Splitting an entity with multiple continents into individual continents
smhollingsworth
Traveler
I created a world in FT3 and imported it into CC3+. All of the continents are a single entity. Is it possible to break those apart into individual continents? From what I googled, I saw a single continent can be broken apart, but neither BREAK nor SPLIT seem to be right for what I am trying to do, since none of the continents touch.
Comments
The FT3 exports are what we call 'multipolies' and behave quite different to ordinary polygons. They are made up of ordinary polygons combined into a single entity.
There's an explode button on the left toolbar. Make sure you only have one sheet visible, as sometimes there are duplicated contours - for example contour zero and the coastline coincide with each other. Use Explode only once on that multipoly. Then you should be able to manipulate the continents properly.
Looking a little ahead of that exercise, FT3 exports frequently have way too many nodes to be practical in a CC3 map, so unless you exported from FT3 at a relatively low resolution the next logical step might be to use the SIMPLIFY keyboard command to weed out duplicated or very closely positioned nodes on all your continents. This will help a lot when you start to add more polygons to your map.
Thank you, Sue.
I don't plan to use the continent as entities, themselves, but to trace them. I've tried using an image, but am having a horrible time creating one that is of the correct proportions. It starts out that way, but after making it a transparent PNG, everything is off, even if I keep setting the same size. Trying to fix it via scaling didn't work; making it the correct width made the north and south extend off the map. This seemed easier until I can figure out where things are going wrong with the other.
Explode worked wonderfully.
Have you considered starting with a random FT3 world and sculpting it into the right shape?
I mean if the one you are using isn't right.
I did use FT3 to do all the sculpting, using the One-Day Worldbuilder guide; I love how things look after, so I use it often. I have worked out my image issue - it was the app I was using to make the image transparent. Realizing I had Photoshop installed on this computer fixed everything. Just inserted the file and am ready to trace. Thank you for your help, earlier. I was kind of excited after I exploded the continents and realized I could move them around. Tracing, though, led to a bunch of random lines, which just got worse as I tried to fix them by deleting nodes. I'm still learning...
I'm not sure what you mean about the tracing problem. A screen shot, or maybe the FCW file might be helpful so we can see the problem.
It's all fixed now. It just took more digging through manuals and experimenting on my part to figure out how things worked