Black & white mapping

bloodymage

I'm working on a product that doesn't really lend itself to full-blown color mapping. Is there a way to draw B&W maps in CC3? Mostly what I need are outlines of features such as caves and passages. Maybe cc3 is the wrong program for this. Recommendations?

jaerdaph

Do you want a true monochromatic black and white image (those two colors only) or greyscale? There are a few black and white styles and annuals available, but if you actually want greyscale why not just do your map in the style you want in color, export an image file (e.g. a PNG file) from the CC3 map and then convert it into a greyscale map in an image program like Photoshop or the free GIMP? That's what I usually do when I need to convert something in greyscale and it isn't that hard to do either.

jaerdaph

If you want true black and white only, check out the Old School Dungeon annual: http://sub.profantasy.com/2007/december07.html Even though the maps featured are in Old School Blue, the style and symbols are varicolor so you could make a black and white map too. And you can use the monochrome symbols and simple style that comes with DD3 as well to do something similar if you don't already own or want to buy the annual.

bloodymage

Well, I don't have Photoshop and I tried GIMP back when I had a brain and it wasn't something I could wrap my head around then. Thanks, I'll play around, see if I can't come up with something.

Monsen

There are plenty of ways to draw a monochrome map.

Firstly, if you only need the basic outlines, and noting fancy, simply use CC3's core drawing tools from the rightmost toolbar. Here you find regular polygons, smooth polygons and fractalized polygons/paths. All of these uses the current color and width, so just make sure to set the desired properties on the top statusbar before using them. Note that this tools does not do anything autmomatically for you, you must set color, width, fill style, layer and sheet manually, as opposed to the drawing tools which sets most of this automatically.

DD3 comes with basic monochrome symbols as well. Start a new Dungeon Map based on the DD Pro dungeon style. It seems like the master filter is a little odd for these symbols, but if you click on the Open Symbol Catalog button, and browse to #Symbols\Dungons\Filled\Monochrome (Where the #-sign refers to your CC3 installation directory) you will find the various monchrome catalogs here. Simply load one of them.


There are also simple monochrome symbols in the handdrawn style in Symbol Set 2, as well as in the December 2010 annual, but you don't need either of these to make simple black & white dungeons and caves.

mosswood17

Also, you can add a Sepia tone to your entire drawing from the sheets menu. Just activate the "Activate Sheet Effects" in the upper right corner, then below it just a little select "Whole Drawing". Click the "Add" button and select "RGB Matrix Process". On the menu that pops up, click the drop down menu next to "Predefined" and select Sepia. It causes everything to become sepia tone. Works really nicely!

Nick

mosswood17

Oh, forgot to mention. The nice thing with doing things this way is that you can use color symbols from anywhere! It overlays everything.

Nick