them on the same sheet as your background tiles you will notice that they have transparent sections that let the lower layers show through. With some creative placement you can alter the landscape to look much more organic. Another trick would be to create a sheet between the background tiles and your buildings and place the fractal polygons with the transparency on that sheet. Then you can have different effects for your each sheet.
Hope that helps
Mind you this map suffers primarily from my woefully understocked texture/symbol library. Hopefully I will be able to get the CSUAC files this weekend, and going forward my maps will be MUCH more fleshed out. But I'm very excited to apply those two techniques, thanks! Mainly I was just trying to master the basic concepts here--layering up different levels, and using sheets to separate the effects that apply to them. It took a little thinking to get my head around the difference between the layers and sheets, but I've got it now--it finally clicked. If I wanted to have a tower room that cast a very heavy shadow outside, but not inside, what I could do is put the wall line and the floor polygon on the same sheet (even though they are on differing layers) and that way I won't get the shadow cast into the room, right?
They are formatted for immediate use in DJ, and will soon be in FM8. Sorry, but they are not configured for CC3 at the moment, but the material can be easily found and you can import what you need.
editted: removed "s" from https--link should work fine now