World of Myirandios - Mivlis-Gyaflaggio region (400 x 400 km)

[Deleted User]

I will use this thread to map my 400 x 400 km (250 x 250 miles) section of the Gyarflags - Weldarmon regional map.

First the regional map for reference:

[Deleted User]

Now the 400 x 400 km square I will be working on - Gyarflags and Mivlis - this is my main focus area, and whee most of my small regional maps, settlement maps and building and dungeons will be located. You will recognize some from the Atlas. I will list them on my next post. They are all hyperlinked.

More work is needed on this, obviously, and apart from getting the regional maps done as an initial start in each, I will be concentrating on this map for Myirandios.

[Deleted User]

Two years later - and many maps later, I have got back to this map. I hope to run a version of Night's Dark Terror on it with a new RPG group.

What's left to do? Some settlements and other places of interest; and text.

Then hyperlinks. So far, Thredeov (Atlas Vertshusen); Krakatos (Atlas Torstan) and Sulaska (Atlas Gronvang), with their associated maps.

A larger version is in the Gallery.

@Monsen and @Ralf I can't export this as a jpg or png greater than 6000 x 6000. Before a few updates ago, I could export this at 12000 x 12000. I have tried it at exportsetmppp at 80000000000, plus smaller and higher numbers. Any solutions?

Jeff B

https://forum.profantasy.com/discussion/comment/111098#Comment_111098

@Quenten I have been having to use the CA129 large export option to get most of my maps to export at a good resolution.

[Deleted User]

OK, I haven't ever used that, so I will give it a tryout when the map is completed.

Monsen

I have tried it at exportsetmppp at 80000000000, plus smaller and higher numbers

That's way to high. You shouldn't go higher than 40000000. You can easily calculate that number yourself. Take that 6000x6000 that you manage to export, multiply that up, and you have 36000000. That's your practical limit for how much large a map export you can do in a single pass. If you set the ppp value higher than you can handle, you'll end up making your max possible single pass size your absolute max as well, because CC3+ won't be allowed to go for more than one pass.

jslayton

Single large exports come with lots of memory pressure. During export, CC3+ needs to allocate up to eight working image buffers for drawing and generating effects as well keeping all of the artwork bitmaps needed in memory. It will rotate artwork bitmaps through its internal bitmap cache as needed, but those working image buffers need to be single blocks of memory.

The "Export Maximum Pixels Per Pass" setting (EXPORTSETMPPP command) controls how many pixels are created in the each of the working image buffers. The system will break up the specified output into bands of images that are very roughly (exportsetmppp / width) pixels high. The default size (4M pixels) is a very small value, but it will work on every machine that it's ever been tried on because the system only requires 8*4M pixels*4bytes/pixel=128MB of RAM in fairly small (16MB) blocks. However, that small value tends to get a lot of bands. For example, trying to export a 4000x4000 pixel image with the default 4M exportsetmppp size will give bands that are about 1000 pixels high, meaning that 4 or so bands are required. Setting exportsetmppp to 40M pixels will give more headroom with a enough memory space left over to still do useful caching of bitmaps (8*40M pixels*4bytes/pixel=1280MB of RAM, or about 1/4 of the total memory space available to CC3+). However, those larger block need contiguous memory to be able to allocate them. To try to make things work better, CC3+ will free up the cache and try to get rid of as much internally-allocated memory as it can before starting an export. However, the system does lots of little allocations all of the time and if those allocations fragment larger memory blocks, then the system won't be able to allocate really big blocks.

Some effects are more or less global effects (point lighting is the worst), requiring the whole image be available during operations. Some effects need absolutely no context beyond a single pixel (HLS and RGB Matrix, for example). Effects that needs lots of context need larger single exports for the best results. If the context available to an effect is too small to do its job, then visible banding will show up in the final output image.

How to get the largest possible single images during export?

• Use RESMODE to allow the system to pick the resolution of bitmap artwork as needed by selecting "Automatic Bitmap Quality". Always forcing the artwork to "high" resolution will force CC3+ to load larger versions of the bitmap artwork, which usually aren't needed for onscreen display.
• Also on RESMODE, make sure that the "Use memory cache for bitmaps" checkbox is checked and that the "Size (default = -1)" value right under that it set to -1. Letting CC3+ manage your bitmap cache size will let it optimize for total memory usage.
• Use EXPORTSETMPPP to set a reasonable per-band size such as 40M (40000000), keeping in mind that CC3+ will need to allocate 8 blocks of [4 * exportsetmppp] bytes to do the export.
• Make sure that your export isn't using more memory than you expected because antialiasing is set high. The "Antialias" checkbox on the "Bitmap Options" can cause your image to be larger (up to sixteen times larger) than you might have intended. If the "Antialias" checkbox is turned on, there will be a "work size" indicator on that dialog that shows the physical size needed to service your request.
• Make the CC3+ window as small as practical right before doing the export to reduce the size of the onscreen drawing buffers needed. Modern high-resolution monitors can make CC3+ use almost as much memory as the entire export. Making the displayed onscreen image as small as possible right before doing an export can reduce the memory pressure. You can restore the window size after the export, but you're optimizing for a large single operation here.
• Immediately before attempting to do a large single export, restart CC3+ (with the smaller window) and make your first command be your export. Doing this step will ensure that the largest-possible contiguous blocks of memory are available for export.

How to get the largest possible images? Do lots of images and stitch them together. The CA129 large image export operation does this and can get much larger images than any possible single CC3+ export.

[Deleted User]

Thanks, Jo, this has been very useful. I will try it out when I have completed this map.

[Deleted User]

Well, I have been able to download a 12,000 x 12,000 pixel jpg and png. Thanks to all above.

Moreover, I have completed it - well, insofar as a map for the area of adventuring can ever be completed. I have already linked many maps of my own which were also put in the Atlas, and will also be using many of the other maps - buildings, dungeons and settlements.

A larger version is in the gallery.

Wyvern

Lot of detail there, certainly!

If this was going into the Atlas, I'd suggest a rethink on some of the labelling, as to my eye much of it's getting lost amongst the terrain in places (using the larger Gallery version to check this). Indeed, there are labels visible on that version that I didn't spot on the Forum one. Since it's for personal use, that's probably less of an issue though!

[Deleted User]

Ii will be using the 12000 X 12000 pixel version.