Hi all....great idea, Tonnichiwa. Count me out, though. I've got too much on my plate between my WizKids contract, my personal campaign and IRL "stuff" going on that I just wouldn't have any time to commit....so, add me to the lurker list
I suspect the first few maps will be easy enough to do in a week, but the further into it we get, the longer each one will take. In the long run, I think milestones are the way to go.
Firstly, great idea! Time and my somewhat erratic visits here preclude my own likely involvement, barring commenting from time to time, perhaps, but I would like to see this succeed. I suppose that classes me in the "probable lurker" group!
I'd suggest a little more structure to the intended class development than just "a map every [x-amount of time]". For instance, what is each map intended to teach? Should maps be designed so they can be reused over time, to demonstrate different special effect techniques, say? An "Edge Fade, Inner" tutorial could be easily added to an existing map, and perhaps more realistically than creating a map just to experiment with that effect, but that could be a goal as one milestone element of a full mapping lesson, of course.
Maybe set out a loose "lesson plan" for the first two or three maps, with what the four (or however many) milestones should be for each, showing how each will build on what's been learned with each previous map.
Personally, I wouldn't have found an island a particularly easy map to begin with, because you have all the problems of coastlines, sea features, etc., as well as the land ones. My first map with CC3 four years ago was a purely land affair, a small area (100 by 80 kilometres in size) with some towns, villages, a couple of religious/unusual sites, and some terrain effects including a couple of rivers and some roads. That seemed a good way to start to me, and having done quite a few more overland and other maps since, on reflection, it still does, although it was quite accidental that I went that way. I appreciate others may feel differently, of course!
I'd also suggest creating a deliberate structure on the Forums for how these lessons/classes are to be presented and stored. As there's clearly now enough support to get the idea started, maybe it would be worthwhile moving this topic to the "Mapping with ProFantasy's Software" Category, which would make it easy to find for new users, and then start each new map/lesson with a fresh topic in that same Category, styling each title as "Mapping Class 101: Map [Add Number] - [Brief description of the lesson]", again so people can find things easily later, and keep the focus simple.
I'd also recommend Tonnichiwa should edit the opening post once each map class has concluded, to add a bullet-point list of what that map-class has covered, because things may come up during the class which would be helpful to know about, but which may not be obvious from the topic's title, plus the title line can be only so long! This would make the tutorials of more lasting benefit, I think.
Hi Lorelei, I understand that kind of commitment. Glad you will be watching though.
Hi Wyvern, Glad you will be watching too.
Thanks Monsen
Ok, again there are some great ideas here.
I like Monson's idea of milestones, I think that will really help people to get the idea behind the lessons. I think a milestone a week isn't asking too much. If it is please let me know.
I also like the idea of saying what each milestone is intended to teach and I think we should use that method for explaining why we are doing something and of course how to do it.
I like your ideas too Wyvern. I think adding structure to the way this is taught is a great idea as well.
So, I gave everyone a while to decide on if they wanted to begin with the Mike Schley overland style or if they wanted to do a different one. So far the votes are for the Mike Schley overland style and no overwhelming votes have come in for anything else so I think we will begin with that style.
Now the thing about the Mike Schley style is that when you get cc3+ and open it for the first time, the Mike Schley style begins with an ocean, not land. I think because of this, the idea of going with an island is probably a better one than going with just a land based map as it should teach people how to create land over the water, which in most overland maps, is one of the first things you do.
I do have a question for everyone in the class though. Is everyone familiar with how to pick and choose a style or does this class need to begin with how to use the very basic stuff of the user interface? Please take the time to answer this question as I need to know what the first lesson should be.
Do you think we should assume that people have worked through the example in the User Manual, and would know the very basic basics about what each of the tools is supposed to do? Or not?
Well, looking over the list of people in the class, I think I have seen maps from just about everyone so I think we'll begin assuming everyone has read the manuals and are familiar with the user interface enough to at least begin a map.
Sadly, I've got to go sit in some government offices for a while today so I won't be able to do anything until I get back.
Hmm... I am not sure what all I know, and don't know. I did do the tutorials, years ago, and it is very likely I simply don't know how to do some basic things. So, start wherever you want to.
Posted By: LoopysueDo you think we should assume that people have worked through the example in the User Manual, and would know the very basic basics about what each of the tools is supposed to do? Or not?
As a teacher, I always start with some basic assumptions on what my students should know - and then make them responsible for asking whenever they don't understand what I am talking about. This does take a bit of practice, as most would rather die than ask anything, but I don't think that will be a problem here. So I think it is safe to assume the basics are known (although I'm pretty sure a lot of people skim through/ignore/misunderstand the manuals, me included, not to mention that non-native speakers of English might actually find the manuals a challenge.) as long as everyone understands they are welcome to ask for the basic stuff.
Posted By: tonnichiwaI do have a question for everyone in the class though. Is everyone familiar with how to pick and choose a style or does this class need to begin with how to use the very basic stuff of the user interface? Please take the time to answer this question as I need to know what the first lesson should be.
I worked through the manual before doing my first map and watched Joe Sweeney's videos (invaluable), so I'm familiar with the basic tools. If I forget one, I'll just raise my hand and ask a question.
I think I am reasonably familiar with CC3+, but I know I could be more efficient, effective and consistent. I've skimmed the manuals and Tome but I have to be honest and say that I only read enough to solve my current task. I want to take advantage of this class (or series of classes) to review the manuals and really understand CC3+.
When we use terminology, may I ask that we try to match the language in the manuals and/or Tome? I'd like to be able to look things up and break myself of bad habits.
Ok, I'm back. I had to go take the General Knowledge quiz for my Commercial Driver's Permit, and the other tests for my Passenger Endorsement, Air Brakes Endorsement, and School Bus Endorsement. Whew!...I passed and only missed 2 questions! yay!
Alright, with the assumption that everyone has at least attempted to read through the manuals and maybe watched a Joe Sweeney video or two (if you haven't done this yet I suggest you do as they are a great help and a lot of fun)I think I'm going to begin this class.
Let me start by telling you a little bit about what kind of a program you have bought. Campaign Cartographer is a mapping program that has been structured to work around a Computer Aided Drafting and Design program called fastCAD. (if you wish to know what fastCAD is please look it up on Google or some other search engine because it would take too long for me to explain it completely to you here)
As such, it does not function the same way as a photo manipulation package like Photoshop or Gimp does. So if you are used to working with those kind of programs then this will be quite different for you.
Campaign Cartographer was designed with the gamer in mind. And it's main concentration is on overland style maps. However, Profantasy has also designed many different types of add on packages which will help you to design other types of maps as well. Campaign Cartographer is a full-fledged Vector graphics program that handles Raster graphics pretty well too.
As such, the possibilities for it's use are endless. You can make Overland maps that are as large as a world down to very small areas. You can make City maps, Dungeon maps Space maps, Isometric Perspective maps, Dioramas (3 dimensional towns that you can print out, fold up, glue together and use for 3d miniature gaming), and even more unusual things like Character pictures for role playing games, card game pieces, tokens, flowcharts, mind maps, character sheets. You can even make an interactive atlas of the maps you have made, so you could for instance, create a map of the world, click on a nation of that world, and have the nation map show up, then click on a city in that nation and have a city map show up, then click on a building in that city and have a building map or dungeon map show up, depending on which one you want. The list of what you can do goes on and on.
