LOL Jim - you nearly gave me a heart attack in five words! Thanks for the support. this was rendered this morning (midnight last night for most of you US folks). I built the entire province of Cherrin, and was really pleased with it only something happened during an autosave, and now I'm back to just the roads. Never mind. I've switched autosave off for now, and I'm manually saving every ten minutes by a stopwatch timer I've got on my desk Maybe the second attempt will be even more pleasing to the eye than the first.
I usually have autosave on, so if it does crash I can open the autosave file. This time, however, it was the autosave that messed up, and once CC3+ crashed I couldn't open the autosave version - lost 4 hrs work.
Never mind. I've let Ralf know and set him a copy of the messed up autosave file in the hope of finding out what went wrong, but there's no hurry. I'm happy doing it by hand for now. It seems to be much happier now I don't have autosave running in the background.
Have you ever noticed how the second time you make a map of the same thing, it all seems to happen faster and better than the first, so maybe this was a blessing in disguise?
I'll upload another new version in a few hours time. I only have 2 days a week that are mine, now, so I'm going to work through the night to get what I would have done in a week before sorted out.
I save as to a string of filenames. Filename01_0001, do some work, filename01_0002, etc. Yes, it leads to lots of files. I save as often as every 2 minutes. After lots of symbols, maybe 15 or 20 at the most. If I used effects, it would be before and after effects.
Most of the time; for dungeons I have around 50 to 180 files. Cities, at least 20, as many as 200. Countries, up to 50 or more.
If I lose one due to a crash, I have a file less than 5 minutes previous.
If I get nervous, due to me being tired, my computer has been acting up, etc. I save even more and more often. I have an external USB hard drive I save older map files to. The terabyte ones have come way down in price.
Goodness Jim. That certainly sounds like a lot of trouble. At the speed I draw (dead slow with lots of thinking breaks) I'd be saving the same version about ten times over before anything changed, so every ten minutes is enough for me
I'm still working on MC right now, and I haven't had so much as a stutter since I turned the auto save off!
I'm beginning to wonder if the crash on save problem that Storm and I were having a couple of days ago might not be caused by something to do with auto save not working quickly enough on really big files, and tripping over itself as I continue to draw while its trying to save the file. I'm up to about 86 sheets and about 150 effects.
I will log a tech question in the morning. Its only about 3 am in Germany for now
The weekend 'burn' is going well, but I will have to sleep soon. Its 4 am. At last - a new section of the city: Cherrin, a combined boatyard/fishing port (needs more boat paraphernalia lying around, but the basics are there). The buildings in this section are biased towards large merchant houses and small industries associated with the dock and the fish market - glue factories and so on (need some smoke plumes I think), so they are larger than the buildings elsewhere on the island
All the ships are a very nice touch. There is just so much awesome work that is going into this. :-)
The draws would be subject to flash floods during heavy rains, yet I see roads going strait up them. Will there be drainage somewhere? In addition, the road to the northwest that heads directly up the mountain from the gate. It seems that this would be to steep for practical use. I don't see mules pulling any kind of wagon up that nor anyone crazy enough to take a wagon down it. It has to be almost vertical. Maybe lifts for bringing up supplies? The Fortress of Salzburg used such a system.
Apologies for nick picking such beautiful work, but in the military we use topographical maps all the time and I have had to find a way to get my big vans with the satellite dishes and line of site radio antennas on top of high ground a lot. As such, I look at the practicality of things.
The drainage is subterranean - This being limestone country with no clay base in any of its valley floors - think: limestone pavement. That is why the spring/well in the Observatory garden is such a weirdling thing - but only explained in the novel.
As for flash floods - neither the Merles nor the Blucrans have ever been stupid enough to build anything on any slope that is known to be subject to such torrents (and in that way are certainly more advanced than our own 21st century civilisation which has the audacity to think that it can get away with doing such nutty things), and they don't have any tarmac to worry about things getting ripped up and washed away. Its a low tech society caught somewhere between our own Iron age and our 12th century AD. If your nicely worn path gets a bit chewed up you just go right on ahead and walk another one into existence with your multitudinous feet. The use of ladders and knotted ropes between levels has long been the custom for the Merles at least, who are native to this island. They have also cut many steps and channels both in the surface and underground (note the tunnel under Jamne Head) for their own convenience. Some of these tunnels are completely unknown to their Blucran conquerors, and disguised as the entrance holes to humble cave dwellings (of which there are hundreds on the island).
