COntours - mystery lines, edge fades, inner contours

debreos

I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for my contour problems.
Situation - relatively new CC user, but getting to grips with it. I am trying to reproduce some of my old game maps in CC, and having problems with contours.
The old maps had different heights coloured in gradually darkening shades, with contour lines to show relief more clearly.
I am using CC3 Overland Hex as the base.

First problem - I am using the contour tool to create the blocks, with darker colour blocks laid on lighter colour blocks.
But creating the contour lines around the individual blocks is causing me trouble.
First thought was to trace the perimeter with a line - but not many entities allow you to trace.
Second thought was to change the line width on the block - but if you turn it into a line, the inner fill disappears.
Aha! I thought. Copy the block, paste it on a different layer, and THEN change it to a line. Eureka! I now had a contour line surrounding the block.
Unfortunately, I also have a lot of spurious jagged lines emerging from the blocks and pointing all over the map. When I change magnification, some disappear - but others appear. Turning off the contour line layer makes them all disappear - so that is obviously causing the problem. Any ideas?

Second problem - I was trying to use Edge Fade to blur the harsh boundaries between the different blocks of colour - but it fades the colour of EVERY contour block with the underlying Land colour, not the next contour block down. Again, ideas?

Third problem - there is a sunken area in the middle of a mountain range - so I have inner contours. I saw some advice NOT to "cut" an area out of a contour shape, because it caused problems. I have found a sort of solution by "cutting" one side of the mountain range with the edge of the contour block, bringing it into the sunken area in a straight line, curving around the depression, then taking it back out of the mountain range along the same line, and completing that block. I do the same with the next block up, tracing that line into the centre. In effect, the contour lines work fine - I just have a continuous line through one side of the mountain range. Was I wrong to take the advice not to "cut " an area out of the contour block? Is there a better way?

These may be minor problems to others, but at my level they have me perplexed. Don't get me wrong - I'm really enjoying learning to use CC, but I think I have reached a point with this where I could use some advice.
Of course, in two years time I will probably look at my current efforts and decide to redraw the lot in a quarter of the time - but nevertheless...

Monsen

Posted By: debreosUnfortunately, I also have a lot of spurious jagged lines emerging from the blocks and pointing all over the map. When I change magnification, some disappear - but others appear. Turning off the contour line layer makes them all disappear - so that is obviously causing the problem. Any ideas?

The lines are caused by the miter joins of the lines. This issue occur when two lines form a very narrow angle (which in most cases are caused by two nodes being very close together), and is affected by the with of the line. Because this is caused by the visual size of the line, it changes as you change zoom levels.

Generally, the way to handle these is to either reduce the line width, as this issue will occur less and less as the line gets thinner. For an outline, you may even wish to use a 0-width line, which eliminates this problem entirely (Just make a break in the polygon, this will turn it into a path, which can be 0-width as opposed to a polygon which will just become filled). For a thin 0-width outline, you could even just use the Outline in Black command instead of going through the route of making a copy of the polygon and changing the line width. Obviosly, only applicable if 0-width lines is ok for you.
The other option is to reduced nodes that appear really close. You can use the SIMPLIFY command for this (save before starting experimenting with simplify, so it is easier to recover). The downside of removing nodes from an outline is that it won't match the polygon exactly anymore, but if it is just a few nodes, it probably won't be visible at all.
Another way to handle and outline is to use a glow effect on the contour instead of a line. For this to work, each contour level would need to be on its own sheet.

Second problem - I was trying to use Edge Fade to blur the harsh boundaries between the different blocks of colour - but it fades the colour of EVERY contour block with the underlying Land colour, not the next contour block down. Again, ideas?

Effects consider the entire sum of entities on the sheet, not on individual entities. Basically, the sheet is flattened, then effects are applied, so that piece of terrain hiding below another terrain on the same sheet doesn't exist as far as effects are concerned. To get it to fade to terrain below, you should employ multiple sheets.

I saw some advice NOT to "cut" an area out of a contour shape, because it caused problems. I have found a sort of solution by "cutting" one side of the mountain range with the edge of the contour block, bringing it into the sunken area in a straight line, curving around the depression, then taking it back out of the mountain range along the same line, and completing that block. I do the same with the next block up, tracing that line into the centre. In effect, the contour lines work fine - I just have a continuous line through one side of the mountain range. Was I wrong to take the advice not to "cut " an area out of the contour block? Is there a better way?

Multipolies (what you need to use to cut a hole) do have some issues, one of them is making things a little harder to edit if you wish to change things, but you don't need to avoid them at all costs.
However, based on the situation you describe, I would probably just have drawn a lower color contour line on top of the higher level one. The point with contours is to have the right color, it isn't about the entities themselves, so stacking lower level contorus on top in reverse order should also give the effect of a hole.

debreos

Thanks for the reply
I just responded to another comment about "Node Edit" because the description sounded very like what I was experiencing with the contour lines. I thought it might have been because I had been adding, moving, and deleting nodes on the contour blocks to solve problems.

The problem with using Glow for 0 width contour lines is that I think it produces a continuous line. I wanted to use a dashed type line to show it was abstract. I can try reducing line width to see what happens - is there a Glow type effect that matches the dashes, rather than following the whole path?

On the second point - I therefore need to add in a sheet for each contour block level? That's twelve more blocks - even though I have 500m contours, the highest peak is over 6000m!

And I don't think that the third solution (put lower blocks over higher blocks to pretend to show the depression) would work with the second solution. If I am putting blocks on higher sheets to make sure they draw properly, then that internal block would be on a higher sheet than the block above it in level. So when I Edge Fade, it would go in reverse. Unless I could use u=inner fade instead... Which would mean I would then need another ten or so sheets for the inner blocks so I could apply the reverse effect.
Twenty-two extra sheets for contour blocks is getting a bit high....

This is an amazing bit of software - I need to spend more time getting used to it!

Monsen

Yes, you are correct, using different sheets for the contour levels would preclude the third solution unless you add even more sheets.
Don't be afraid to use multiple sheets though. The software doesn't mind. Since sheets can be toggled on/off, it can also be quite helpful to have things on different sheets.

The issue doesn't have anything with adding/deleting/moving nodes by itself, it is just a result of nodes being placed in such a way that the lines form very sharp angles. Of course, manipulating nodes is a way of getting them into that unfortunate position of course.

No, there isn't a dashed glow. That is, if you put glow on a dashed line, it will put the glow around the dashes. This won't allow you to drop the line entirely though, but it will allow you to use a 0-width dashed line and then use the glow to add some thickness to it. Of course, the line will need to be on e separate sheet for this to work as desired.