I don't like the contast between the mountain symbols and the actual mountain-back, so I have just used mountain_MS fill. Also a quick and lazy way to get the mountains and hills in, and you can fix up the edges later with symbols. But that's just my preference, and what I did on my map (which now displays, thanks Dogtag) at the beginning of page 2 (this page) of the thread. I have also added a fuller description. I might also add one of the smaller islands to the tutorial.
LAND FEATURES. It does mean that if you put in the mountain background first, then the Hill one on top, the monatin one will be hidden. So you need to click on 'Bring to Front ' icon, then select mountain polygon (sometimes a trial and error thin) the "Do It', and behold, your mountain polygon appears again. And here are the islands of Chaenan and Thelwen
I've got a series of islands off the north of the main continent that are volcanic in nature, and inhabited by pictish savages (they're not organized enough to be pirates). This will eventually end up being used there, if I like it.
Here is the second video. I'm trying to incorporate all the information added by my colleagues, so I'll always give a day or two after Tonnichiwa publishes his instructions. Anyway, this week before Christmas will be hectic with tests and marking so I'll probably only do more videos next weekend.
Posted By: qwalkerLAND FEATURES. It does mean that if you put in the mountain background first, then the Hill one on top, the monatin one will be hidden. So you need to click on 'Bring to Front ' icon, then select mountain polygon (sometimes a trial and error thin) the "Do It', and behold, your mountain polygon appears again. And here are the islands of Chaenan and Thelwen
This definitely works but the best way I've found to layer terrain is to use a separate sheet for each terrain type. That way you can easily adjust the order they are drawn and you can apply effects to each terrain fill (even different effects). If they are on the same sheet then only the edges of the outermost terrain will show the effect. You can see this in the sharp edges of the mountain fill of the layered terrain, above.
I agree, but just decided to go along with the tutorial at this stage. But what I have now done is move the hill background to Hill Background Sheet (I made a new sheet), and the same for the Mountain background on the LAND FEATURES. Wish that this could have been set up that way as the default sheet in the style from the beginning. Oh, and I have used the same effects for these 2 new sheet as for LAND FEATURES. You can see the difference. Finally. I moved the Hills Background Sheet above the LAND FEATURES Sheet, and the Mountains Background Sheet between the two. This ensures that Hill background is on the bottom, LAND FEATURES on top, and Mountains Background sandwiched between. At present LAND FEATURES has nothing in it.
EDIT: This used to be the "how to save, export, and upload a map to the forum" part of the thread but I have moved that closer to the beginning of the class.
Dogtag and Qwalker: The discussion on sheets is definitely on-target, and I do not wish to in any way discourage such discussions. However, getting into the ins and outs of sheets is quite a bit ahead of where we are right now, and someone who is truly new to CC will likely be confused by it, or worse, start playing with stuff they don't understand and developing bad habits. Again, you're both on-target with what you're saying, and again, I have no desire to discourage everyone from offering whatever wisdom they have, but perhaps it would be more productive to the absolute newbies to wait until we're a little further on?
(I hope that doesn't come across harshly, or as negative criticism. It isn't intended to be.)
LOL! Its ok taustinoc. You stick with me. I'm just plodding along with Tonnichiwa's instructions and only listening to the rest of it
Even though I've done all this stuff and might sometimes think I know it backwards, there are always bad habits a person can get into, so I'm doing the learning bit all over again the Tonnichiwa way to make sure I'm doing things right
Sorry to get ahead of things - I was just 'inspired' by Dogtag's comments on how Effects did not work for the MountainFill_MS put on top of the Hill fill_MS. Won't be bad again (fingers crossed behind back)
It's not that you're confusing me - I get what you (and Dogtag) are saying, and agree completely. And Loopysue, yeah, I'm not exactly a clueless newbie - most of the concepts are quite familiar from CorelDraw (though CC's sheets are a *lot* more sophisticated, obviously), but still a newbie, and I've already learned some pretty basic things.