There is even a program Profantasy sells that allows you to create biomes and really cool looking maps that look like the kind you would see in a government database. It's called Fractal Terrains 3. You can make a map in that program add all the cool technical features, then import the map to Campaign Cartographer 3 and add many more things to it.
You can also purchase the Cartographer's Annual subscriptions, which come out with another mapping style every single month. If you are looking for a new mapping style I suggest you pick those up.
And I've found that the one item Profantasy sells that will help you become a much better mapper is the Tome of Ultimate Mapping. It has much to teach about every product Profantasy sells. I strongly suggest that if you have not picked it up yet that you make it your next purchase. It is invaluable.
So as you can tell, this is some very sophisticated software.
Now that you know what you are working with lets get started.
EDIT:I decided to go ahead and explain how to get to and use the New Drawing Wizard because we have at least one very new user who I think may benefit from this.
Our First Map
Our maps are created on templates, which are actually FCT files, that give us a foundation of tools on which to create our drawings.
Now, when I create a map I don't just decide I am going to quickly slap down some land and randomly start placing symbols all over it. That road leads to madness and honestly, not very well thought out maps. Instead, I like to think about why I am creating my map in the first place and what I want to accomplish by making the map.
So I will do something like this: " I want to create a map that shows the Isle of Dread. The Isle of Dread is going to be a tropical island filled with dinosaurs, hostile natives of some sort, an active volcano, and some crazy pirates who just happened to come across it and decided to bury some treasure there, but were then taken away as slaves by the natives."
You see, by coming up with a sort of story, you can then keep in your head the way you want the island to look, and you automatically know what you want on it. this saves you trouble down the road if you cannot decide what to put there. If you don't have an idea of what to put there, planning the island out so things flow together naturally may not work and you could end up with things on your island that might not quite fit.
So for our first map we will be exploring how to create a basic map using the tools provided.
Everyone please open up your cc3+ program.
This brings up the cc3+ user interface. Now, because some of us have add ons, if you have the cc3+ icon on the toolbar that is directly above your drawing area, please left click it now. This is called the "Map Menu" button. (If all you have is cc3+ I don't believe it is there but I don't remember. If it is, left click it now) This ensures that the basic overland tools for using cc3+ are loaded into your cc3+ user interface.(Hint: it's the red icon that says cc3+ on it) If you have multiple different add ons, you should always remember to click on whichever add on you plan on using before picking a mapping style from the mapping style menu.
Now, left click on the "new map" icon (it's the one that looks like a paper being folded over and a magic wand waving over the top of it). If you already have a map loaded into cc3+, a little box will appear and ask you if you would like to save changes to your current map. This is obvious but if you want to then click yes, otherwise click no, the box will disappear, and then it will bring up the New Drawing Wizard.
The New Drawing Wizard will present us with some new options. For this class, please left click the circle that says "decide settings myself". This will allow us later to pick what sized map we want to work with instead of having a pre-determined size map that is pre-measured for us. If you want pre-measured map templates then choose "pick a pre-defined template" instead.
Once you have left clicked "Decide Settings Myself", then left click on "Overland Maps" until it is highlighted, then left click the "Next" button.
This brings up the next part of the New Drawing Wizard. In the "Map Style" box, look for the style that says "Mike Schley Overland" and left click it.
A picture of the map style should appear in the box on your right. This is to help you identify if it is the style of mapping you were looking for, and the map style should be highlighted in the left hand box.
In the bottom box it should say "Bitmap Overland Template based on the artwork of Mike Schley."
Now left click the "next" button again.
The third part of the New Drawing Wizard should come up. There will be four boxes, one on each corner of a larger central box. the central box should have a blue field surrounded by a white outline on it.
the four boxes that are surrounding this part of the template are for you to put things in that will be automatically placed on the map at the maps creation. It is for things like a map compass. A scale bar. A copyright notice. However, I like to put those things on as a symbol so I can place them better. So I never use those. Of course, you can if you want to.
Below those boxes on the left hand side are the boxes that define the size of your map. If you did not choose metric when you decided what kind of overland map to make then the size of overland map will be measured in miles. For our map I think maybe a size of 100 width by 80 height might be good. So lets make our map that size. Enter 100 into the width box and 80 into the height box.
Over on the right hand side are the map title box and the the copyright notice box. Always give your map a name because the saving system will never let you progress further unless you do. For my map I am going to name it 101 class map.
You don't have to put anything in the box for copyright if you don't want to but I always do. So I put Crawford Cartography in that box. (yes, my last name is Crawford...Yes, Cyndi is my sister, No, you can't date her, she's married for goodness sakes! :P )
Left click the "Next" button.
This will bring up the 4th New Drawing Wizard page. This page should have a large box a the top with a large blue sqare in it, and a white edge. This is your background layer. It is a bitmap fill of the ocean style in the Mike Schley Overland style. There is a "Map Background" box on the left hand side. Leave it checked. We want a background.
Beneath that box is another box that says "Fill Style" Ocean_MS. This is the identifier for the blue box that you see above. If you want to you could play around by opening that up and seeing what other fill style's are available. But whatever one you highlight will be the one that the map begins with. So if you want Ocean_MS as your background, then leave it as it is.
Go ahead and look through them all now. Click on each one to see what they all look like. But be sure to come back to Ocean_MS before we move on and make sure that it is highlighted.
On the right hand side is a checkbox for adding a grid to your map. If you check it, it will bring up different options for adding different types of grids to your maps. This can be especially helpful if you are drawing in Isometric styles or trying to make Dungeon maps for role playing with miniatures.
But it can get complicated so lets leave it unchecked for now.
Don't worry about the box that says "color" now either. that is for a different class. For now we just want the basics.
Now left click the "Next" button.
This will bring up the fifth page of the New Drawing Wizard.
There should be a box on the left that says "Enable Multiple Levels". this is for adding more than one level to a dungeon map or a floorplan map. We won't use it for this class so leave it unchecked.
Left click the "Finish" button. This will bring up the "save your map" box. Before left clicking save, be sure you take note of where it is saving to so you can come back to it later if something weird happens with your program. Sometimes weird things happen. We don't know why...in my case, I think my computer is haunted... :P
When you finally left click the save button it will now bring you back to the Campaign Cartographer user Interface. It should now have a blue field on it.
Our template has now become the beginning of a drawing.
EDIT: FOR MAPPING 101 CLASS
Ok, before we go any further it has occurred to me that maybe some of the newer people may not know how to upload a picture of their work to this website. So, I think this is important enough that we cover it now. I'm doing this so you know how to show your work.
So you’ve got a great map. You are excited to show everyone on the forums what you have done. But you have one problem…you don’t know how to save your work and upload it to the forum…
Have no fear, we are here to help.
Let’s start with your map. Your map is sitting there staring at you from your Campaign Cartographer User Interface. It’s beautiful. It’s awesome. It’s gonna make everybody on the forums jealous…but…before you can do this there are some things that have to happen.
First thing to do is to ALWAYS check to make sure you have turned on your sheets and effects for your map. (Since this is just for the Mapping 101 class to show our work, however, this time around you don’t really have to) Nothing is worse than saving your map and after it is rendering, realizing that you forgot to turn on the sheets and effects. Your map won’t look anywhere near as good and you will have to start the whole process over again.
So to turn on the sheets and effects on your map, left click on the Sheets and Effects button. It is the one that looks like a bunch of closed manila envelopes stacked on top of each other. If you are unsure, hover your mouse over it and it should say “Sheets and Effects”.
