Returning beginner: how to change fill angles and fix fill scaling?

galik

I'm a returning beginner. The new Humble Bundle included a few add-ons I was missing, so I decided to make a second attempt to learn how to use CC3+. Unfortunately, I'm encountering the same problems that stifled my progress last year. After searching through the .chm help files, manual, these forums, and the YouTube channel, I think its time to ask for help. If anyone would be willing to assist, perhaps it would help other beginners such as myself.

When attempting to make a room with a floor, there seems to be at least four ways to do this. I can't get any of them to produce a pattern at the correct angle and/or zoom behavior.

1) The "add room" command includes a floor fill option. When using this, the fill renders identically at all zoom levels, and always with a 0 degree rotation.

2) I can create a room without a floor background fill, then use the "floor" command. This creates a floor with fixed scaling at all zoom levels, but is again fixed at a 0 degree angle.

3) I can draw a floor using fractal polygons from a symbol catalog. This method handles zooming and rotation, at least for square shapes. I don't know how to reproduce this with my own fill patterns unless they come preloaded in the symbol catalog.

4) I can draw a polygon manually. As with the 1st method, I can't get zooming or the angle to work as expected. When I attempt to use the "shaded polygon" or "shaded polygon (angle by edge)", it seems to erase the fill pattern I select.

galik

5) It seems that some styles have flooring as true symbols. Using the "dracula dossier" style as an example, I can't figure out how to get these to render at all.

Monsen

When using this, the fill renders identically at all zoom levels

This is due to the particular fills you have picked. Unfortunately, most templates contain some truly ancient fill options which doesn't work very well with modern CC3+. These are the leaves, tiles, stone and woodgrain fills in the list. Avoid these. I am unsure which style your map was made in, but if you have Dungeon designer 3 (DD3) or Symbol Set 4 (SS4) I recommend starting a map in one of those styles as they contain proper bitmap fills you can use with the room and corridor commands. If not, you should also have access to the Annual John Roberts dungeon style which also have nice fills.

You'll normally also want to avoid those vector (line) based fills.

always with a 0 degree rotation

Yea, fills in CC3+ are always drawn without rotation regardless of the angle of the room. You need to use the shaded polygon command on them to rotate the fill

When I attempt to use the "shaded polygon" or "shaded polygon (angle by edge)", it seems to erase the fill pattern I select.

This is again down to your choice of fill. This command only works with bitmap filled entities. If you use one of the proper bitmap fills from the styles I mentioned above, it should work fine.

For the Dracula dossier, I am guessing those geomorph floors weren't intended to be there. Ralf repurposed an older set of symbol catalogs, as they work fine with that particular style, but I guess he forgot the geomorph catalog. The reason it doesn't work is that the fill style used for the floors in the symbols doesn't exist in the actual Dracula dossier template.

galik

Perhaps there is something wrong with my computer. Here is an example of a DDR3 style. The room on the right is converted to a shaded polygon with 45 degrees set for the angle and pitch. Changing to a shaded polygon seems to turn the floor either to white or black regardless of angle or pitch that I select and whether sheet effects are enabled. This example uses DD3's "Stonework Fire King Bitmap" fill.

Loopysue

I think that is where shaded polygons created this way automatically have a roof-like slope down to the edge that was clicked - the 'pitch'. So if you have a pitch of 45 degrees and the slope is away from the global sun, it will get very dark.

You can make CC3 ignore the pitch using the EDITSHADING command on your keyboard and picking the floor. That will bring up this dialog. Ignore most of it. All you need to do is check the Shade Only Copy box and OK.

Monsen

Also note that the Shaded Polygon command changes the fill style to whatever is currently selected. You can use Extract Properties to set the current settings to match that of your poly before running the command. Or you can use the Shaded Polygon (Angle by Edge) command which doesn't do this, and at the same time figures out the correct angle for you.

galik

Well this is strange. I can't get "shaded polygon" to work, but "shaded polygon (angle by edge)" does render the floor - at least for this example.

It works for irregular dimensions as well.

Okay, this is something I can work with as long as I stick to using specific fills. Thank you for your help.

galik

I really like the Dracula Dossier style. Even though its fills can't be rotated, this would be easy to map out a dungeon crawler with. By default, inserting geomorph symbols (sections of wall with floors) does not appear as shown in the thumbnail.

Thanks to Monsen's tip above, I went looking to figure out how these symbols work. As he suggested, they rely on a fill pattern which is not present automatically when you create a map of this style. The solution is to manually insert the geomorphs symbol catalog.

1. Select "Draw -> Insert File..." from the menu.
2. Insert "C:\ProgramData\Profantasy\CC3Plus\Symbols\Modern\Floorplans\Dracula Dossier\Geomorphs.FSC" into the map.
3. Any geomorph symbols you already placed will suddenly show their intended fills.

JimP

You could load a fill into Irfanview, L or R to rotate it 90 degrees.

Or Ctrl-U for fine rotation, save as a different filename, and use that.

galik

Thanks, that could work.