As I develop the paths along the steeper cliffs, you will begin to see evidence of these caves, and maybe a few of the longer ropes and climbing net systems. Don't forget that these people are as agile as goats, and extremely fit compared to our own relatively lazy 21st century selves with all our technology to help us get around. It is nothing for a Merle to shift a weight of anything up to (and sometimes even beyond) 50 kilos right from the Flats (that's the sands and the marsh area) to the Sayer compound on top of the island in less than a day. They are built like Nepalese Sherpas and are the ant to our comparatively flabby caterpillar!
Transporting heavier things up and down the cliff, like all the food and ale consumed by the wealthy upper town residents and the Sayers themselves? Aaaah. Well that would definitely be telling rather too much and spoiling a whole load of surprises, but its there all right and it has a lot to do with Eonat's recently deceased mother, who was a revered and much loved... if slightly quirky... inventor
I'm glad that you asked these questions, because I know that if I do mess up and I really haven't thought about something properly, you will be kind enough to help me by pointing it out to me.
Awesome background Loopysue - I love it. It demonstrates a point I have made before. Sometimes the map drives the story and sometimes the story drives the map. Truly wonderful work! :-)
Thanks robotrock. I've done a lot more work to the sea since then, and I can hardly wait to upload this evening... but I really must add some more city to it first!
I really meant to bash on with adding a ton of buildings to the city, and I have added a couple more, but I got a bit distracted by the sea. Its been in my mind a lot lately due to some of my friends drawing underwater maps for the current Cartographer's Guild Challenge. When I stepped back from the screen and took a critical look at my own ocean the first thing that struck me was that I had no obvious patches of seaweed, which at this scale would be visible down through the water near the shore. I found a suitable texture and started drawing in the weed, only to discover that the water wasn't really transparent enough to see it to the correct depth. A couple of hours later, and after many wiggly patches of seaweed, and fiddling about with the Sheet effects, this is the result.
I have also replaced the rather inappropriate battle ships that I had turned into fishing boats with some of Jo's rather more attractive and far more appropriate fishing boats, and added a couple of wrecks for interest
Posted By: LoopysueWhen I stepped back from the screen and took a critical look at my own ocean the first thing that struck me was that I had no obvious patches of seaweed, which at this scale would be visible down through the water near the shore.
Excellent. I don't remember anyone here coming up with his good idea before, and it certainly is a cartographic idea that I never have had, but, now that we're there ....
Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm.
I don't know what seaweed is like off the coast near Dorset. I've never been there. But I do know about seaweed patches off the coasts of Scotland, or seaweed patches in the South China Sea or in the Pacific off the California coast. And ... well ... they're all not like that. They're all really patches of seaweed with breaks in between, rather than something that follows a coastline perfectly like a contiguous forest.
Thank you, Vintyri Keine genommen (and I REALY hope that says "none taken")
I'm so used to seeing the sea that I take it for granted that you have to have patches of weed in the shallows, so it wasn't so much an inspiration as a realisation as to why the water looked wrong.
The weed off Portland looks a lot like this at certain times of the year - notably winter, when the North Atlantic storms rip straight up the English Channel and hit Chesil Beach, sometimes with hurricane force. That causes the stones to roll and bounce along the sea bed, which leaves this weird looking pattern where they are deposited on top of the existing weed beds.
However, I appreciate that Chesil Beach is probably an exception, and that I have only ever seen it obliquely from the top of Portland (250ft cliff), so I may well join a few of those patches together yet
I'm also thinking of making the weed just a tad more orange, and a tad lighter.
Up to a few versions ago, I thought the background of this map was very beautiful (and I really enjoyed seeing its different versions), but I was not sure how this could turn into a city map. I saw so many narrow terraces, and thought it could never contain enough houses. But now the butterfly is starting to pry open its chrysalis, and we start seeing full districts. And at the same time you keep adding more and more details in the background itself, continuing improving what already was quite impressive! Keep up the marvellous work!
You're right of course, the terraces are very narrow, but there are hundreds of caves in each of them, so there will be an awful lot of paths just disappearing into the caves
I didn't like the entrance to the city. In the plot there's a riot in the square... only I didn't have a square.
I have one now, but it came at a heavy price. Most of the first part of the city had to be demolished so that I could reorganise the wall, the entrance, the angle of the roads... everything really.
I couldn't stand the rest of the horrible roads any more (wish I'd kept the paths I laid out), so I just got rid of them so that I wouldn't have to see through them any more as I worked. I also added a lot more detail to the ocean, and knocked a couple more buildings down in Cherrin to make space for the all important fish-glue/varnish/paint/seaweed-gelatine/general-organic-chemical plant, complete with its plume of foul black seaweed smoke. There's going to be an even bigger industrial site on the opposite side of the island, but more on that when we get there.
