Making speed cities with Watabou Medieval City Generator

I have taken up Sue's suggestion that one could use TRACE to make outlines of all the buildings generated from the Watabou's medieval City Generator.
Here is the map generated, (export as Black and White). I then made the background made transparent (via Photoshop).
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Comments

  • Here is the CC3+ version after using Trace. I deliberately chose red to give you a visual headache ( :D ).
    Not bad, eh.
  • But look at close up Help.. how can I use TRACE without getting these wavy lines. Callout to Captain Monsen to the Rescue (or Sergeant Sue)
  • jslaytonjslayton Moderator, ProFantasy Mapmaker
    The wavy edges are due to the resolution of your image that's being used to create the vector entities. Each little vertical/horizontal/45-degree segment is part of the trace along the edge of each pixel. You need higher source information resolution (the image that you're using TRACE on) or to set the "Work Image Resolution" in TRACED to a higher resolution (if "Work Image Resolution" is already higher than the size of your input image, then increasing "Work Image Resolution" won't do anything).
  • Thanks, Admiral Joe - just the advice I needed. I will try both of those and see
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    OMG! LOL!

    Oh dear!

    Well I don't have an answer for that one. Maybe Remy does?

    Its the resolution of the png you get from the site.

    I've just tried saving it as an SVG, opening it in Inkscape, saving it again as an AutoCAD plotter file, and importing it into CC3 that way. But I only got the walls and the fields. The buildings don't come across.
  • I used png, and at least I got the buildings as well
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    I must admit that I hadn't considered the relatively low res of the exports.

    Sorry, Quenten.

    I've done another couple of experiments with images through Inkscape, and I've nearly got there. The trouble is that the tracing it does is seriously detailed, so cleaning it up is almost as much work as just drawing them by hand in CC3.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Haven't managed to get anything useful.

    Inkscape is really user unfriendly. It's like landing on an alien planet and trying to speak the local lingo the moment you open your mouth.
  • Why do you use it then, or are you just really good at Alienese?
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    It's the only way I know to convert SVG to DXF. There are probably more. PS might do it, but I wouldn't know.

    CC3 can import DXF files.

    My thought was that if you just converted in Inkscape you could bypass the bitmap issues altogether, but the result of conversion was about a million little lines that were all disconnected.

    Quicker to draw by hand.
  • There are free online converters now for most file types, including SVG to DXF (I just checked via Google). The downside is you may not be able to get to the resolution limit you need that way either.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    SVG and DXF are both vector formats, so resolution isn't a problem. They don't suffer from pixelization because they haven't got any pixels.

    So if you could find a converter for free you could do this.

    Just don't try Inkscape, or you will give yourself the mother of all headaches!
  • i recently used Inkscape to convert a .png to a .svg to a .ttf - it was NOT easy. Especially for someone who really has no idea what she is doing - i just follow video instructions, lol.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
    Main problem with Inkscape is how it builds the converted images. The visual results are quite nice, but behind the scene is en enormous amount of simple primitive entities, which makes it very unsuitable for further import and work in CC3+ without a lot of manual work, you don't get clean nice entities ready to use.
    Same is the case with most free online raster to vector convertors.
  • Posted By: LoopysueInkscape is really user unfriendly. It's like landing on an alien planet and trying to speak the local lingo the moment you open your mouth.
    For me, this could be said of CC3+. Basically, they are different programs based on different interface philosophies. And if you look at the vast majority of whatever kinds of drawing software, inkscape is way more "normal" and "easy" than CC3+.

    On top of this, inkscape can easily used to solve the problem. Export SVG from the city generator, and produce a whatever-you-like resolution raster file (PNG,JPG) in inkscape. As long as CC does not support SVG naturally, you cannot get around using other software for that.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    edited November 2019
    I am sorry, treczoks. I didn't mean to upset anyone :)

    There must be many people who use and enjoy Inkscape, or it would have died a death many years ago. One of my friends at Cartographer's Guild uses nothing else. I've been able to pick up and immediately play with most other software I've ever come across, including CC3, but not Inkscape. It is one of only 2 apps I cannot use for more than 5 minutes without tearing my hair out or having to search for a video for instructions.

    I have to admit, though, that I hadn't thought of exporting a better bitmap from it.

    Eventually, there will be no need for any of this, since PF have already stated in another thread that SVG compatibility is on the developers wish list for CC3 - or maybe they meant CC4.
  • Posted By: LoopysueI am sorry, treczoks. I didn't mean to upset anyone :)
    I'm not upset. For me, it is the opposite as it is for you: I need to find tutorial and read the tome for nearly every step in CC3+, while I'm quite fluent in Inkscape - which would be my tool of choice, if CC3+ hadn't such a big advantage with it's symbol libraries and mapping-related features.
    Posted By: LoopysueEventually, there will be no need for any of this, since PF have already stated in another thread that SVG compatibility is on the developers wish list for CC3 - or maybe they meant CC4.
    Yes, he mentioned it for CC4 - whenever this may happen.

    It would be nice to have a kind of thread or other kind of repository where one could see and request wishes for such a future release. It would also help ProFantasy to get an overview what customers want.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    That request thread was over on the FB Group page about 6 months ago now (can't remember exactly) There were well over a hundred comments on it and people asking for all kinds of weird and very wonderful stuff. It is a shame you weren't there when it happened, but I am sure Profantasy are listening even as we talk to one another ;)
  • Posted By: LoopysueThat request thread was over on the FB Group page about 6 months ago now (can't remember exactly)
    Oh, OK. Well, I do not play Facebook, so I could not participate, anyway. Why do the go FB, when they have a working forum here?
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Different generations, different preferences.

    I don't actually like FB all that much because its so easy to get into a destructive argument over issues political and religious, which doesn't change anything in the real world and only damages the participants. Life is too short to spend it being angry at things you cannot change.

    Having said that, though, I do enjoy helping people on both forums - here and the FB Group page. The group is a private community within FB, so you usually only get mappers and in particular CC3 mappers joining up. It's much safer than the rest of FB.
  • The mods are pretty quick at deleting trolls, spammers and non-CC3+ junk that people post from time to time.
  • And we do so with ruthless, grim, joyous glee! :D
  • Sorry, I don't have the context for this and it looks really interesting. How were you able to get it to trace the map to begin with? I'm assuming this isn't the same as tracing with a drawing tool is it?
  • I first made it as black and white as I could, made the background transparent (with photoshop), then used the Command line command TRACE.
  • Tried to tinker with it tonight but couldn't think of anything to get them reasonably straight. Straight to Smooth tool doesn't look bad, but there's still a lot of bumps. I wonder if a tool or macro could be made to try to straighten them out by deleting nodes. If it could recognize where corners are for a building that would make it easy.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    treczocks suggestion of downloading the SVG version and actually using Inkscape, but only to open it and immediately export a very much higher resolution png will probably work best if anything does. You will probably need to export it at 3 or 4 times the size that it would have been downloaded as an image from the generator.

    Try downloading both versions of your chosen city, note the pixels size of the png version, multiply those numbers until the longest one is pretty near 10,000, and then export a png of that size from the svg file using Inkscape.

    Untested method - I've only just woken up!
  • I'm actually working with the same city generator, and I thought of building some kind of SVG to CC3 macro generator. At least to save me from grebling all those houses...
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