This opens a new window called “Drawing Sheets and Effects”.
In the upper right corner of this box is a checkbox that says “Activate Sheet Effects”. Put a check in that box by left clicking your mouse over the checkbox.
Next, in the Drawing Sheets and Effects box, there will be a button on the bottom right that says “apply”. Left click that button. Right next to the apply button is another button that says “OK”. Left click that button. At this point the Drawing Sheets and Effects box will disappear and you should be right back at your Campaign Cartographer User Interface. Now your map should look fantastic!
So now how do you export your map?
Up in the top left of your Campaign Cartographer User Interface, you will see the word “File”. Left click on this word. This will bring up a list of options. Scroll down to the option labelled “Save As” and left click it.
This will bring up a new window labelled “Save As”. In this new window at the top left you will see a drop down window labelled “Save In:” This line lists where your map will save if you were to click the save button on the bottom right of the large Save As window. So be sure you navigate to the folder you wish to keep it in. Personally, any time I am saving a map to put online, I save it to my desktop and move it to the correct folder later.
Next, look down to the bottom left of the large Save As window and you will see a line that says “File Name”. Make sure that your map is listed there with the extension .FCW at the end of it. If .FCW isn’t there, then your map will not save properly.
Below that is another line that says “Save As Type:”
I have found that it is usually best to make this file into a JPEG when I am uploading to the profantasy site. For some reason it doesn’t like PNG files too much. Sometimes it will take them but it seems to always take JPEG. So in the scroll down menu, find the line that says JPEG Bitmap File and left click on it.
Next, on the bottom right of the large Save As box is a button marked “Options”.
Left click on that box.
This should bring up the “Bitmap Options” box. If it does not and instead you get a box that says “CC3/CC2 File Options” and then has two checkboxes labelled “File Compression” and “Group Files on Insertion” , then that is telling you that you forgot to change the file type in the Save As Type dropdown menu to JPEG Bitmap file. Cancel out of that box and go change the file to a JPEG Bitmap file.
Now on the right side of the “Bitmap Options” box, there are two boxes for height and width. The profantasy website will not accept ANY maps that are greater than 1250 in size. So I usually put about 1200 in both of those boxes. You can put whatever numbers you want but I wouldn’t go over 1250. More detailed maps tend to need to be smaller than 1250.
Next is the” Antialias” checkbox. I always check that and then type in 25%
Next is the “Crop Image to Aspect Ratio”. I always check that box too.
Next is the “Restrict Image to Map Border” I always check that box as well because it gets rid of the white border that always seems to be around your maps.
Next I put JPEG quality to 100. Then click the Ok button. (yes, I’ve sped up a little on my explanation because this is getting too long)
Once you click ok, your image will start rendering and should save in the place you told it to.
Once it is done, go to the profantasy site, write what you are going to write in the comments section.
Down below the comments section is a button labelled “Browse”.
This will let you browse to where you saved your map. So navigate there, left click on your saved map, Next, left click the “Add your comment” button.
You are done!
Now we can all marvel at your wonderful map!
EDIT (Nice map qwalker. lol, sorry it is taking me so long to type it all out)
Our first question is what to draw in what order on the map?
The general rule is to add all the solid and bitmap fills first, working from lowest elevation to highest. once the landmasses are in, we can add mountains rivers, vegetation, roads, structures, and finally text.
Everyone please move your mouse over the icon in the upper left corner of your user interface that looks like a blue ocean with a green island in the middle of it. If you let the mouse hover over it, it should tell you what button it is. In this case it is called the "Default Landmass" button.
Left click the "Default Landmass" button, then move your mouse back over to the blue background in the user interface.
You will notice that a horizontal and vertical line have appeared. Where they intersect is where your "ink" for lack of a better term will appear.
Bring your mouse near the top center of the drawing and left click it, then move the mouse to your left. You will notice a line start to appear that flickers a little bit and seems to have a mind of it's own as it bends a little bit the farther you go. It does this because it is creating a fractalized image of the landmass over the top of your ocean background.
Each time you left click your mouse now the line seems to anchor down to the background and then when you move your mouse again, it heads off in another direction. This is because each time you left click now you are placing what is called a "node" that the line attaches itself to. This is so you can create the shapes you want as you get better and more used to mapping. You will develop a love/hate relationship with nodes as sometimes they do what you want and other times they don't. But for the most part they do what you want.
So now, bring your mouse around so the line continues and move the mouse so the line forms a sort of circle. right before both ends of the line meet, right click your mouse. You will see that cc3+ completes the connection so you don't have to try to accurately move one line to touch the other. Also, now that you have right clicked, a green somewhat circle shaped landmass should have appeared on your map.
It should look something like this
(I'm now adding these bits of instruction in small bits as I lost some information and it is now taking me a while to type it all out again. So I will be doing lots of little edits so I don't lose so much info if this happens again.)
So here are a few points to keep in mind when doing this.
Point #1. Almost everything you draw goes on a sheet.
I guess the best way to describe sheets is like this. Have you ever seen those books that have a picture of the human body on transparent plastic sheets of "paper" but the first piece of plastic has the skeleton, the second has the circulatory system, the third one has the muscles, and the fourth one has the skin? When they are all put together they make the human body?
Sheets are basically the same thing, only they make the map.
Normally, Campaign Cartographer will organize the icons and bitmap fills so they go on the proper sheets. But not always. So any time you do something new, like drawing a landmass, it is always good to check what sheet it was placed on.
How do you do this? by clicking on the "Sheets and Effects" button.
Look on your Campaign Cartographer User Interface for a button that looks like a bunch of closed manila envelopes that are stacked on top of each other. Hover your mouse over it if you are not sure. It should say "Sheets and Effects".
Lets left click on sheets and effects now.
This will bring up a box labelled "Drawing Sheets and Effects".
On the left hand side of the box it says "Sheet Status".
Below that is a checkbox that says "Auto hide all sheets except current and COMMON"
Then there are many buttons below that. They say "Rename", "Add", "Delete", "Move Up", "Move Down", "Show All", and "Hide All".
All of these buttons are for manipulating sheets.
Right next to the buttons for manipulating sheets is the names of the actual sheets. Each sheet has two checkboxes next to them except the COMMON sheet.
At this early stage, since all you have done is added a landmass, there should be a checkmark next to the sheet named LAND. The checkmark should be in the left checkbox. When the checkmark is in a box on the left, it is showing you that the sheet name that is checked is the active sheet. In other words, the sheet that you drew the landmass on. If you were to move the checkmark to a different sheet by checking another left hand box on a different sheet, such as the ROADS sheet, then the ROADS sheet would then be the active sheet.
As you add more symbols however, you cannot rely on the checkmark alone to tell you where you just put something. So how do you check where you put something when you have a lot of symbols on the map? This will require some explanation of how sheets work
so looking at the way the sheets are listed in the box that they are contained in is actually very important. If you put something on the sheet that is at the very bottom of the list, then whatever you put there will always be drawn over the top of everything else except other symbols on that same sheet.
This is because, just like that anatomy book, sheets build up to a finished map. In the anatomy book the skeleton would come first, then the circulatory system, then the muscles, then the skin. If we were to pretend that our sheets were that book then the sheet at the top would be the one the skeleton is drawn on. Then the sheet below that one would have the circulatory system, then the one below that would have the muscles, until you finally get to the very bottom sheet in the list which would have the skin. Put them all together and you have got a body/map.
