Adding cities & roads to FT3 generated map

billcoke

I really like how I can generate a world in FT3 that I can then view in Google Earth. I was wonder though if there is a way for me to add the markings of civilization to my FT3 world? Can I add cities & roads to the FT world that I generate so when I view it in Google Earth I can see where civilization has formed on this world?

There are plenty of great tools in FT3 (ability to raise & lower land), so I would think that adding this type of information would be possible also.

Gold

You can try to add things with the Overlay menu. It can certainly add things like a Compass Rose (as explained in Terraformer 0.5 manual which you can get free with your FT3 registration), or I used Add Overlay to make ice caps on the poles - which I posted a tutorial for the ice caps in Cartographer's Guild, another forum site.

I do not know if Overlays can be used for cities or roads. In theory maybe yes (in conjunction with another graphics program to draw the roads, and use FT3 Add Overlay to show the graphic in the correct position over your fractal world). I am interested to hear if this would work. If anyone has tried it?

As another option (not as good as it sounds), I found a clumsy workaround way, like this: Export Sphere Map of the world. Export KMZ of the world. Open Sphere Map in photoshop (or GIMP, free raster graphic editor), and paint your cities and roads, and save it. Now open the KMZ in your computer not in Google Earth, KMZ is a type of zip folder format so just open the folder and replace the Image in the KMZ with the new Image you created from the sphere map. Now open the KMZ in Google Earth with your new image in the KMZ. It shows your markings! Which is cool. But things are distorted with the global wrapping, because we didn't paint in map perspective in Photoshop/GIMP, so now a circle of a city from our Photoshop Image is not round anymore on the Google Earth, it becomes more eliptical (at high and low latitudes). Another problem is it gets more blurry than you want, when you zoom in, because we have painted at a world-scale not a closeup scale. In conclusion it is possible to paint pixel art on top of the Image in a KMZ file, however it becomes somewhat distorted and pixely on Google Earth.

Perhaps the Overlay can do it?