Switching to Schley Lighted wiped out custom sheet effects?

JMunsonII

Greetings!

After fully populating my map, setting up sheets, etc., I switched to the Lighted effects and bam - all my custom sheet effects disappeared.

Anyone have a solution and/or know why this occurred?

I did save off my map as a different version before I applied the effects so I can easily revert...

Thanks!

Jon

JMunsonII

I got around this by documenting and copying Mike's lighting settings and my map is OK to move forward. A bit unexpected behavior though...

Loopysue

Not sure I understand what happened there!

Are you talking about changing the Effects Presets, in the Drawing and Sheet Effects dialogue?

Monsen

Changing the preset loads a complete new set of effects, replacing the once you have. This is intentional, as accumulating multiple effects from selecting different presets would not be a vary good idea (and CC3 doesn't differentiate between effects you added to the map, and those added by a preset)

JMunsonII

Well, that's a "gotcha" I will just have to remember going forward and dump in the lighting sheet effects myself (as I don't know how to do the macro thing yet)... Unless there exists a macro to "turn on the lights" (at least on the standard sheets)?

Monsen

I don't think you can use a macro to add effects, unless there is a command I am not aware of.

Anyhow, I generally prefer to put in the lights myself. I use a lot of custom sheets, so adding a default light setup rarely work for me. Didn't even know there was a lighted preset in there, usually only use the presets I've made myself.

Loopysue

I tend to make a new set of presets to preserve special and very complicated set ups, but you have to be careful you don't save the ones you've altered over an existing 'factory' set of settings! Making a new one is the safest way. I have one for each of the large maps I've made. That way if I want to 'do a map like...' I just load the personal preset file so I've got all the same sheets and effects (not to mention the fills and tools I added and made in that map) ready to go on the new one, and don't have to do the whole setup all over again.

For example, I did a city (Merelan City) with 135 sheets and well over 300 effects - mostly all my own fills and adapted drawing tools. It took 4 months to draw, and I'd just die if I had to do all of that all over again for another city, so I made a new preset I called 'Merelan City'. Now if anyone ever asks me for a map like that again in the future I can create a new map and get it set up exactly the same in a matter of minutes.

Some people create entirely new templates, but I've never found the need to go quite that far

JMunsonII

I suppose if one stuck strictly with the Schley sheets, there wouldn't be an issue. But, then, I'm always one to push the envelope, and sometimes in a bad way...

Adding the lights isn't that hard, I'll do a better job of documenting what goes where initially and then it won't be much of an issue going forward.

Thanks for letting me know what the SOP is - I've no problem with it now that I know about it.

JMunsonII

@Loopysue: Maybe one day I will get that far...