Color key isn't working again
HelenAA
🖼️ 2 images Surveyor
Sorry but my color key isn't cutting through anything! It disappears completely. I've physically moved the land mass to have a look. Not there. My settings are right. the only thing I've done is to extend the drawing area.=
Comments
Could you post the .fcw, I can have a look and see if I can spot the issue.
sure.
ten minutes later: I can't find the ruddy file! Sorry. Will carry on looking though.
Hi Remy, I was absolutely sure I'd saved the ruddy file, and though I have found a version of the extended drawing area, it’s part of a manual extension because enlarging a file through CC3+ the original is pinned to 0,0 where as I wanted to enlarge with the already drawn bit at the top left. So I took the borders off a blank map and inserted it in below the already drawn map.
it took ages to remove all the black edges by hand but then I started to draw. I'm having major difficulties with fpoly either from the list of drawing tools down the side and via drawtoolsp in the command line owing to things outside PF. anyway with lines having three 'ends' - start, midway through the line and the end - and I was relying on color key to help make realistic shapes. So when I found the shapes disappearing I really didn't know what to do.
Hi all, does the Color Key work when drawn over top of terrain fills? I'm not convinced based on previous battles with it.
The Colour key works as long as you have these three things set up correctly:
If you want to cut the same hole in other sheets, for example you've cut a hole in your land that you want to cut in the terrain that lies on it, then you will have to set up the same thing for that sheet as well. It doesn't work for multiple sheets, but only the one its on.
Do terrain fills work as the sheet they are on top of? E.g Ocean (background) -> Land on Land Sheet -> terrain fill farmland on the Land Sheet
A Color Key only works on the one sheet that it's on. If you want to cut things on other sheets you need to make a new Color Key on that other sheet and add new colour cut out polygons to that sheet above the polygons you are cutting.
I actually missed a point above. The cut out shape must be on top of all the other shapes on that one sheet.
I don't understand - do I put a color key on TOP of a terrain fill?
I think we have a terminology conflict in this conversation and that's why we aren't able to understand each other all that well. These are my meanings:
'Color Key' is the sheet effect and nothing else
'Cut out polygon' / 'Cut out shape' is the magenta polygon drawn on the map to cut out shapes in the polygons lying underneath it.
How are you defining the terms you use?
I thought Color Key was the process that actually punched the hole because that's what happened until yesterday. I didn't understand that there was another thing that actually made the hole.
Here's a screenshot of my map just before I refreshed the map.
Please can you share the file with us again in it's current state?
I've sorted it out - it turned out that although Color Key was in the list it wasn't at the top as I had thought. When I got back from a nasty virus I looked again and saw I'd put it below Edge Fade - not above it, I'm sorry.
No need to apologise!
I hope you are feeling a lot better now :)
I do too!!!
Color Key is acting up again. It won't let me move a poly away from the junction of three (or more) polys - all that happens is I get all sheets being selected as below
Your color key poly is grouped with your landmass. If you use LIST on it, you'll see that it reports a group.
You can use the UNGROUP command to ungroup them, or temporaily turn off group locking by clicking that Locked button in the lower right.
success!
not success AT ALL. my stupid hands did something that wiped 40% of my map, and part of what got wiped was what Remy ungrouped and it’s the focal point of the story behind my map!!!! I've tried to ungroup that bit after ungrouping the entire map but its not playing ball :(
I'm not putting the fcw today, if I can't get at that flaming map by tomorrow this time, then I will. I had been at 98% complete too. <sorrowful face>Autosave wasn't any help either.....
Sorry to hear you have so much troubles, but hopefully you'll manage to sort it out.
When you say wiped 40% of your map, make sure to check out things like sheets and sheet order. You may end up with something on an unexpected sheet after ungrouping, which means things may just be hiding out under something, like below instead of above your landmass or other terrain.
Hi Everyone!
I'm hijacking this, as I'm a little stumped with color key as well. I used it successfully before, but in this map it doesn't want to cut through the black.
I originally tried to cut through a png, that was supposed to be a nice background around the round magenta shape, but that didn't work. I was not sure if color key is able to cut through a png so I thought I just let it cut through a poligon (the black rectangle) and give it a proper fill style once it cuts through it.
Alas: it does not work :(
here are the informations about the poligons and the color key effect.
As I always get confused with opacity and transparency, I also tried 50%, but it looked the same.
Does anyone see what I did wrong?
I don't mind you hijacking the thread!
I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets muddled by opacity, @Fersus . Transparency isn't quite as bad because if you can't see anything you have gone too far in whichever direction: I tend to put either a large or small number in to start with and adjust as needed!
I do the same ^^. With transparency I don't have this problem, as it's the same word in German (my native tongue). But for some reason I never can get it into my head, that opacity is the opposite...
Do you have the FCW file for us, Fersus?
Sure, @Loopysue
There are some custom icons in there, so you'll get some red X, but as the color key is not even working on simple polygons that shouldn't be a problem...
ok, I think I got it!
Layer MERGE was hidden -.-
Sorry for wasting your time :/
You aren't wasting my time :)