CC3 Functionality: Questions Before Purchasing

CosmicBob

I am hoping that CC3 can do what I want. I am trying to map a world. I have about 10 individual hand drawn maps that are all of different scale (1cm=Xmi). I want to scan them, then trace them and construct them in CC3. If I create scans of the maps, can I use the scans as a background sheet with the scale of the map? Then trace them and put in all the various symbols and text and things for the individual maps?

Is there a way to define lattitude and longitude by using the grid? If the world is basically spherical and two of the maps I have are of the polar regions, can they have gridlines that converge at the poles?

What I want to end up with is the various seperate maps and then some kind of spherical map or globe rendered using the maps that I have drawn. I know the radius of the planet, so I should be able to figue out how the lat/long should go from the equator to the poles, and so I know where to place the various continents relative to each other.

Can this be done with CC3? I have Fractal Mapper 7, but I have Windows 7 (64bit) and it seems like it will be difficult to get FM7 to work and it looked like CC3 has more features anyway. I am pretty sure I can do the scanning/tracing of the individual maps using sheets, but my big question is how difficult is it to combine them into a world map and have lat/long be correct as a grid instead of a flat grid.

Thanks,

Cosmic Bob

Monsen

Scanning the maps and using them as a background sheet while tracing is very simple. It is also easy to rescale them in CC3 before tracing to make sure they end up at the correct scale.

The internal coordinate system in CC3 is always square, and grids can only be rectangular, isometric or hexagonal. If you need anything other than that, you will need to draw it yourself. There is nothing stopping you from manually drawing any kind of grid you want though, although you cannot get automatic snap points for these (But that is usually not used for overland maps anyway). Creating a longitude/latitude grid can be done by drawing a series of slightly curved lines on the grid sheet.

CC3 also only draw flat maps, so it cannot make/render your map to arbitrary map projections, you will just have to draw the map in the desired projection manually. If you wish to work with globes however, Fractal Terrains might be of interest to you.

JimP

The surface maps of my game world are originally drawn on 5mm hexagon paper, scanned in, and drawn over. Saved as PNGs, uploaded and as zipped fcw files. Around 500 from the 1980s. I have added about 1,100 more.

I don't have latitude and longitude grids, I just arbitrarily added several latitude lines. Well, I measured, and I think I got them correct.

Monsen got the rest.

CosmicBob

Thanks y'all! I have ordered CC3, even though I can't make my globe, it's still going to be really useful for the flat maps with all the sheets/layers and other features.

sdavies2720

Well, you can map a projection. It's what I did with my original world ( see http://AncientDawn.com/world.html ). It's just that there aren't tools in CC3 that allow you to change the projection, and many of the drawing tools assume that you have a rectangular map (but the features that rely on this can be turned off).

In truth, I wish that I'd done a rectangular projection when I started rather than the interrupted one.

Steve

JimP

There are 2 icosahedron flattened template in Cosmographer Pro. One for Gurps and one for Traveler worlds.

I have used them to create quick worlds, as hexagon symbols with basic land types comes with it.

Here are two on my sites: Shass, mystery planet and Tok Tol

Both are home planets for characters on my starship site

CosmicBob

Mine's coming today (I think) but I'm impatient!

Suppose I have my scanned map image as a background and want to put a grid on it. And suppose I want this grid to have an intersection at a specific point in the middle of my scanned map and then have the grid built from there with specific spacing, corresponding to my flat projection. Can I do that, or do I need to draw the lines on my scanned image first? I'd like to use the grid feature of CC3 if possible.

I'm going to give it a try once I get the software and get it installed.

Thanks,

Monsen

The grid can have it's center at any point you wish (Grids are placed by inputting corners though, so you may need to calculate the corner position based on the grid size and where you need that intersection, but that is simple).

Note that grids are regular, with each "cell" being square and of the same size (but you can make this size anything you need). As long as this fits your map, you can use the grid feature. If not, you will need to draw the individual lines that make up your grid manually (And then optionally group them to keep them together)