Colors change when zooming

MichaelW

Hi everyone, any help would be appreciated. I'm having a very consistent, repeatable problem.

I made a CC3+ map, which happens to come from FT3: an exported climate zones map. When I zoom in on this map, it looks "correct" in the sense of having the same colors as in FT3. However, as I zoom out, one of the climate zones, colored brownish, loses it's color - it turns white. Upon closer inspection, it retains it's original brownish color as a border, but the polygon fill turns white. I can zoom in-and-out and the color of each of those climate zone polygons change back-and-forth from brown to white. There is a particular zoom level where it happens - below that all levels use the brown polygons, above it, all use the white. Using the refresh button has no effect.

Any ideas?

Best Regards,
Michael

Loopysue

That sounds a bit odd.

If you hide all the sheets except for the climate one does it still do that?

MichaelW

Thanks for the idea. Yes, I tried hiding all layers except for the climate zones, and the behavior remains exactly as I described it.

Michael

Loopysue

Any chance of uploading the FCW so we can have a look at it?

MichaelW

OK, I tried to attach it to this comment.

Loopysue

Well, I've opened it and hidden all sheets but the climate one, and I can confirm that there is a strange behaviour exactly as you describe.

I don't, however, know what it is or how to stop it doing that. I'm kind of hoping that maybe Remy Monsen or one of the tech wizards will pick it up and tell us both what the problem is, but since it is Easter I don't know how quickly that might happen.

I would suggest that if no one else dives in to help in the next day or two you might want to send a tech report through your account page?

Loopysue

Have you considered exporting the map at a lower resolution?

I ask, because as soon as anyone tries to explode that particular multipoly to be able to simplify it a bit the app crashes to desktop.

MichaelW

Thanks again for your efforts! It is an odd problem.

I'm trying to keep the resolution high because I find the main value for me in these kind of tools is to be able to zoom in and out and get multiple scales without having to create and manage separate files. But, if I can't make it work, I may have to go that route.

Best Regards,
Michael

JimP

But you could export at a lower resolution to see if the problem goes away.

Ralf

It's not actually the colors changing in the map, but one of the climate multipolies (the one with color 133) losing its solid fill at a certain zoom level. It's because the entity is too complex and possibly corrupted. See the attached drawing for the complexity of this entity - trying to explode it crashes CC3+. The only workaround I can see is to reduce the detail level of the FT3 export.

MichaelW

I've been playing with the setting and resolution, several tries with each to ensure the behavior was consistent. It basically was. Here are some findings:

1) I unchecked the FT3 export option "Multipoly each Contour Level." This led to CC3+ crashing as soon as I did Zoom Extents.
2) I reduced the resolution in FT3 export from "1024" to "896." This creates an apparently corrupt file, because CC3+ just shows a blank page.
3) I reduced the resolution in FT3 export to "768". This creates a file that displays correctly as far as I can tell. But unfortunately, the smallest exported feature is a square about 2.5 miles on a side. Not ideal for RPGs.

So we've "solved" the weird color problem, but created a more troublesome problem. I have a few more ideas - I'll let you know if anything works better.

In the meantime, thank you all again for your help. It's really kind of you.

Best Regards,
Michael

Loopysue

The 2.5 mile resolution is more than adequate for a world map. Bear in mind that even if you were to print it as a wall poster the detail at that scale would still be plenty good enough.

For larger scale maps zoom in to a continent or a region and export again. FT3 exports only what is visible in the current view, so you will get a larger scale map of the continent or region.

It is possible to go right down to relatively small areas and get detailed exports of relatively small regions. However, past a certain point most of what you will get is the detail of the actual fractal, so it is probably better just to draw ordinary CC3 maps based on the coastline at that scale.