I just think that this whole forum class idea is a very good one. Joe Sweeney's videos are an excellent introduction, but can't, for obvious reasons, go into anywhere near as much detail as this can. But as an IT pro for too many years to contemplate, I know the hazards of throwing too much information at people who have no clue what I'm talking about, too quickly (because I've done it so many times). Sometimes, when you're teaching someone how to do something incredibly complicated, you have to teach them how to do stuff "wrong" early on, so they understand the basics when you start to build on it with the "right" way. Otherwise, they get bored, and wander off to play Farmville on their phone.
Well, here's my "homework." Just the basics as in Tonnichiwa's instructions. "Blob Island" and some hill country, which, by the way, wound up on the "Minerals/Mountains" sheet. I did remember to check.
So I just wanted to let everybody know that I added what we have learned to the very first post. This way, if new students show up they can get an idea of what we have already covered.
I also wanted to let everybody know that Dogtag has made a few video’s on how to do some of the most useful but misunderstood tools CC3+ uses. If you haven’t had a chance to do so, I highly recommend you check them out.
So how many of you passed the pop quiz? Did you really look or did you have to go back and look? Be honest.
If you didn’t look, please try to get in the habit of doing so. Trust me, eventually you will be glad you developed this habit.
It’s ok, I did something absentminded too. I forgot to save my work from the last lesson so I had to re-draw my my whole map with the bitmap fill. (I don’t have my autosave turned on as I don’t like being interrupted all the time. So it was late and I shut down my program without saving. Doh!)
So how about we get started.
Remember when I said “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?"
Well, lets continue to add another bitmap fill to the map.
Open your map up in your Campaign Cartographer User Interface and lets begin.
This time, we are going to pick a different spot than we did for the last bitmap fill we used, and this time, you are going to left click on the icon for “Vegetation”.
It is the icon on the top that looks like a single tree. If you are unsure, hover your mouse over it. It should say “Vegetation”.
Left clicking the Vegetation button loads Drawing Tools and Symbols related to vegetation into your Symbol Catalog.
The Symbol Catalog is that line of pictures along the left hand side of your drawing. The symbol catalog window displays the symbols and drawing tools matching your current drawing style and type as selected on the symbol toolbar.
Now, you can access the Symbol Catalog Window by either right clicking on a symbol there, or scrolling down with the down arrow. Either way you choose to do it I want you to find the Grassland tool and left click it. Now look at your command line. What does it say? Just keep in mind I am telling you to do this so you get in the habit of looking at your command line.
Then look at your map again, move your mouse over to another area not covered by your first bitmap fill, and play around making a grassland bitmap fill, doing it similar to the way you did the Hills background bitmap fill. Don’t forget to look to see what sheet this one goes on.
Do note that we could also have found this tool by right clicking Default Terrain as we did previously. I just wanted to show you that there is more than one way to do something in cc3+.
Now you should have two bitmap fills on your map that look something like this:
The layer was VEGETATION, the Sheet was LAND FEATURES. The command line read Smooth polygon, first point. Here is my updated map, with two areas of Grassland. The islands are like the Hebrides, but facing cold northern gales regularly, so not much in the way of forests or farmland, just pasture.
Now we come to the part most people like to do. Placing Symbols.
So what are Symbols?
Symbols are a special type of entity used for map features such as trees, cities and mountains. They are the little graphic entities that you see in the Symbol Catalog Window.
Before we start placing them however, it will help to get you familiar with what you are looking at when you see a symbol. Of course there is going to be the awesome detail of the art itself (especially in this case as it IS Mike Schley style)
But as you look at the Symbol of something you might notice that somewhere in a corner of one of the Symbols are these little letters, or a box with color in it.
What do these mean? I’m glad you asked.
I’d like you to go over to the Symbol Catalog, place your mouse on a Symbol, and right click it. Then go up above your map and left click on the “Vegetation” button again.
