No Flowers Petals with Flowers using Japanese Temples
JulianDracos
Mapmaker
I went to place some flowers, but they just look like green bushes. However, the symbol before I place shows flowers. The icons in the folder show flowers. I opened up the image in GIMP and there are flower petals.
I see that the folder included varicolor for the flowers - although that is not an option in the vegetation menu. I change the color being used just in case that is it, and still no flower petals.
When I zoom in, I see what is probably them. They are black/gray. Thinking it might be a sheet effect, I turn them all off. Still no petals. I try making them big, and still no colorful petals.
I open up the sample file and none of the flowers there show petals either.
Do I have to report this as a bug, or is there a way to fix this?
Comments
Check the symbol list under symbol manager to see if there are two symbols with the same name. If so, delete the one that isn't leaves.
I think that might be it or something related to the varicolor. When looking at the folder, there are two sets files both with the same name. That is they are both varicolor with exactly the same name. One includes the green bush with silver-white flowers. The other is just blank space with black flowers. What seems to be occuring is that it is placing small black flowers that blend in with the dark leaves. It is not actually applying any color.
Possibility 1: EDIT: read further down the tread - this is actually wrong, but I will leave it here to maintain the record of why people said what they said.
Varicolour symbols only work if you open the catalogue, not the folder.
Click the open folder button at the top of the symbol list and open the [catalogue file name].FSC file, rather than the folder.
You might need to purge the existing Flower Shrub symbols from your drawing, save it and reopen it first, or CC3 will remember the first definition for that name and continue to paste the old symbols instead of the new working ones by the same name.
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Possibility 2:
You have an old installer back from when the set was first published. I think it was corrected some time ago, so a fresh download and reinstall might put it right.
Loopysue 🖼️ 35 images Cartographer ProFantasy 03:34 edited 03:42 Flag
Possibility 1:
Varicolour symbols only work if you open the catalogue, not the folder.
Thanks! Been struggling with this too...
I am assuming by folder, you mean vegetation.fsc. If that is the case, then that does not work. I deleted all of the flowers. I then purged the symbols. Saved and then loaded the catalog.
However, I was able to get it to work by navigating to the vegetation symbols and then loading the varicolor for the flowers. That loaded up all of the vegetation and it works correctly.
FSC files are files. They have the CC3+ icon. The folders with their standard yellow folder icons are where the raw png images are stored.
This is me, opening the "All.FSC" catalogue file for Creepy Crypts. That particular catalogue contains all the images from all the folders above it and provides random collections, varicolour symbols, and random collections of varicolour symbols. In some styles there are also drawing tools included in some of the FSC files.
There is a lot more to an FSC file than there is to the plain old folders that contain the images they use.
Because I appear to have a different way of understanding this system than you do, I don't really understand what you are saying.
There is only one other way that varicolour symbols will work if you don't open the FSC, and that is if you import the pngs from the folders into the Symbol Manager, which is different to the possibility 1 I stated above. Possibility 1 refers to when you click the open folder button at the top of the symbols pane and then open the folder instead of opening a catalogue file, completely bypassing the Symbol Manager.
(At least, this is how it's been for years. Maybe one of the latest updates changed all of that, and I am just unaware of it because I always use the Symbol Manger, or open an FSC file ;) )
Here is what does not work:
Here is what did work:
When you open up an image file for that folder, it loads up every image in that folder. Notice on the right, you can see the blue flowers, but not on the left.
Generally speaking:
It appears that things have changed as I suspected above at the end of my last comment - that you can indeed get vari symbols to work just by opening the folder and totally ignoring the Symbol Manager and the FSC file.
However, the downside of opening the folder and completely bypassing the Symbols Manager, and not using the FSC file either, is that you don't have any collections. That is why the FSC file looks like it is missing symbols. It's not, I assure you. If you click the little plus sign on any of those symbols that are displaying them at the top left corner in the FSC file, the collection will expand and you will see all of the symbols in that collection. Click the subtract sign to contract the collection again or it won't work.
Collections allow you to pick just the symbol showing and then paste randomly selected, scaled and rotated members of that collection on your map with each click you make, which greatly improves the speed of mapmaking if you have lots of trees or bushes to paste.
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More specifically, now, for this style in particular:
It's clear from your shots that you have a defective FSC file where the vari symbols are broken. If you downloaded the annual recently please can you report the fact that the vari symbols in the FSC file aren't working to Tech Support? Thanks :)
If it is an old installer from just after the style was published, it may just be that you downloaded it before the FSC was repaired, and that downloading a fresh copy might just sort it out for you, so that you can use the FSC with it's collections. So if it's an old installer you could try that before reporting it.
@Loopysue, the last few updates should most definitely not have changed how varicolor symbols work. I do agree that the symbology on the symbol catalog can be a little unclear and would benefit greatly from tooltips like "symbols in drawing" and "load symbols from disk". Also, there is a known and unexpected feature on placement of varicolor symbols that causes them to use the base image rather than the varicolored one, but I don't think that's part of the complaint here.
