Contoursm not working for me anymore
Hey folks, I wondered if there had been a change with how the contoursm command works? I've looked through the forum and blogs and can't seem to find anything.
For reference, I usually make a black and white export from Fractal Terrains and then insert it onto a trace sheet I make. Then I use the instructions at https://rpgmaps.profantasy.com/leveraging-the-new-features-of-cc3-update-16/ . This has always worked for me in the past. To check if there was something wrong in the image, I used an image I had used before in this way, and although it seems to do something, I can't see any coastlines.
Thanks.
Comments
Hi there! I can confirm it's the same for me... looks like something broke with Contoursm. We'll investigate.
Have you tried using TRACED instead. Maybe it'll work better for you.
Hi Ralf and Monsen. Thanks for the responses.
I should have mentioned that I have the same problem when using TRACED for this.
Thanks.
I can confirm that TRACED isn't working for me either.
Good. I thought I was just doing something wrong the last time I tried. It has been a few months, but I just assumed I wasn't doing something right.
When did everyone first notice things like TRACED and CONTOURSM not working? I've only just noticed it myself, but that's because I was investigating things not right mentioned in this thread.
It might help us pin down the cause if we know when it happened.
Does it do contours and tracing around entities other than images? I ask because working on images was a major surprise to me when it happened.
The original purpose of CONTOURSM was (as the name implies) to be able to draw multiple contours from a macro, making it possible to do waterlines in geometry rather than as a sheet effect. TRACED was aiming more at tracing around multiple entities to get a single, solid polygon instead of little bits with fragment fills.
When I tried TRACED earlier I used a single polygon with a bitmap fill. I used INFO on it afterwards to see how many entities were there, and discovered only the original polygon.
I usually use contoursm when I start a new major area in my world, and the last one I used this procedure for successfully was created on July 7, 2022. So whatever happened to alter its performance must have happened sometime since then.
It is not a common command I use, so I am not sure any dates I provide will be useful. I know I tried it after Aug of this year. This was after I updated to 3.98. I know I tried it before then when I was still using 3.97 and I don't think it was working either. The only time I can say it was working would have been more than a year ago, so I think 3.95 or maybe 3.94 version.
I just ran it on some text and it worked fine for me. I just tested it on a new map and it is working. (contoursm). I used it on the land mass in the map.
@Jeff B - when you click About CC3+... in the Help menu, what version is your software?
Version 3.98
For me, it's working on non-bitmap entities. For some reason, picture entities aren't being scan-converted correctly into the internal buffers used to create the distance field. I've isolated the problem, I just need to figure out why it suddenly started failing.
Is there any chance this will get fixed?
It looks like it's several bugs fighting for supremacy over the course of the last few years. The code was robust enough to sort of keep working until it just all fell apart (and it didn't want to go back together again, either).
The sort of good news: CONTOURSM will work when used on non-bitmap entities, but will totally ignore bitmap entities. TRACED can be made to work on bitmap entities, but requires a change to the CC3Plus configuration file to suppress one of the bugs. Open your CC3PlusCfg.xml file and insert this key:
<ContoursMCmd>
<AAScale>1</AAScale>
</ContoursMCmd>
into the file at "Software/EvolutionComputing/CompaignCartographer3Plus/XP" so that the top of your file looks like (lines in blue are the new ones along with some context):
As to when the bug will get fixed, I don't have a timeline for availability, sorry.
Hey thanks for the quick reply, and your work on this. I really do appreciate it.
Before I attempt this, will the change affect anything else in CC3+? I'm sorry, but at the level of code I am completely useless :(.
It should only affect TRACED at this point. It touches infrastructure used by CONTOURSM and FOREST (and TRACED), but FOREST is enough different that it shouldn't affect it. I am told by someone who tried it that it only works for TRACED when the offset is zero.
It occurs to me that I forgot to ask. The original reason that CONTOURSM wouldn't quite work right (and that TRACED was intended to fix) was that CONTOURSM would only trace bitmaps with completely black pixels or with transparent pixels where it's not black. The drawing background color should be white.
If the drawing background color is white, CONTOURSM should be tracing pure black pixels in the image.
It was actually the contoursm that ended up working for me. Thanks a lot!
Sorry to bump an old thread, but I applied the fix to the XML to hopefully get TRACED to work, but it isn't working for me either. Restarted CC3+ and everything.
The comment above mentions that CONTOURSM should work on non-bitmap entities. I assume this means that picture files that get inserted don't work. How do I get an existing landmass into CC3+ that isn't a bitmap entity?
In other words, is there any current way to get the program to trace an existing coastline from another image?
If the landmass in your input image is pure black and everything else in the image is transparent, then it should work.
This is the image I'm using. The land is pure black and the sea/background is transparent(set to 0 Alpha/opacity).
When I use either contoursm or traced, it goes through all the steps of asking for distance/select entities etc. then when I click do it, it just doesn't do anything. No errors.
Use List from the info menu and see how many entities you have there.
Tried this, it only returns info on the image I inserted.
I apologize about the delay in getting back to you on this, but it was a crazy weekend.
Here's what I did to get the attached map:
0) Start CC3+
1) Make a new map (Overland, Mike Schley CC3 Standard style)
2) INSERT the image posted above (image went onto the LAND sheet, but it shouldn't matter which sheet)
3) TRACED with the below setting (should be the default)
And out came the outline of the image.
It's a little jagged because the input image is a little low resolution (1014x650). If you'd like to reduce the amount of apparent jaggedness, change "Work Image Resolution" to something pretty close to the image's largest resolution (1014 in this case) so that the tracer doesn't go around upsampled edges (here's the one with Working Image Resolution = 1014).
Thank you for the response! I got it to work, because I went in to the cfg file to notice that the lines I added from the post above had been removed. It looks like the CFG file gets overwritten each time the program is closed. I know I added the lines originally because I have a backup of the file, and it was something I triple checked. Weird, but it's working now. Thanks!