I think that's about the only changes I've managed to make in the last couple of days
Posted By: Loopysueto make space for the all important fish-glue/varnish/paint/seaweed-gelatine/general-organic-chemical plant, complete with its plume of foul black seaweed smoke. There's going to be an even bigger industrial site on the opposite side of the island, but more on that when we get there.
Hey, Lady! I read that! I'll have you know I'm a supporting Greenpeace member. You keep this kind of stuff up, and I'll see to it that we come and get you!
Sue, this is stunningly beautiful. Awe-inspiring. You have shown the world what a true artist can do with CC3+. I'm so glad you've decided to share your work with us!
Aw, Shessar That's really high praise coming from the creator of so many beautiful maps and indispensable techniques. Thank you
As for being an artist... well... hmmmn.
All I do is dream of how I would really want it to look if I was paying through the nose for someone else to do it for me, then spend several days fiddling with the effect controls... one effect at a time, one attribute at a time, one digit at a time... just to see if I can't sort it out for myself before I go and waste all that money. That's why its taking so long to get there - 1% inspiration 99% hard labour (and I know I'm not the first person to say that, but I can't remember who I'm semi-quoting)
The ocean did take quite a long time to get sort of right. The weed, I think, could do with a bit of fractalizing around the edges, as its clumping too much into definite lobes - a bit like a child's drawing of clouds, but I'll leave it at that for now. Feathering it out a bit would cost me rather too much in processing power right now, when I'm about to add the rest of the city
That's just the default font. I threw in a few place names when I started, and moved them around or curved them to a position where they wouldn't be in the way of the drawing work.
I don't usually bother about what the labels look like till near the end of the process - part of the 'finishing' work, like the fancy handles on a chest of drawers LOL!
I've been thinking about using Tolkien, just to keep it in line with the font I've used on the other maps of Ethran, but I'm not so sure it would work well with this map.
I've been trying for days now to figure out what this map reminds me of. Well today it finally hit me. In one of the annuals they talk about how to make a 2d map into a raised 3d map. This reminds me of that. Only the graphics on this seem more realistic and less cartoony.
I really love the way this map is turning out. To be honest I've been afraid to tinker too much with the effects because I didn't want to mess something up so bad that I would have to start an entire map over. I've messed with a few of them but not to the level that I should have been doing. Now you are inspiring me to start doing that. Thank you for that.
The relief was created outside CC3+. I exported a bitmap from one of the earlier versions of the city with all the land levels done in tones of grey - from black sea to white mountain top. I used it to generate a terrain in Bryce, which I then eroded to smooth out the steps between levels, and rendered from above with the light in the right direction. I then imported the resulting bitmap back into CC3 and applied a blend mode to impose the shading of the new relief map onto the 2D map beneath it.
The bitmap itself has to be high resolution, or it pixelates the underlying details (I discovered). The CC3 map size is 5000 x 5000, so I had to make the relief bitmap 2500 x 2500 before it stopped having that effect. Its a 16 MB file and has the drawback of making everything noticeably slower. I sometimes work with it hidden so I can get on with stuff that isn't affected by it.
I should mention that half the bitmap is transparent. I processed it in CorelDraw to get rid of the area around the island, and to remove as much of the white as I could before importing it, so it isn't as large a file as it could be for that resolution.
The rest of the map is controlled by the inbuilt CC3 effects. About 170 of them in all, spread out over 84 sheets.
There is no reason why any effect should ruin a map beyond repair. You can turn them on and off individually, or simply delete the ones you don't like. However, if you feel unsure it would probably be best to save several versions as you go along. I am currently working on Version 6 of this map.
Hark at me! I'm beginning to sound like a stuffy old lecturer.
Comments
Never mind. I've let Ralf know and set him a copy of the messed up autosave file in the hope of finding out what went wrong, but there's no hurry. I'm happy doing it by hand for now. It seems to be much happier now I don't have autosave running in the background.
Have you ever noticed how the second time you make a map of the same thing, it all seems to happen faster and better than the first, so maybe this was a blessing in disguise?
I'll upload another new version in a few hours time. I only have 2 days a week that are mine, now, so I'm going to work through the night to get what I would have done in a week before sorted out.
Most of the time; for dungeons I have around 50 to 180 files. Cities, at least 20, as many as 200. Countries, up to 50 or more.
If I lose one due to a crash, I have a file less than 5 minutes previous.
If I get nervous, due to me being tired, my computer has been acting up, etc. I save even more and more often. I have an external USB hard drive I save older map files to. The terabyte ones have come way down in price.