So basically if you want to hide something partially behind mountains but still have some of it showing, then put it on the sheet right above the MOUNTAINS sheet.
does that make sense?
So what does all this have to do with how to see what sheet you just put something on?
Because sometimes you may forget to check what sheet you put something on, get your sheets and effects turned on, and notice something isn't working right because it is on the wrong sheet, and you cannot remember where you put it. (So I urge you STRONGLY to activate the right sheet for EVERY entity you are drawing. If you are drawing mountains then be sure that the sheet that has the checkmark is the MOUNTAIN sheet. If you are drawing land then make sure the sheet that is checked says LAND, etc)
Unfortunately the only way I know of to check what sheet you have put something on if you forgot to check before hand and have moved on to drawing other things is to physically look. We do this by hiding all but one sheet at a time. Hiding sheets will make whatever is on the hidden sheet become invisible. But whatever sheet has the checkmark on it will still be visible. So you just go down the line sheet by sheet until you find the offending entity and put it out of it's misery by moving it to the right sheet.
To do this, you simply put the checkmark in the sheet at the top first, then press the "Hide All" button. Keep moving the checkmark down to the next sheet below until you find the sheet with the offending entity. It's easy but tedious. (Note that I have not told you how to move something from one sheet to another sheet yet, only how to find a lost entity if you cannot remember what sheet you put it on. We will get to how to move them later. There is already a lot of information here and I don't want to get into a lot of the other stuff just yet).
To make all of the sheets visible again, just left click the button labelled "Show All".
(Ok, it's 11:10 P.M. here and I'm getting tired of typing so I'll do more tomorrow)
Understanding sheets is so important. You just cannot do your best work without a solid understanding of how to work with them. It should be noted that many, maybe even most, drawing tools and symbols will default to being put on a particular sheet (and layer), and it may not be the sheet (or layer) that is currently selected. And it's confusing to try to override that behavior. So pay attention. (This is probably best discussed in depth later on, but it should definitely be covered at some point.)
I've also learned something I didn't know (that's not part of your tutorial): The Land, Default drawing tool draws the land mass on the Land sheet, but it also draws an outline on the Coastline sheet as a separate object. I can foresee potential advantages to this.
You can also find out what is on which sheet by clicking Info>List, selct object(s) and 'Do" This will give info about Sheets, Layers, styles, fills, colours etc for each object clicked.
I have also decided to do a small section of my world, Myirandios as part of this learning course. Here is the first iteration, without much in the way of terrain (yet). As mountain and Hills, I just used the Mountain_MS and Hill_MS fills, and added 2 volcanoes in Evain. I will fix the edges of the fills with hill and mountain symbols later, also add a few caves, great peaks, whatever. My land is a type of British Isles, but one withe more Celtic influence, and a large portion ruled by the Klemtan (Roman) Empire. Ok, the parallels are not exact. Evain is mainly Elvish, though, and Langelwin (Welsh) are Half-Elvish. My Elves (Aeifa), Orc-Goblins(Grim and Dwarves (Davarin) are actually descendants of long ago bioengineered humans and so can breed with each other. Usual racial antipathies apply, but no one race is inherently good or evil, not even the Grim. Oh, and woman rule the world, since they can manipulate E_M spectrum directly, whereas men suck at it, so get all the grunt jobs; and black women are the aristocracy since the capital of Klemtos is almost on the equator. Finally, the culture, apart from the militaristic codes, is more like ancient Minoan brought up to date to say, the Baroque era, but no gunpowder.
Thanks Tonnichiwa that must have taken you ages, so to show willing I've done my first bit. (and if we aren't supposed to clutter up this thread with our own maps please say so and I will edit this one out
I am recording and uploading my process through Tonnichiwa's lessons. I hope it can be of use for people like myself, who are more visual and/or have problems following written instructions. (PS: This is the reason I love Joe Sweeney's tutorials.)
Tell me if there's something wrong with the video (or if it's too big), please. I also followed Qwalker's great tip on using Info>List.
This may already have occurred to you, but I would strongly recommend typing your notes offline, and saving them as a simple text file you can then just copy and paste as your Forum notes here, rather than trying to type it all "live". While the latter is useful for quickly responding to a query, for the detailed notes, it may help to have time to reflect on how best to explain some of the more technical matters. And more importantly, if something goes haywire when you try to post on the Forum, you won't lose all your typing!
I'd also like to commend Teresa's video, as it's a really nice way to show the features described, as well as things like the importance of looking to see what the Command Prompt line is showing while you're actually drawing the map. If you don't like the next bit of random fractal coastline, it's really easy to change it by just tapping the Space bar, for instance, or as Teresa showed, to actually go back and delete as much of the shape as you don't like. This is exactly the same kind of helpfulness I found with Joe Sweeney's videos when I started out with CC3, because he showed you how to solve "little" problems like this easily as you're going along, or when you've made a mistake.
Might be worth saying too how to get rid of that really irritating Floating Command Prompt CC3+ defaults with, as it was the first thing I wanted to clear away when I opened CC3+ initially: Go to "Tools" > "Options" and clear the check box "Display Floating Prompt" if you don't like it hiding what you're trying to map either! I know it can be useful for those just starting out, however (and you can always check the box to bring it back again, if you need to).
Thank you for the robust description, Tonnichiwa. And thank you, Teresa, for the video.
My island is located off the coast, far from anything that resembles civilization. It is isolated and self-sufficient. A tribe of orcs calls it home and uses it as a base from which to raid the closest human settlements 50 miles to the south. Recently, a pair of chimera have found that the rocky coast and isolation are to their liking much to the consternation of the orcs. Did I mention the ruins? Oh, that's a secret...
The seaward shore is rough, rocky and wooded. It's frequently shrouded in fog and pounded by winter storms. The landward shore isn't exactly a resort, but it does have some rocky beaches and is more protected with calmer waters. As the island is 60 miles at it's longest point, it's a 2/3 the size of Hawaii which is helpful for me to visualize distances, so it's a pretty large mass.
Thank you everyone for your kind words. Thank you taustinoc, qwalker, and Wyvern for teaching some points that I haven't gotten to yet. Teresa, that video is wonderful. I'm glad the instructions weren't so awful that you couldn't figure it out.
Loopysue and qwalker, thanks for showing the progress on your maps. That is what I was hoping for. And it was also suggested by Monsen that we show our progress. This will be a good way to see that everyone is grasping the concepts. Remember what they showed you in arithmetic class? Show your work :P
That's a great description of your island AEIOU. Great job on that. Please let me know if it is too much information or if it is moving too fast.
I am happy my video is helpful. Your instructions are very good Tonnichiwa - I had never even realised you can just click a button to create a new map, I just used the file menu. I'll do my best to keep illustrating your hard work.
@Wyvern: I believe I will soon hate the floating prompt, but so far I don't think I can live without it shouting instructions at me. :P Still, it is good to know how to turn it off when the time comes.
Thank you Teresa. I'm glad you learned something from this class. And thanks for illustrating things. this is great ")
So on to what I didn't finish last night.
Wyvern already mentioned what Point #2 was going to be
Point #2 Pay attention to your Command Line.
What is a “Command Line”?
The Command Line is one of your most important ways to communicate with CC3+. CC3+ uses it to tell you what it expects you to do next, and what options you might have. You can use it provide answers to CC3+’s questions, as well as typing your commands, instead of selecting them from the menu or toolbars.