This will expand your Symbol Catalog way out to the right and show you all of the Vegetation Symbols in the Catalog.
One of the first Symbol’s I want to talk about are the “Shaded Varicolor Symbol”.
Look down the Symbol’s until you see one that has a colored square in the top right corner. The square will most likely be green.
This is how you know it is a “Shaded Varicolor Symbol”.
A Shaded Varicolor Symbol is a Symbol, that, when placed, are shaded in the color that is currently displayed on the “Status Bar” up above your drawing.
If you look at the Status Bar above your drawing, you will see a small square in the middle of the Status Bar that has color on it.
Left click it now.
This will bring up the “Select Color” window.
The Select Color window is awesome! It’s got a bunch of different colors for you to choose from and even has buttons that will help you to blend your own colors if you want. I will leave custom color exploration up to you.
Now, I want you to left click on one of the colors and then left click the “ok” button and watch what happens.
Now do it again with a different color.
Notice how the colors on about half of the Symbol’s change? Very cool right?
This means you can choose what color you wish to make certain Symbols! How awesome is that!
On some Symbol’s you will see a “+” sign in the top left corner. Left click the “+” sign.
Did you see how the Symbol Catalog symbol’s seemed to expand and more Symbols appeared?
That’s because there is more than one kind of Symbol art contained In that Symbol. You access it by left clicking the “+” sign. It is basically the same Symbol, only drawn slightly different.
So for instance there may be multiple pieces of art for a single pine tree. Some might be taller, fatter, shorter, slightly bent…whatever. But they are all still just a single pine tree. So they were grouped together under the pine tree Symbol. Now you know how to get to them to use them in your map.
Next you will see a box directly underneath the “+” sign that has the letter “R”.
This means that Symbol is randomly selected.
Some Symbols are picked randomly from a collection of similar Symbols, like a collection of different mountains. This allows you to easily have variation in your map without having to manually pick and place different Symbol. A new Symbol will be automatically selected from the collection for each placement.
Here's a tip. If you have left clicked on a Symbol with the R on it but a random Symbol comes up that you don't like, you can press the tab button on your keyboard to cycle through them.
In the upper right corner of some entities in the Symbol Catalog is the letter “T”.
What this means is that this particular entity is actually a Terrain bitmap fill. It can be left clicked and used the same way we used the other two bitmap fills that we have already placed.
Alright, Now we are going to get a little bit deeper into Symbols than just super basic. The reason is because, even though Symbols look simple, to use them right , there are some things you need to know.
So this is why I stressed looking at your command line. Because now we are going to be using it.
Move your mouse up to the buttons that are near the “Vegetation" button you used before.
Now left click on the button that looks like a mountain. That is the “Minerals/Mountains” button.
This will load the Mountain type fills and symbols into the Symbol Catalog.
Scroll down or expand out the Symbol Catalog until you find the Symbol for “Foothills 1” and left click it.
But what happened?
The Symbol appeared on your cursor but it’s WAY too big for the screen! Uh oh! What do we do now?
I’m glad you asked.
You look down at your command line. It should say “Place Symbol (Shift = 15 degrees Rot, Shift+Ctrl =Rot, Ctrl = Scale)[Options]:”
The prompt is telling you that you can also:
Press and hold the Shift key to rotate the Symbol by 15 degrees intervals while moving the mouse.
Press and hold the Shift and Control key to rotate the Symbols even less than in 15 degree intervals while moving the mouse.
Press and hold the Ctrl key to Scale the Symbol to fit while moving the mouse.
Feel free to play around with what these three buttons do.
Now, with your mouse hovering over your map, with a Symbol of hills hovering on your cursor, I want you to right click your mouse.
This brings up the Symbol Parameter’s button. I’m not going to get into the details of the button just yet so I want you to just left click the button that says “Set Normal”.
That will set the Symbol to the correct size for a map of this size. Yep, CC3+ does that. It knows what scale you are working with and will set the Symbol’s to that scale.