I'm still working on MC right now, and I haven't had so much as a stutter since I turned the auto save off!
I'm beginning to wonder if the crash on save problem that Storm and I were having a couple of days ago might not be caused by something to do with auto save not working quickly enough on really big files, and tripping over itself as I continue to draw while its trying to save the file. I'm up to about 86 sheets and about 150 effects.
I will log a tech question in the morning. Its only about 3 am in Germany for now
The weekend 'burn' is going well, but I will have to sleep soon. Its 4 am. At last - a new section of the city: Cherrin, a combined boatyard/fishing port (needs more boat paraphernalia lying around, but the basics are there). The buildings in this section are biased towards large merchant houses and small industries associated with the dock and the fish market - glue factories and so on (need some smoke plumes I think), so they are larger than the buildings elsewhere on the island
The draws would be subject to flash floods during heavy rains, yet I see roads going strait up them. Will there be drainage somewhere? In addition, the road to the northwest that heads directly up the mountain from the gate. It seems that this would be to steep for practical use. I don't see mules pulling any kind of wagon up that nor anyone crazy enough to take a wagon down it. It has to be almost vertical. Maybe lifts for bringing up supplies? The Fortress of Salzburg used such a system.
Apologies for nick picking such beautiful work, but in the military we use topographical maps all the time and I have had to find a way to get my big vans with the satellite dishes and line of site radio antennas on top of high ground a lot. As such, I look at the practicality of things.
Great work!
Thanks for the compliment
The drainage is subterranean - This being limestone country with no clay base in any of its valley floors - think: limestone pavement. That is why the spring/well in the Observatory garden is such a weirdling thing - but only explained in the novel.
As for flash floods - neither the Merles nor the Blucrans have ever been stupid enough to build anything on any slope that is known to be subject to such torrents (and in that way are certainly more advanced than our own 21st century civilisation which has the audacity to think that it can get away with doing such nutty things), and they don't have any tarmac to worry about things getting ripped up and washed away. Its a low tech society caught somewhere between our own Iron age and our 12th century AD. If your nicely worn path gets a bit chewed up you just go right on ahead and walk another one into existence with your multitudinous feet. The use of ladders and knotted ropes between levels has long been the custom for the Merles at least, who are native to this island. They have also cut many steps and channels both in the surface and underground (note the tunnel under Jamne Head) for their own convenience. Some of these tunnels are completely unknown to their Blucran conquerors, and disguised as the entrance holes to humble cave dwellings (of which there are hundreds on the island).
As I develop the paths along the steeper cliffs, you will begin to see evidence of these caves, and maybe a few of the longer ropes and climbing net systems. Don't forget that these people are as agile as goats, and extremely fit compared to our own relatively lazy 21st century selves with all our technology to help us get around. It is nothing for a Merle to shift a weight of anything up to (and sometimes even beyond) 50 kilos right from the Flats (that's the sands and the marsh area) to the Sayer compound on top of the island in less than a day. They are built like Nepalese Sherpas and are the ant to our comparatively flabby caterpillar!
Transporting heavier things up and down the cliff, like all the food and ale consumed by the wealthy upper town residents and the Sayers themselves? Aaaah. Well that would definitely be telling rather too much and spoiling a whole load of surprises, but its there all right and it has a lot to do with Eonat's recently deceased mother, who was a revered and much loved... if slightly quirky... inventor
I'm glad that you asked these questions, because I know that if I do mess up and I really haven't thought about something properly, you will be kind enough to help me by pointing it out to me.
Thanks Charles
Ocean
I really meant to bash on with adding a ton of buildings to the city, and I have added a couple more, but I got a bit distracted by the sea. Its been in my mind a lot lately due to some of my friends drawing underwater maps for the current Cartographer's Guild Challenge. When I stepped back from the screen and took a critical look at my own ocean the first thing that struck me was that I had no obvious patches of seaweed, which at this scale would be visible down through the water near the shore. I found a suitable texture and started drawing in the weed, only to discover that the water wasn't really transparent enough to see it to the correct depth. A couple of hours later, and after many wiggly patches of seaweed, and fiddling about with the Sheet effects, this is the result.
I have also replaced the rather inappropriate battle ships that I had turned into fishing boats with some of Jo's rather more attractive and far more appropriate fishing boats, and added a couple of wrecks for interest
Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm.
I don't know what seaweed is like off the coast near Dorset. I've never been there. But I do know about seaweed patches off the coasts of Scotland, or seaweed patches in the South China Sea or in the Pacific off the California coast. And ... well ... they're all not like that. They're all really patches of seaweed with breaks in between, rather than something that follows a coastline perfectly like a contiguous forest.