That floating icon you have on your screen that Wyvern told you how to get rid of is kind of telling you what the Command Line wants to tell you as well. So if you decide to get rid of it, then please be sure that you pay attention to the actual Command Line itself.
So where is this "Command Line" located anyway?
The Command Line is located in the bottom left corner of your Campaign Cartographer User Interface.
The Command Line takes some getting used to using and I personally don’t use it a whole lot, though I do watch it when I am making maps. So eventually we will get into using it more but for now, just realize that it is there and that you should be watching it.
It really helps to glance at the command line if you aren't exactly sure what to do next when you are in the middle of doing something you aren't very familiar with doing
Now we have a foundation on which to build the rest of our map.We’ll start by adding some hills and an area of grasslands to our map.
Right click “Default Terrain”. It’s the button on the left side of your Campaign Cartographer User Interface that looks like four squares that are all together on one button, the square on the top right is sort of a yellow cover. If you are unsure, hover your mouse over it. It should read “Default Terrain”.
From the selection of Terrain drawing tools, select “Terrain Default, Hills Back”.
Now look down at your Command Line. (Remember that we should be looking at it for everything we do?) The prompt reads Smooth Polygon: First point) Ok, just checking to remind you to do this.
So now, let’s make some mountain background in the top left corner of our island.
Move the mouse back over to the top left corner of our island. You will notice that the horizontal and vertical lines are back again so you can see where your “ink” begins.
Before you click anything else, keep in mind the way a mountain range in the real world looks. For the most part they are in a lazy wavy line that travels for hundreds if not thousands of miles. But on a small island, while it would still keep the shape of a line, that line would not be so large as what you would find on a continent.
Now you can begin drawing your line of mountain fill. Left click on the spot your mouse is at and bring the mouse down for a little ways on the map. Maybe at a 45 degree angle headed left. When you have brought it down for a little ways head south with it for a little bit then follow your first line back up and curve it over so that it gets close to where your original line began. Now right click to make the computer fill in the rest , like you did originally when you made the land.
Your mountains land fill should automatically fill in and at this point should look like somewhat of backwards L shaped oval.
Comments
Firstly, great idea! Time and my somewhat erratic visits here preclude my own likely involvement, barring commenting from time to time, perhaps, but I would like to see this succeed. I suppose that classes me in the "probable lurker" group!
I'd suggest a little more structure to the intended class development than just "a map every [x-amount of time]". For instance, what is each map intended to teach? Should maps be designed so they can be reused over time, to demonstrate different special effect techniques, say? An "Edge Fade, Inner" tutorial could be easily added to an existing map, and perhaps more realistically than creating a map just to experiment with that effect, but that could be a goal as one milestone element of a full mapping lesson, of course.
Maybe set out a loose "lesson plan" for the first two or three maps, with what the four (or however many) milestones should be for each, showing how each will build on what's been learned with each previous map.
Personally, I wouldn't have found an island a particularly easy map to begin with, because you have all the problems of coastlines, sea features, etc., as well as the land ones. My first map with CC3 four years ago was a purely land affair, a small area (100 by 80 kilometres in size) with some towns, villages, a couple of religious/unusual sites, and some terrain effects including a couple of rivers and some roads. That seemed a good way to start to me, and having done quite a few more overland and other maps since, on reflection, it still does, although it was quite accidental that I went that way. I appreciate others may feel differently, of course!
I'd also suggest creating a deliberate structure on the Forums for how these lessons/classes are to be presented and stored. As there's clearly now enough support to get the idea started, maybe it would be worthwhile moving this topic to the "Mapping with ProFantasy's Software" Category, which would make it easy to find for new users, and then start each new map/lesson with a fresh topic in that same Category, styling each title as "Mapping Class 101: Map [Add Number] - [Brief description of the lesson]", again so people can find things easily later, and keep the focus simple.
I'd also recommend Tonnichiwa should edit the opening post once each map class has concluded, to add a bullet-point list of what that map-class has covered, because things may come up during the class which would be helpful to know about, but which may not be obvious from the topic's title, plus the title line can be only so long! This would make the tutorials of more lasting benefit, I think.
Hi Wyvern, Glad you will be watching too.
Thanks Monsen
Ok, again there are some great ideas here.
I like Monson's idea of milestones, I think that will really help people to get the idea behind the lessons. I think a milestone a week isn't asking too much. If it is please let me know.
I also like the idea of saying what each milestone is intended to teach and I think we should use that method for explaining why we are doing something and of course how to do it.
I like your ideas too Wyvern. I think adding structure to the way this is taught is a great idea as well.
So, I gave everyone a while to decide on if they wanted to begin with the Mike Schley overland style or if they wanted to do a different one. So far the votes are for the Mike Schley overland style and no overwhelming votes have come in for anything else so I think we will begin with that style.
Now the thing about the Mike Schley style is that when you get cc3+ and open it for the first time, the Mike Schley style begins with an ocean, not land. I think because of this, the idea of going with an island is probably a better one than going with just a land based map as it should teach people how to create land over the water, which in most overland maps, is one of the first things you do.
I do have a question for everyone in the class though. Is everyone familiar with how to pick and choose a style or does this class need to begin with how to use the very basic stuff of the user interface? Please take the time to answer this question as I need to know what the first lesson should be.
Sadly, I've got to go sit in some government offices for a while today so I won't be able to do anything until I get back.
edit:
Yes, I can pick a style...
One lesson a week seems a good standard to me.
When we use terminology, may I ask that we try to match the language in the manuals and/or Tome? I'd like to be able to look things up and break myself of bad habits.
-- Steve
Alright, with the assumption that everyone has at least attempted to read through the manuals and maybe watched a Joe Sweeney video or two (if you haven't done this yet I suggest you do as they are a great help and a lot of fun)I think I'm going to begin this class.
Let me start by telling you a little bit about what kind of a program you have bought. Campaign Cartographer is a mapping program that has been structured to work around a Computer Aided Drafting and Design program called fastCAD. (if you wish to know what fastCAD is please look it up on Google or some other search engine because it would take too long for me to explain it completely to you here)
As such, it does not function the same way as a photo manipulation package like Photoshop or Gimp does. So if you are used to working with those kind of programs then this will be quite different for you.
Campaign Cartographer was designed with the gamer in mind. And it's main concentration is on overland style maps. However, Profantasy has also designed many different types of add on packages which will help you to design other types of maps as well. Campaign Cartographer is a full-fledged Vector graphics program that handles Raster graphics pretty well too.
As such, the possibilities for it's use are endless. You can make Overland maps that are as large as a world down to very small areas. You can make City maps, Dungeon maps Space maps, Isometric Perspective maps, Dioramas (3 dimensional towns that you can print out, fold up, glue together and use for 3d miniature gaming), and even more unusual things like Character pictures for role playing games, card game pieces, tokens, flowcharts, mind maps, character sheets. You can even make an interactive atlas of the maps you have made, so you could for instance, create a map of the world, click on a nation of that world, and have the nation map show up, then click on a city in that nation and have a city map show up, then click on a building in that city and have a building map or dungeon map show up, depending on which one you want. The list of what you can do goes on and on.
There is even a program Profantasy sells that allows you to create biomes and really cool looking maps that look like the kind you would see in a government database. It's called Fractal Terrains 3. You can make a map in that program add all the cool technical features, then import the map to Campaign Cartographer 3 and add many more things to it.
