Mountain Range, Symbols, scale and other issues on a continent sized map
Hello all! I’m brand new to mapping with CC3, although I’ve been drooling over the programs for years now. I currently have CC3, CD3, DD3, FT3, and the Tome of Ultimate Mapping. I’ve gone through some of the video tutorials, and plunged in on the deep end of trying to make a world map.
Here’s the background on my question.
I have created a world in FT3 that I’m quite happy with. There are a few large continents with some small islands and such. I saved the FT3 map that I liked so that I have it available to make different ones at different scales. What I’m trying to do at the moment is to map out the central continent, and then break it down to the detail maps for places of interest that I want to map for players (such as cities, ruins and the like). I worked with the FT3 map to get the mountains the way I wanted them (I’m not particularly interested in whether it’s “accurate” to world building and such. That may be something I work with later on, but as of now it holds no interest for me, I just want to manage a map that doesn’t look like something that went through a blender…LOL). I exported one of the large continents with the expectation of recreating the mountain ranges and such based on the FT3 map. I exported the map as a coastline only one since I didn’t like any of the exports that showed the height information, with the intention of recreating them myself on the map using symbols.
Now to the question/issue.
I suspect my problem is one of scale. My continental map is over 6000 miles across and the problem that I’m having is that the symbols either make the continental map look too small for its actual scale if I enlarge the mountain symbols, and if I make the symbols small, when I try to put the ranges in they look crowded, and for lack of a better term, “yucky”. Another issue is that the mountain range is “fat” on one end, where the higher mountains are supposed to be. I’m guessing that I’m going to run into this with other things, like the city and forest symbols.
What I have done so far.
I’ve tried changing the style of the mountains, and the one that I got to look closest to what I was looking for was done in more of a written map style, but that’s not really what I’m looking for (nor was it really what I was trying to do, but it came closer than anything else I’ve done so far). I have the Tome of Ultimate Mapping (bought it today, in fact), and while I look forward to running through the tutorials there, I didn’t see anything immediately applicable to my current situation.
I’ve looked through the forums, both here and on the Cartographer’s Guild website, and though it is possible I have overlooked the nugget of wisdom I’m looking for, I have tried every search I can think of and haven’t seen anything on this subject. The only information I’ve really found on mountains at all is go from top to bottom, left to right (or cheat and use the sort symbol command), less is more, and your symbols should be scaled at map width/1000.
I would really appreciate some advice on this one; I’ve been stumped on it now for more than a week. (I’ll include some of the different things that I’ve tried as well – don’t laugh too hard).
List of attachments:
Written Map Style: Main Continent Parchment
Two maps I'm not happy with:
Main Continent 005/005a
Thanks in advance,
RedSatyr
Here’s the background on my question.
I have created a world in FT3 that I’m quite happy with. There are a few large continents with some small islands and such. I saved the FT3 map that I liked so that I have it available to make different ones at different scales. What I’m trying to do at the moment is to map out the central continent, and then break it down to the detail maps for places of interest that I want to map for players (such as cities, ruins and the like). I worked with the FT3 map to get the mountains the way I wanted them (I’m not particularly interested in whether it’s “accurate” to world building and such. That may be something I work with later on, but as of now it holds no interest for me, I just want to manage a map that doesn’t look like something that went through a blender…LOL). I exported one of the large continents with the expectation of recreating the mountain ranges and such based on the FT3 map. I exported the map as a coastline only one since I didn’t like any of the exports that showed the height information, with the intention of recreating them myself on the map using symbols.
Now to the question/issue.
I suspect my problem is one of scale. My continental map is over 6000 miles across and the problem that I’m having is that the symbols either make the continental map look too small for its actual scale if I enlarge the mountain symbols, and if I make the symbols small, when I try to put the ranges in they look crowded, and for lack of a better term, “yucky”. Another issue is that the mountain range is “fat” on one end, where the higher mountains are supposed to be. I’m guessing that I’m going to run into this with other things, like the city and forest symbols.
What I have done so far.
I’ve tried changing the style of the mountains, and the one that I got to look closest to what I was looking for was done in more of a written map style, but that’s not really what I’m looking for (nor was it really what I was trying to do, but it came closer than anything else I’ve done so far). I have the Tome of Ultimate Mapping (bought it today, in fact), and while I look forward to running through the tutorials there, I didn’t see anything immediately applicable to my current situation.
I’ve looked through the forums, both here and on the Cartographer’s Guild website, and though it is possible I have overlooked the nugget of wisdom I’m looking for, I have tried every search I can think of and haven’t seen anything on this subject. The only information I’ve really found on mountains at all is go from top to bottom, left to right (or cheat and use the sort symbol command), less is more, and your symbols should be scaled at map width/1000.
I would really appreciate some advice on this one; I’ve been stumped on it now for more than a week. (I’ll include some of the different things that I’ve tried as well – don’t laugh too hard).
List of attachments:
Written Map Style: Main Continent Parchment
Two maps I'm not happy with:
Main Continent 005/005a
Thanks in advance,
RedSatyr
Comments
There are generally 2 options > A Color palette example: (http://forum.profantasy.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=2754) good example or B Symbols
Here's the latest incarnation - not sure if it's too busy, though. I went to FT3 and set up an export to get just the mountain ranges, starting at 9000 ft. I then put outlines on the contours every 10000 feet to help define the mountains. More than that made the "transparency" too hard to place when inserting the file because of the redraw time. In retrospect, it might look better if I deleted the 9000 ft contour line, outlined that altitude (making it an 11000ft gap on that level, rather than 10000ft) or something like that. What do you think?
(If I've licked the mountains, next will be forests...LOL)
You could use edge fade or blur to smoothen it a bit further.
To fade the contour colours into one another, you're best putting each colour on a separate sheet and
applying an "edge fade inner" to each one. At this scale you'll likely need quite a broad fade, maybe 100 miles
or so, to see the effect.