Each varicolor symbol based on bitmap files is composed of two parts: the base image file and a mask image file (has "vari_" in the file name) that indicates where the varicolor color will be applied. In this case, there should be an image of bushes and an image of little black spots that tells the system where to use the specified varicolor color (non-transparent parts of the mask file will show which parts are colored). The .fsc (catalog) file has the information needed to use both the image and the mask together to get varicolor behavior. If the
If you load a simple PNG file from a directory via the load symbols from disk button the symbol catalog, CC3+ will first look at the directory above that file for a .fsc file with the same name. If it can't find that .fsc, it will create a temporary .fsc named "~XPSYMCAT.FSC" and load all of the PNGs from the directory where the original PNG was selected into that temporary .fsc file. That temporary .fsc is then shown on the symbol catalog window.
@JulianDracosseems to be encountering corruption in the .fsc files for that annual, based on the statements above. I can't tell whether the corruption is on his machine or in the master distribution. I think I saw mention that the fsc works for others, so it seems likely to be a local problem. Loading the raw PNG file will create a temporary catalog that wouldn't have the corruption.
Oh I see! thank you Joe :)
When the style was first published I remember that the FSC didn't work. I think it was repaired at the end of the year, so anyone who downloaded the full annual later on will have the working version of the FSC.
However, maybe it was repaired much later than that, and it really does depend on when you downloaded the style. I can't tell from my own system since I remade the FSC for myself, so I have a unique setup of the style.
I went to my downloads and I do not own the 2018 annual. So I must have gotten it from one of the bundles. I am just not sure which one it is, so I am not sure which file to redownload to try and fix it. I suspect that the bundle collection is using the file that was not corrected. So I really do not want to download GB worth of stuff again, reinstall it, and then it still not work.
I used CC3+ to open the vegetation file. It gave me a blue background and a single green line. The symbols on the left, were all the temple parts.
I think a request to Tech Support is the way to go from here, as I can't tell if the original corrupted FSC was ever repaired where I've overwritten my own catalogues with working versions I made for myself.
If you mention the history of where it came from, that might help TS to locate and repair any separately stored FSC files, and you will probably get a working copy for yourself.
@Glitch - was yours also from a bundle and not the 2018 annual?
OK, so after an hour of checking, downloading and reinstalling, I have the complete 2018 Annual installed (again...), and an identical problem to Julian's still. No varicolor bushes unless I load from the PNG files, as described already above.
Before I reinstalled, all four of the Japanese Temples FSC files had dates of 31/08/2018, and they all still do, so I can only assume they were never updated in the final (i.e. the one huge, ~2 GB, Annual download file for 2018).
Hopefully these can be easily redone to correct the problem, though I imagine everyone who owns that Annual except Sue (!) will then need to reinstall the updated version.
Here is a corrected FSC file for the vegetation symbols of the style. Not quite sure what happened with the original, but these should work. Please check and if they do, I'll fix and update the 2018 setup.
@Ralf : Closed CC3, Copied your FSC file over the old one in ...\Profantasy\CC3Plus\Symbols\Cities\CA141 Japanese Temples
Restarted CC3 and created flower bushes from the catalogue and from the individual PNGs.
Still have the same issue as @JulianDracos described above
My CC3 is up to date and the annual was installed some time during the last year.
What happens if you create a new map in the style and paste the bushes?
Ah... In every newly created map, the flower bushes work as intended - can use them from the catalogue and varicolour flowers/ fruit show correctly.
So it looks like @Ralf 's FCS file works as intended.
I'll work around it on my one, currently still "open" map in this style.
Thanks a lot.
It should be possible to repair the existing map one of two ways, in no particular order:
Option 2 worked fine, since I hadn't used the symbols a lot before.
The visitors of Nota park are delighted. 🙂 Thanks again.
The leaves on the bushes in the symbol list, when I load the fsc that came with the annual, do change when I change the color. I copied over the original with the one Ralf provided.
The file works for me and even on the original map. However, I should note that when initially trying to solve the problem I deleted all of the incorrect flower symbols and purged.
As an experiment, I loaded the sample file. I could not see any flowers. I loaded the new symbol catalog. It displayed correctly on the left. I tired adding flowers. It worked once. After that,it stopped working. For the fruit trees, only one of them worked correctly, but it did so every time.
So I am thinking that for existing maps, you first need to remove all of the old symbols and purge.
I think that you are correct about having to remove existing symbols before refreshing from a symbol catalog.
When you select a symbol for placement, CC3+ looks for symbols by the name specified for the symbol, first within any symbol definitions already in the drawing, then within the loaded symbol catalog. This search order means that if there is a symbol already in the drawing with the same name as the symbol picked from the symbol catalog, you will get the one from the drawing rather than from the symbol catalog.
There was a PF live mapping session dealing with changing drawing styles ( Live Mapping: Changing Map Styles - YouTube ) a while back, but it doesn't exactly match your use case here (replace symbols of the same name from a catalog).
I have put some items on the wish list for explicit features to make it simple to replace symbol definitions in the current drawing with ones from a symbol catalog.
@jslayton Does that mean you can't rename the faulty symbols and then replace them with the correct ones?
Somewhat belatedly, as I wasn't online here sooner, thanks very much @Ralf !
Happy to confirm what others have said already above, that the updated FSC file posted here does work just fine. And better, I don't have to do the whole 2 GB download and reinstall again!
I'm not sure how well renaming the existing symbol definition and then importing the new ones will work. I suppose it would work if you then renamed the original symbols to their original names. I think you have come up with a good workaround for the behavior.
[edit] My brain seems to be aging faster than the rest of me, because that is exactly what you described. Ah well, fortunately I'm just writing software and that doesn't take much brainpower
Thanks Joe :)