You can also purchase the Cartographer's Annual subscriptions, which come out with another mapping style every single month. If you are looking for a new mapping style I suggest you pick those up.
And I've found that the one item Profantasy sells that will help you become a much better mapper is the Tome of Ultimate Mapping. It has much to teach about every product Profantasy sells. I strongly suggest that if you have not picked it up yet that you make it your next purchase. It is invaluable.
So as you can tell, this is some very sophisticated software.
Now that you know what you are working with lets get started.
EDIT:I decided to go ahead and explain how to get to and use the New Drawing Wizard because we have at least one very new user who I think may benefit from this.
Our First Map
Our maps are created on templates, which are actually FCT files, that give us a foundation of tools on which to create our drawings.
Now, when I create a map I don't just decide I am going to quickly slap down some land and randomly start placing symbols all over it. That road leads to madness and honestly, not very well thought out maps. Instead, I like to think about why I am creating my map in the first place and what I want to accomplish by making the map.
So I will do something like this: " I want to create a map that shows the Isle of Dread. The Isle of Dread is going to be a tropical island filled with dinosaurs, hostile natives of some sort, an active volcano, and some crazy pirates who just happened to come across it and decided to bury some treasure there, but were then taken away as slaves by the natives."
You see, by coming up with a sort of story, you can then keep in your head the way you want the island to look, and you automatically know what you want on it. this saves you trouble down the road if you cannot decide what to put there. If you don't have an idea of what to put there, planning the island out so things flow together naturally may not work and you could end up with things on your island that might not quite fit.
So for our first map we will be exploring how to create a basic map using the tools provided.
Everyone please open up your cc3+ program.
This brings up the cc3+ user interface. Now, because some of us have add ons, if you have the cc3+ icon on the toolbar that is directly above your drawing area, please left click it now. This is called the "Map Menu" button. (If all you have is cc3+ I don't believe it is there but I don't remember. If it is, left click it now) This ensures that the basic overland tools for using cc3+ are loaded into your cc3+ user interface.(Hint: it's the red icon that says cc3+ on it) If you have multiple different add ons, you should always remember to click on whichever add on you plan on using before picking a mapping style from the mapping style menu.
Now, left click on the "new map" icon (it's the one that looks like a paper being folded over and a magic wand waving over the top of it). If you already have a map loaded into cc3+, a little box will appear and ask you if you would like to save changes to your current map. This is obvious but if you want to then click yes, otherwise click no, the box will disappear, and then it will bring up the New Drawing Wizard.
The New Drawing Wizard will present us with some new options. For this class, please left click the circle that says "decide settings myself". This will allow us later to pick what sized map we want to work with instead of having a pre-determined size map that is pre-measured for us. If you want pre-measured map templates then choose "pick a pre-defined template" instead.
Once you have left clicked "Decide Settings Myself", then left click on "Overland Maps" until it is highlighted, then left click the "Next" button.
This brings up the next part of the New Drawing Wizard. In the "Map Style" box, look for the style that says "Mike Schley Overland" and left click it.
A picture of the map style should appear in the box on your right. This is to help you identify if it is the style of mapping you were looking for, and the map style should be highlighted in the left hand box.
In the bottom box it should say "Bitmap Overland Template based on the artwork of Mike Schley."
Now left click the "next" button again.
The third part of the New Drawing Wizard should come up. There will be four boxes, one on each corner of a larger central box. the central box should have a blue field surrounded by a white outline on it.
the four boxes that are surrounding this part of the template are for you to put things in that will be automatically placed on the map at the maps creation. It is for things like a map compass. A scale bar. A copyright notice. However, I like to put those things on as a symbol so I can place them better. So I never use those. Of course, you can if you want to.
Below those boxes on the left hand side are the boxes that define the size of your map. If you did not choose metric when you decided what kind of overland map to make then the size of overland map will be measured in miles. For our map I think maybe a size of 100 width by 80 height might be good. So lets make our map that size. Enter 100 into the width box and 80 into the height box.
Over on the right hand side are the map title box and the the copyright notice box. Always give your map a name because the saving system will never let you progress further unless you do. For my map I am going to name it 101 class map.
You don't have to put anything in the box for copyright if you don't want to but I always do. So I put Crawford Cartography in that box. (yes, my last name is Crawford...Yes, Cyndi is my sister, No, you can't date her, she's married for goodness sakes! :P )
Left click the "Next" button.
This will bring up the 4th New Drawing Wizard page. This page should have a large box a the top with a large blue sqare in it, and a white edge. This is your background layer. It is a bitmap fill of the ocean style in the Mike Schley Overland style. There is a "Map Background" box on the left hand side. Leave it checked. We want a background.
Beneath that box is another box that says "Fill Style" Ocean_MS. This is the identifier for the blue box that you see above. If you want to you could play around by opening that up and seeing what other fill style's are available. But whatever one you highlight will be the one that the map begins with. So if you want Ocean_MS as your background, then leave it as it is.
Go ahead and look through them all now. Click on each one to see what they all look like. But be sure to come back to Ocean_MS before we move on and make sure that it is highlighted.
On the right hand side is a checkbox for adding a grid to your map. If you check it, it will bring up different options for adding different types of grids to your maps. This can be especially helpful if you are drawing in Isometric styles or trying to make Dungeon maps for role playing with miniatures.
But it can get complicated so lets leave it unchecked for now.
Don't worry about the box that says "color" now either. that is for a different class. For now we just want the basics.
Now left click the "Next" button.
This will bring up the fifth page of the New Drawing Wizard.
There should be a box on the left that says "Enable Multiple Levels". this is for adding more than one level to a dungeon map or a floorplan map. We won't use it for this class so leave it unchecked.
Left click the "Finish" button. This will bring up the "save your map" box. Before left clicking save, be sure you take note of where it is saving to so you can come back to it later if something weird happens with your program. Sometimes weird things happen. We don't know why...in my case, I think my computer is haunted... :P
When you finally left click the save button it will now bring you back to the Campaign Cartographer user Interface. It should now have a blue field on it.
Our template has now become the beginning of a drawing.
EDIT: FOR MAPPING 101 CLASS
Ok, before we go any further it has occurred to me that maybe some of the newer people may not know how to upload a picture of their work to this website. So, I think this is important enough that we cover it now. I'm doing this so you know how to show your work.
So you’ve got a great map. You are excited to show everyone on the forums what you have done. But you have one problem…you don’t know how to save your work and upload it to the forum…
Have no fear, we are here to help.
Let’s start with your map. Your map is sitting there staring at you from your Campaign Cartographer User Interface. It’s beautiful. It’s awesome. It’s gonna make everybody on the forums jealous…but…before you can do this there are some things that have to happen.
First thing to do is to ALWAYS check to make sure you have turned on your sheets and effects for your map. (Since this is just for the Mapping 101 class to show our work, however, this time around you don’t really have to) Nothing is worse than saving your map and after it is rendering, realizing that you forgot to turn on the sheets and effects. Your map won’t look anywhere near as good and you will have to start the whole process over again.
So to turn on the sheets and effects on your map, left click on the Sheets and Effects button. It is the one that looks like a bunch of closed manila envelopes stacked on top of each other. If you are unsure, hover your mouse over it and it should say “Sheets and Effects”.
This opens a new window called “Drawing Sheets and Effects”.