And I'm sure you know what comes next:
Nix für Ungut!
I'm so used to seeing the sea that I take it for granted that you have to have patches of weed in the shallows, so it wasn't so much an inspiration as a realisation as to why the water looked wrong.
The weed off Portland looks a lot like this at certain times of the year - notably winter, when the North Atlantic storms rip straight up the English Channel and hit Chesil Beach, sometimes with hurricane force. That causes the stones to roll and bounce along the sea bed, which leaves this weird looking pattern where they are deposited on top of the existing weed beds.
However, I appreciate that Chesil Beach is probably an exception, and that I have only ever seen it obliquely from the top of Portland (250ft cliff), so I may well join a few of those patches together yet
I'm also thinking of making the weed just a tad more orange, and a tad lighter.
You're right of course, the terraces are very narrow, but there are hundreds of caves in each of them, so there will be an awful lot of paths just disappearing into the caves
Is that... cheating? LOL
Two steps back, one step forward...
I didn't like the entrance to the city. In the plot there's a riot in the square... only I didn't have a square.
I have one now, but it came at a heavy price. Most of the first part of the city had to be demolished so that I could reorganise the wall, the entrance, the angle of the roads... everything really.
I couldn't stand the rest of the horrible roads any more (wish I'd kept the paths I laid out), so I just got rid of them so that I wouldn't have to see through them any more as I worked. I also added a lot more detail to the ocean, and knocked a couple more buildings down in Cherrin to make space for the all important fish-glue/varnish/paint/seaweed-gelatine/general-organic-chemical plant, complete with its plume of foul black seaweed smoke. There's going to be an even bigger industrial site on the opposite side of the island, but more on that when we get there.
I think that's about the only changes I've managed to make in the last couple of days
As for being an artist... well... hmmmn.
All I do is dream of how I would really want it to look if I was paying through the nose for someone else to do it for me, then spend several days fiddling with the effect controls... one effect at a time, one attribute at a time, one digit at a time... just to see if I can't sort it out for myself before I go and waste all that money. That's why its taking so long to get there - 1% inspiration 99% hard labour (and I know I'm not the first person to say that, but I can't remember who I'm semi-quoting)
The ocean did take quite a long time to get sort of right. The weed, I think, could do with a bit of fractalizing around the edges, as its clumping too much into definite lobes - a bit like a child's drawing of clouds, but I'll leave it at that for now. Feathering it out a bit would cost me rather too much in processing power right now, when I'm about to add the rest of the city
That's just the default font. I threw in a few place names when I started, and moved them around or curved them to a position where they wouldn't be in the way of the drawing work.
I don't usually bother about what the labels look like till near the end of the process - part of the 'finishing' work, like the fancy handles on a chest of drawers LOL!
I've been thinking about using Tolkien, just to keep it in line with the font I've used on the other maps of Ethran, but I'm not so sure it would work well with this map.
I really love the way this map is turning out. To be honest I've been afraid to tinker too much with the effects because I didn't want to mess something up so bad that I would have to start an entire map over. I've messed with a few of them but not to the level that I should have been doing. Now you are inspiring me to start doing that. Thank you for that.
The relief was created outside CC3+. I exported a bitmap from one of the earlier versions of the city with all the land levels done in tones of grey - from black sea to white mountain top. I used it to generate a terrain in Bryce, which I then eroded to smooth out the steps between levels, and rendered from above with the light in the right direction. I then imported the resulting bitmap back into CC3 and applied a blend mode to impose the shading of the new relief map onto the 2D map beneath it.
The bitmap itself has to be high resolution, or it pixelates the underlying details (I discovered). The CC3 map size is 5000 x 5000, so I had to make the relief bitmap 2500 x 2500 before it stopped having that effect. Its a 16 MB file and has the drawback of making everything noticeably slower. I sometimes work with it hidden so I can get on with stuff that isn't affected by it.
I should mention that half the bitmap is transparent. I processed it in CorelDraw to get rid of the area around the island, and to remove as much of the white as I could before importing it, so it isn't as large a file as it could be for that resolution.
The rest of the map is controlled by the inbuilt CC3 effects. About 170 of them in all, spread out over 84 sheets.
There is no reason why any effect should ruin a map beyond repair. You can turn them on and off individually, or simply delete the ones you don't like. However, if you feel unsure it would probably be best to save several versions as you go along. I am currently working on Version 6 of this map.
Hark at me! I'm beginning to sound like a stuffy old lecturer.
Sorry! I hope it helped