Next, left click the “more” button and place your Symbol at its new size halfway on your hills fill and make sure you have part of it off of the hills fill.
Looks good doesn’t it?
On your keyboard, hit your escape button. This will take the next Symbol off of your cursor and clear the command to put another Symbol on your cursor.
Now I want you to move your mouse up to right hand side of your Campaign Cartographer User Interface and left click the “Redraw” button. It is the one that looks like two arrows circling around each other. If you are unsure, hover your mouse over the button. It should say “Redraw”.
but I don't mind if you clutter the thread up with the same problem. I was hoping people would show their work, especially beginners, so we know they've grasped the concept. And if they haven't grasped the concept then we could all help them to. Anyway, I'm gonna let this one sit for another day or so before moving on.
Puts on teacher's voice
"remember, this is a class so please show your work"
Posted By: tonnichiwa...I did something absentminded too. I forgot to save my work from the last lesson so I had to re-draw my my whole map with the bitmap fill. (I don’t have my autosave turned on as I don’t like being interrupted all the time. So it was late and I shut down my program without saving. Doh!)
Hope I'm not spoiling (another) one of your future lessons here Tonnichiwa, but it may be worth stressing the importance of continually saving your mapwork as you're going along. I've found this is a very good habit to get into, as important as remembering to check the Command Line. CC3 has an annoying tendency to crash and have to close down at unpredictable points occasionally, if usually just when you're really pleased with what you've accomplished, but hadn't remembered to save it for quite a while. At which point you've lost all the new stuff since you last saved the map... (I haven't worked much with CC3+ still, so am not sure if it does the same thing as relatively frequently.)
Yes, having the Autosave panel flash up regularly can be an irritation (especially as it can do so when you're in the middle of drawing something at times), but I find it's useful to leave it turned on, because it then reminds me I need to save the map RIGHT NOW, just in case!
It's also worth saying that using the Autosave panel means your file will not be stored where it usually is, but as a separate .FCW file called AUTOSAVE.FCW in the ProgramData/Profantasy/CC3Plus folder on your computer.
Posted By: WyvernYes, having the Autosave panel flash up regularly can be an irritation (especially as it can do so when you're in the middle of drawing something at times), but I find it's useful to leave it turned on, because it then reminds me I need to save the map RIGHT NOW, just in case!
As an addendum to this, remember that you can turn off the popup, but still have CC3 autosave regularly. I prefer to do that myself.
Although I've generally found that CC3+ is made of stronger stuff compared to CC3, as far as crashing goes, I agree that it is still a good idea to have the auto save switched on, even if the popup can sometimes get a bit irritating. At least it gives you the option to defer saving if you happen to be right in the middle of doing something a bit complicated
Comments
When you laid down your mountain fill, did you check to see what Sheet it was on?
EDIT: LAND FEATURES ?
And here are the islands of Chaenan and Thelwen
Hi Dogtag!
Can I add you to the list of people who may pop in from time to time?
(I hope that doesn't come across harshly, or as negative criticism. It isn't intended to be.)
Even though I've done all this stuff and might sometimes think I know it backwards, there are always bad habits a person can get into, so I'm doing the learning bit all over again the Tonnichiwa way to make sure I'm doing things right
I just think that this whole forum class idea is a very good one. Joe Sweeney's videos are an excellent introduction, but can't, for obvious reasons, go into anywhere near as much detail as this can. But as an IT pro for too many years to contemplate, I know the hazards of throwing too much information at people who have no clue what I'm talking about, too quickly (because I've done it so many times). Sometimes, when you're teaching someone how to do something incredibly complicated, you have to teach them how to do stuff "wrong" early on, so they understand the basics when you start to build on it with the "right" way. Otherwise, they get bored, and wander off to play Farmville on their phone.
(He wrote, walking away sheepishly...)
I also wanted to let everybody know that Dogtag has made a few video’s on how to do some of the most useful but misunderstood tools CC3+ uses. If you haven’t had a chance to do so, I highly recommend you check them out.