In the upper right corner of this box is a checkbox that says “Activate Sheet Effects”. Put a check in that box by left clicking your mouse over the checkbox.
Next, in the Drawing Sheets and Effects box, there will be a button on the bottom right that says “apply”. Left click that button. Right next to the apply button is another button that says “OK”. Left click that button. At this point the Drawing Sheets and Effects box will disappear and you should be right back at your Campaign Cartographer User Interface. Now your map should look fantastic!
So now how do you export your map?
Up in the top left of your Campaign Cartographer User Interface, you will see the word “File”. Left click on this word. This will bring up a list of options. Scroll down to the option labelled “Save As” and left click it.
This will bring up a new window labelled “Save As”. In this new window at the top left you will see a drop down window labelled “Save In:”
This line lists where your map will save if you were to click the save button on the bottom right of the large Save As window. So be sure you navigate to the folder you wish to keep it in. Personally, any time I am saving a map to put online, I save it to my desktop and move it to the correct folder later.
Next, look down to the bottom left of the large Save As window and you will see a line that says “File Name”. Make sure that your map is listed there with the extension .FCW at the end of it. If .FCW isn’t there, then your map will not save properly.
Below that is another line that says “Save As Type:”
I have found that it is usually best to make this file into a JPEG when I am uploading to the profantasy site. For some reason it doesn’t like PNG files too much. Sometimes it will take them but it seems to always take JPEG. So in the scroll down menu, find the line that says JPEG Bitmap File and left click on it.
Next, on the bottom right of the large Save As box is a button marked “Options”.
Left click on that box.
This should bring up the “Bitmap Options” box. If it does not and instead you get a box that says “CC3/CC2 File Options” and then has two checkboxes labelled “File Compression” and “Group Files on Insertion” , then that is telling you that you forgot to change the file type in the Save As Type dropdown menu to JPEG Bitmap file. Cancel out of that box and go change the file to a JPEG Bitmap file.
Now on the right side of the “Bitmap Options” box, there are two boxes for height and width. The profantasy website will not accept ANY maps that are greater than 1250 in size. So I usually put about 1200 in both of those boxes. You can put whatever numbers you want but I wouldn’t go over 1250. More detailed maps tend to need to be smaller than 1250.
Next is the” Antialias” checkbox. I always check that and then type in 25%
Next is the “Crop Image to Aspect Ratio”. I always check that box too.
Next is the “Restrict Image to Map Border” I always check that box as well because it gets rid of the white border that always seems to be around your maps.
Next I put JPEG quality to 100. Then click the Ok button. (yes, I’ve sped up a little on my explanation because this is getting too long)
Once you click ok, your image will start rendering and should save in the place you told it to.
Once it is done, go to the profantasy site, write what you are going to write in the comments section.
Down below the comments section is a button labelled “Browse”.
This will let you browse to where you saved your map. So navigate there, left click on your saved map,
Next, left click the “Add your comment” button.
You are done!
Now we can all marvel at your wonderful map!
EDIT (Nice map qwalker. lol, sorry it is taking me so long to type it all out)
Our first question is what to draw in what order on the map?
The general rule is to add all the solid and bitmap fills first, working from lowest elevation to highest. once the landmasses are in, we can add mountains rivers, vegetation, roads, structures, and finally text.
Everyone please move your mouse over the icon in the upper left corner of your user interface that looks like a blue ocean with a green island in the middle of it. If you let the mouse hover over it, it should tell you what button it is. In this case it is called the "Default Landmass" button.
Left click the "Default Landmass" button, then move your mouse back over to the blue background in the user interface.
You will notice that a horizontal and vertical line have appeared. Where they intersect is where your "ink" for lack of a better term will appear.
Bring your mouse near the top center of the drawing and left click it, then move the mouse to your left. You will notice a line start to appear that flickers a little bit and seems to have a mind of it's own as it bends a little bit the farther you go. It does this because it is creating a fractalized image of the landmass over the top of your ocean background.
Each time you left click your mouse now the line seems to anchor down to the background and then when you move your mouse again, it heads off in another direction. This is because each time you left click now you are placing what is called a "node" that the line attaches itself to. This is so you can create the shapes you want as you get better and more used to mapping. You will develop a love/hate relationship with nodes as sometimes they do what you want and other times they don't. But for the most part they do what you want.
So now, bring your mouse around so the line continues and move the mouse so the line forms a sort of circle. right before both ends of the line meet, right click your mouse. You will see that cc3+ completes the connection so you don't have to try to accurately move one line to touch the other. Also, now that you have right clicked, a green somewhat circle shaped landmass should have appeared on your map.
It should look something like this
(I'm now adding these bits of instruction in small bits as I lost some information and it is now taking me a while to type it all out again. So I will be doing lots of little edits so I don't lose so much info if this happens again.)
Point #1. Almost everything you draw goes on a sheet.
I guess the best way to describe sheets is like this. Have you ever seen those books that have a picture of the human body on transparent plastic sheets of "paper" but the first piece of plastic has the skeleton, the second has the circulatory system, the third one has the muscles, and the fourth one has the skin? When they are all put together they make the human body?
Sheets are basically the same thing, only they make the map.
Normally, Campaign Cartographer will organize the icons and bitmap fills so they go on the proper sheets. But not always. So any time you do something new, like drawing a landmass, it is always good to check what sheet it was placed on.
How do you do this? by clicking on the "Sheets and Effects" button.
Look on your Campaign Cartographer User Interface for a button that looks like a bunch of closed manila envelopes that are stacked on top of each other. Hover your mouse over it if you are not sure. It should say "Sheets and Effects".
Lets left click on sheets and effects now.
This will bring up a box labelled "Drawing Sheets and Effects".
On the left hand side of the box it says "Sheet Status".
Below that is a checkbox that says "Auto hide all sheets except current and COMMON"
Then there are many buttons below that. They say "Rename", "Add", "Delete", "Move Up", "Move Down", "Show All", and "Hide All".
All of these buttons are for manipulating sheets.
Right next to the buttons for manipulating sheets is the names of the actual sheets. Each sheet has two checkboxes next to them except the COMMON sheet.
At this early stage, since all you have done is added a landmass, there should be a checkmark next to the sheet named LAND. The checkmark should be in the left checkbox. When the checkmark is in a box on the left, it is showing you that the sheet name that is checked is the active sheet. In other words, the sheet that you drew the landmass on. If you were to move the checkmark to a different sheet by checking another left hand box on a different sheet, such as the ROADS sheet, then the ROADS sheet would then be the active sheet.
As you add more symbols however, you cannot rely on the checkmark alone to tell you where you just put something. So how do you check where you put something when you have a lot of symbols on the map? This will require some explanation of how sheets work
so looking at the way the sheets are listed in the box that they are contained in is actually very important. If you put something on the sheet that is at the very bottom of the list, then whatever you put there will always be drawn over the top of everything else except other symbols on that same sheet.
This is because, just like that anatomy book, sheets build up to a finished map. In the anatomy book the skeleton would come first, then the circulatory system, then the muscles, then the skin. If we were to pretend that our sheets were that book then the sheet at the top would be the one the skeleton is drawn on. Then the sheet below that one would have the circulatory system, then the one below that would have the muscles, until you finally get to the very bottom sheet in the list which would have the skin. Put them all together and you have got a body/map.
So basically if you want to hide something partially behind mountains but still have some of it showing, then put it on the sheet right above the MOUNTAINS sheet.
does that make sense?
