Live Mapping: Shaded Contours (Annual Vol 2)
Loopysue
ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
Hi everyone! :D
In this week's Live Mapping session, Ralf will be returning to the cancelled topic of two weeks ago, and looking at creating shaded relief maps.
Come along and join in, or watch later :)
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30 minute shout :)
My working on my television settings a week or so ago has helped. I could always see the map in focues, but the menu text was blurry. Both were readable this time. 40" HiSense tv.
That explained a lot for me. I couldn't figure out how to do it and didn't see (or understand) anything in the manuals about it. I am not sure it is good for my game maps, but it does give a better sense of terrain slope.
To avoid the situation where the bevels don't line up properly, would it be better to draw your 1st beveled contour, set the bevel effects to what you want, then draw the rest of contours and apply the bevel effects?
Yes, you could do that - alternate the contour and bevel sheets, so that you have a giant bevel sandwich. That might not match up entirely either.
There is a thread somewhere on the forum where (I think it was one of @WeathermanSweden's) I think the hill shading was exported from FT3+ and used in CC3+ to provide a perfect result. However, this is a new tool that emerged with the publication of FT3+, and neither Ralf nor I have had the time to play with it just yet.
Forgot to post this after the livestream. I know there was some further discussion about Bevel Effect problems and the changing appearance of the Bevel at different zoom levels in the chat during the stream, some of which Ralf touched upon in the video. I'm not sure if anything was resolved later in this regard (I know sometimes these discussions move to the FaceBook page, which I don't use).
I wanted to add that if you have the CA169 Fantasy Town Annual from 2021 January, there are hill and contour drawing tools in that which use the dark Solid bitmap fills and the Bevel Effect to generate hills. While you could of course create your own drawing tool in any style similarly to test out, these do come ready to use as part of that package. I've been mapping a lot with this style in recent months, and it has been interesting to experiment with the hill tools, to see just what drawing different shapes can generate, including what seem to be flattened, or even indented (so crater-like) hilltops sometimes.
This probably doesn't help move forward the bevel-zoom issues, but it might help those wanting to try things like the shaded relief techniques get a better feeling for what is possible using the Solid fills and the Bevel Effect.
There are two bevel effects in CC3+: "Bevel" and "Bevel, Lighted". Bevel is based on code that creates rectangular buttons lit from the upper-left, which is why it has only 45-degree angles and not much in the way of controls. Bevel, Lighted creates a shapeburst-type image and then uses that image to generate lighting used to modulate the underlying image. It has a lot of controls, perhaps too many (certainly some overly complex ones). Keeping the area for which the bevel is computed from touching the edge of the window is the best way to avoid changing the apparent shapes of things.
Ah, that last paragraph may sort out some of the problems I have been having. Thanks Joe