So how many of you passed the pop quiz? Did you really look or did you have to go back and look? Be honest.
If you didn’t look, please try to get in the habit of doing so. Trust me, eventually you will be glad you developed this habit.
It’s ok, I did something absentminded too. I forgot to save my work from the last lesson so I had to re-draw my my whole map with the bitmap fill. (I don’t have my autosave turned on as I don’t like being interrupted all the time. So it was late and I shut down my program without saving. Doh!)
So how about we get started.
Remember when I said “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?"
Well, lets continue to add another bitmap fill to the map.
Open your map up in your Campaign Cartographer User Interface and lets begin.
This time, we are going to pick a different spot than we did for the last bitmap fill we used, and this time, you are going to left click on the icon for “Vegetation”.
It is the icon on the top that looks like a single tree. If you are unsure, hover your mouse over it. It should say “Vegetation”.
Left clicking the Vegetation button loads Drawing Tools and Symbols related to vegetation into your Symbol Catalog.
The Symbol Catalog is that line of pictures along the left hand side of your drawing. The symbol catalog window displays the symbols and drawing tools matching your current drawing style and type as selected on the symbol toolbar.
Now, you can access the Symbol Catalog Window by either right clicking on a symbol there, or scrolling down with the down arrow. Either way you choose to do it I want you to find the Grassland tool and left click it. Now look at your command line. What does it say? Just keep in mind I am telling you to do this so you get in the habit of looking at your command line.
Then look at your map again, move your mouse over to another area not covered by your first bitmap fill, and play around making a grassland bitmap fill, doing it similar to the way you did the Hills background bitmap fill. Don’t forget to look to see what sheet this one goes on.
Do note that we could also have found this tool by right clicking Default Terrain as we did previously. I just wanted to show you that there is more than one way to do something in cc3+.
Now you should have two bitmap fills on your map that look something like this:
[Image_7203]
As far as I could see it went down on the same sheet as the hills fill.
The command line read Smooth polygon, first point.
Here is my updated map, with two areas of Grassland. The islands are like the Hebrides, but facing cold northern gales regularly, so not much in the way of forests or farmland, just pasture.
So what are Symbols?
Symbols are a special type of entity used for map features such as trees, cities and mountains. They are the little graphic entities that you see in the Symbol Catalog Window.
Before we start placing them however, it will help to get you familiar with what you are looking at when you see a symbol. Of course there is going to be the awesome detail of the art itself (especially in this case as it IS Mike Schley style)
But as you look at the Symbol of something you might notice that somewhere in a corner of one of the Symbols are these little letters, or a box with color in it.
What do these mean? I’m glad you asked.
I’d like you to go over to the Symbol Catalog, place your mouse on a Symbol, and right click it. Then go up above your map and left click on the “Vegetation” button again.
This will expand your Symbol Catalog way out to the right and show you all of the Vegetation Symbols in the Catalog.
One of the first Symbol’s I want to talk about are the “Shaded Varicolor Symbol”.
Look down the Symbol’s until you see one that has a colored square in the top right corner. The square will most likely be green.
This is how you know it is a “Shaded Varicolor Symbol”.
A Shaded Varicolor Symbol is a Symbol, that, when placed, are shaded in the color that is currently displayed on the “Status Bar” up above your drawing.
If you look at the Status Bar above your drawing, you will see a small square in the middle of the Status Bar that has color on it.
Left click it now.
This will bring up the “Select Color” window.
The Select Color window is awesome! It’s got a bunch of different colors for you to choose from and even has buttons that will help you to blend your own colors if you want. I will leave custom color exploration up to you.
Now, I want you to left click on one of the colors and then left click the “ok” button and watch what happens.
Now do it again with a different color.
Notice how the colors on about half of the Symbol’s change? Very cool right?
This means you can choose what color you wish to make certain Symbols! How awesome is that!
On some Symbol’s you will see a “+” sign in the top left corner. Left click the “+” sign.