So what does all this have to do with how to see what sheet you just put something on?
Because sometimes you may forget to check what sheet you put something on, get your sheets and effects turned on, and notice something isn't working right because it is on the wrong sheet, and you cannot remember where you put it. (So I urge you STRONGLY to activate the right sheet for EVERY entity you are drawing. If you are drawing mountains then be sure that the sheet that has the checkmark is the MOUNTAIN sheet. If you are drawing land then make sure the sheet that is checked says LAND, etc)
Unfortunately the only way I know of to check what sheet you have put something on if you forgot to check before hand and have moved on to drawing other things is to physically look. We do this by hiding all but one sheet at a time. Hiding sheets will make whatever is on the hidden sheet become invisible. But whatever sheet has the checkmark on it will still be visible. So you just go down the line sheet by sheet until you find the offending entity and put it out of it's misery by moving it to the right sheet.
To do this, you simply put the checkmark in the sheet at the top first, then press the "Hide All" button. Keep moving the checkmark down to the next sheet below until you find the sheet with the offending entity. It's easy but tedious. (Note that I have not told you how to move something from one sheet to another sheet yet, only how to find a lost entity if you cannot remember what sheet you put it on. We will get to how to move them later. There is already a lot of information here and I don't want to get into a lot of the other stuff just yet).
To make all of the sheets visible again, just left click the button labelled "Show All".
(Ok, it's 11:10 P.M. here and I'm getting tired of typing so I'll do more tomorrow)
I've also learned something I didn't know (that's not part of your tutorial): The Land, Default drawing tool draws the land mass on the Land sheet, but it also draws an outline on the Coastline sheet as a separate object. I can foresee potential advantages to this.
My land is a type of British Isles, but one withe more Celtic influence, and a large portion ruled by the Klemtan (Roman) Empire. Ok, the parallels are not exact. Evain is mainly Elvish, though, and Langelwin (Welsh) are Half-Elvish. My Elves (Aeifa), Orc-Goblins(Grim and Dwarves (Davarin) are actually descendants of long ago bioengineered humans and so can breed with each other. Usual racial antipathies apply, but no one race is inherently good or evil, not even the Grim.
Oh, and woman rule the world, since they can manipulate E_M spectrum directly, whereas men suck at it, so get all the grunt jobs; and black women are the aristocracy since the capital of Klemtos is almost on the equator. Finally, the culture, apart from the militaristic codes, is more like ancient Minoan brought up to date to say, the Baroque era, but no gunpowder.
Tell me if there's something wrong with the video (or if it's too big), please. I also followed Qwalker's great tip on using Info>List.
Mapping Class 101 - Class 1, Milestone 1
This may already have occurred to you, but I would strongly recommend typing your notes offline, and saving them as a simple text file you can then just copy and paste as your Forum notes here, rather than trying to type it all "live". While the latter is useful for quickly responding to a query, for the detailed notes, it may help to have time to reflect on how best to explain some of the more technical matters. And more importantly, if something goes haywire when you try to post on the Forum, you won't lose all your typing!
I'd also like to commend Teresa's video, as it's a really nice way to show the features described, as well as things like the importance of looking to see what the Command Prompt line is showing while you're actually drawing the map. If you don't like the next bit of random fractal coastline, it's really easy to change it by just tapping the Space bar, for instance, or as Teresa showed, to actually go back and delete as much of the shape as you don't like. This is exactly the same kind of helpfulness I found with Joe Sweeney's videos when I started out with CC3, because he showed you how to solve "little" problems like this easily as you're going along, or when you've made a mistake.
Might be worth saying too how to get rid of that really irritating Floating Command Prompt CC3+ defaults with, as it was the first thing I wanted to clear away when I opened CC3+ initially: Go to "Tools" > "Options" and clear the check box "Display Floating Prompt" if you don't like it hiding what you're trying to map either! I know it can be useful for those just starting out, however (and you can always check the box to bring it back again, if you need to).
My island is located off the coast, far from anything that resembles civilization. It is isolated and self-sufficient. A tribe of orcs calls it home and uses it as a base from which to raid the closest human settlements 50 miles to the south. Recently, a pair of chimera have found that the rocky coast and isolation are to their liking much to the consternation of the orcs. Did I mention the ruins? Oh, that's a secret...
The seaward shore is rough, rocky and wooded. It's frequently shrouded in fog and pounded by winter storms. The landward shore isn't exactly a resort, but it does have some rocky beaches and is more protected with calmer waters. As the island is 60 miles at it's longest point, it's a 2/3 the size of Hawaii which is helpful for me to visualize distances, so it's a pretty large mass.
Loopysue and qwalker, thanks for showing the progress on your maps. That is what I was hoping for. And it was also suggested by Monsen that we show our progress. This will be a good way to see that everyone is grasping the concepts. Remember what they showed you in arithmetic class? Show your work :P
That's a great description of your island AEIOU. Great job on that. Please let me know if it is too much information or if it is moving too fast.
Ok. I'm going to go work on point #2.
@Wyvern: I believe I will soon hate the floating prompt, but so far I don't think I can live without it shouting instructions at me. :P Still, it is good to know how to turn it off when the time comes.
So on to what I didn't finish last night.
Wyvern already mentioned what Point #2 was going to be
Point #2 Pay attention to your Command Line.
What is a “Command Line”?
The Command Line is one of your most important ways to communicate with CC3+. CC3+ uses it to tell you what it expects you to do next, and what options you might have. You can use it provide answers to CC3+’s questions, as well as typing your commands, instead of selecting them from the menu or toolbars.
That floating icon you have on your screen that Wyvern told you how to get rid of is kind of telling you what the Command Line wants to tell you as well. So if you decide to get rid of it, then please be sure that you pay attention to the actual Command Line itself.
So where is this "Command Line" located anyway?
The Command Line is located in the bottom left corner of your Campaign Cartographer User Interface.
The Command Line takes some getting used to using and I personally don’t use it a whole lot, though I do watch it when I am making maps. So eventually we will get into using it more but for now, just realize that it is there and that you should be watching it.
Right click “Default Terrain”. It’s the button on the left side of your Campaign Cartographer User Interface that looks like four squares that are all together on one button, the square on the top right is sort of a yellow cover. If you are unsure, hover your mouse over it. It should read “Default Terrain”.
From the selection of Terrain drawing tools, select “Terrain Default, Hills Back”.
Now look down at your Command Line. (Remember that we should be looking at it for everything we do?) The prompt reads Smooth Polygon: First point) Ok, just checking to remind you to do this.
So now, let’s make some mountain background in the top left corner of our island.
Move the mouse back over to the top left corner of our island. You will notice that the horizontal and vertical lines are back again so you can see where your “ink” begins.
Before you click anything else, keep in mind the way a mountain range in the real world looks. For the most part they are in a lazy wavy line that travels for hundreds if not thousands of miles. But on a small island, while it would still keep the shape of a line, that line would not be so large as what you would find on a continent.
Now you can begin drawing your line of mountain fill. Left click on the spot your mouse is at and bring the mouse down for a little ways on the map. Maybe at a 45 degree angle headed left. When you have brought it down for a little ways head south with it for a little bit then follow your first line back up and curve it over so that it gets close to where your original line began. Now right click to make the computer fill in the rest , like you did originally when you made the land.
Your mountains land fill should automatically fill in and at this point should look like somewhat of backwards L shaped oval.
It should look something like this