Making waves in ocean like those in FR maps?
Hi everyone,
I'm in the process of mapping a world for a campaign using CC3+, and well, Everything's good so far. However, my Ocean/ Sea feels flat, and I would like to make them a little more living and by living I mean drawing the waves like they do in the FR overland map, also is there any ways to make like along the shoreline like in these maps ? I tried scouring the internet and somehow didn't found what I needed, perhaps I'm not using the right term to look for what I want! A little help would be welcome😅!
this is the reference :
https://www.dndbeyond.com/resources/1782-map-of-faerun
Thanks in advance,
Jay
Comments
Hi Jay!
To an extent, this will depend on which style you're using to create your map. For some styles, it's possible to use sheet effects to generate a coastal glow that might work, or you may be able to draw your own wave-lines along the coast, and have them blend in to the background sea colour, or there may be edge-stripe drawing tools that will create such an effect for you automatically (the latter primarily with the black-and-white styles).
Can you show us a screenshot of your map, or maybe share the FCW file, so others with better technical know-how than me here can advise you further?
If you want those waves throughout the entire sea, another effect to consider is Texturize — but I will have to defer to others more experienced to recommend how to best use it.
Hi there,
Thanks for your Reply, I am using Mike Schley Overland Style, I will try the Sheet Effect coastal glow! and let you know how that worked out :D
PS: I'll try to upload a screenshot of the map
Jay
Thank you for this! I'll look into this ! :D
Jay
The color variation on the sea areas is hand-painted, I would say (the highlights are on different sides of the linework and different sizes in different places) and there isn't a good way to get that.
Here is a possible ugly workaround using some existing effects:
1) draw a wave[top] (ideally a whole bunch of waves). I drew a terrible black line to get one wave top.
2) use CONTOURSM to draw an outline all of the way around the wave, ideally on a sheet below the wave (switch to the new sheet or use MOVESHT if you forgot to change like I did)
3) use FRX on the contour to make it not perfectly match the wavetop.
4) Add a Bevel, Lighted effect and a Blur effect to the sheet with the contour.
5) Move the contours slightly off to the side so that they don't exactly surround the wavetops.
Yep, not very good and you'd probably want some variance in that water background. Ah well...
Try using the updated Fantasy Realms (?) annual which uses fills and symbols from Mike Schley to update Alan Bowers (?) original. Both of these are CC3 versions of their respective Faerun maps.
As jmabbott suggested, the Fantasy Realms Reimagined style may help with the sea textures (the original Fantasy Realms style has quite similar sea texture bitmaps too), and jslayton's line drawing technique (probably using smooth, interrupted, thin black lines, rather than fractal ones for the wave tops) should get you a result close to the Faerun map's appearance, although I suspect to duplicate the appearance of the multiple wave lines, which sometimes cross one another, it'll mean a lot of hand-drawing.
You might be able to create an interrupted edge-stripe image to use in a drawing tool for the waves along the main coastlines (I don't think there is anything quite like this currently), though this may not work with smaller islands, where the curvature needed will likely result in fairly solid lines.