Did you see how the Symbol Catalog symbol’s seemed to expand and more Symbols appeared?
That’s because there is more than one kind of Symbol art contained In that Symbol. You access it by left clicking the “+” sign. It is basically the same Symbol, only drawn slightly different.
So for instance there may be multiple pieces of art for a single pine tree. Some might be taller, fatter, shorter, slightly bent…whatever. But they are all still just a single pine tree. So they were grouped together under the pine tree Symbol. Now you know how to get to them to use them in your map.
Next you will see a box directly underneath the “+” sign that has the letter “R”.
This means that Symbol is randomly selected.
Some Symbols are picked randomly from a collection of similar Symbols, like a collection of different mountains. This allows you to easily have variation in your map without having to manually pick and place different Symbol. A new Symbol will be automatically selected from the collection for each placement.
Here's a tip. If you have left clicked on a Symbol with the R on it but a random Symbol comes up that you don't like, you can press the tab button on your keyboard to cycle through them.
In the upper right corner of some entities in the Symbol Catalog is the letter “T”.
What this means is that this particular entity is actually a Terrain bitmap fill. It can be left clicked and used the same way we used the other two bitmap fills that we have already placed.
Alright, Now we are going to get a little bit deeper into Symbols than just super basic. The reason is because, even though Symbols look simple, to use them right , there are some things you need to know.
So this is why I stressed looking at your command line. Because now we are going to be using it.
Move your mouse up to the buttons that are near the “Vegetation" button you used before.
Now left click on the button that looks like a mountain. That is the “Minerals/Mountains” button.
This will load the Mountain type fills and symbols into the Symbol Catalog.
Scroll down or expand out the Symbol Catalog until you find the Symbol for “Foothills 1” and left click it.
But what happened?
The Symbol appeared on your cursor but it’s WAY too big for the screen! Uh oh! What do we do now?
I’m glad you asked.
You look down at your command line. It should say “Place Symbol (Shift = 15 degrees Rot, Shift+Ctrl =Rot, Ctrl = Scale)[Options]:”
The prompt is telling you that you can also:
Press and hold the Shift key to rotate the Symbol by 15 degrees intervals while moving the mouse.
Press and hold the Shift and Control key to rotate the Symbols even less than in 15 degree intervals while moving the mouse.
Press and hold the Ctrl key to Scale the Symbol to fit while moving the mouse.
Feel free to play around with what these three buttons do.
Now, with your mouse hovering over your map, with a Symbol of hills hovering on your cursor, I want you to right click your mouse.
This brings up the Symbol Parameter’s button. I’m not going to get into the details of the button just yet so I want you to just left click the button that says “Set Normal”.
That will set the Symbol to the correct size for a map of this size. Yep, CC3+ does that. It knows what scale you are working with and will set the Symbol’s to that scale.
Next, left click the “more” button and place your Symbol at its new size halfway on your hills fill and make sure you have part of it off of the hills fill.
Looks good doesn’t it?
On your keyboard, hit your escape button. This will take the next Symbol off of your cursor and clear the command to put another Symbol on your cursor.
Now I want you to move your mouse up to right hand side of your Campaign Cartographer User Interface and left click the “Redraw” button. It is the one that looks like two arrows circling around each other. If you are unsure, hover your mouse over the button. It should say “Redraw”.
Your map should look something like this:
Uh oh! What Happened?
(we'll get to that)
Puts on teacher's voice
"remember, this is a class so please show your work"
turns off teacher's voice
Yes, having the Autosave panel flash up regularly can be an irritation (especially as it can do so when you're in the middle of drawing something at times), but I find it's useful to leave it turned on, because it then reminds me I need to save the map RIGHT NOW, just in case!
It's also worth saying that using the Autosave panel means your file will not be stored where it usually is, but as a separate .FCW file called AUTOSAVE.FCW in the ProgramData/Profantasy/CC3Plus folder on your computer.