Outlining with Walls
TheIneffableCheese
Traveler
I may have made a rookie mistake and painted myself into a corner. I have drawn the layout of a relatively complex dungeon level, and I was hoping to trace the outside of the floors to create walls, but apparently there is no way to merge all the existing floors into a single whole.
Is there anything I can do, or do I resign myself to tracing the existing map over again manually?
Attached is a WiP of the layout so far. The floors are all on the same sheet and layer, for what that's worth. Any suggestions on how to speed up this process is most appreciated.
I'm really loving the program now that I've had some time to dig into it, and I've been very pleased with the welcome and helpful nature of this community. Thanks to everyone for being so welcoming to a total noob.
Is there anything I can do, or do I resign myself to tracing the existing map over again manually?
Attached is a WiP of the layout so far. The floors are all on the same sheet and layer, for what that's worth. Any suggestions on how to speed up this process is most appreciated.
I'm really loving the program now that I've had some time to dig into it, and I've been very pleased with the welcome and helpful nature of this community. Thanks to everyone for being so welcoming to a total noob.
Comments
There are basically to paths to take from here.
First one involves merging those floors into one using the technique described here.
Then make a copy of the floor on the walls sheet and change the line width of the copy to 1 or 2 to create a hollow outlined shape.
The second path is to just draw around with the wall tool. Your dungeon isn't that big, and you can utilize snaps and modifiers to make sure the wall nodes are placed precisely at the corners. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes.
But I will definitely dig into that tutorial and see if it might not help in the future. Thanks for the response!
Speaking of, does anyone have suggestions about indicating slope in hallways? it is intended that most of the 10 foot wide hallways (5' grid, btw) slope either up or down. I was thinking something simple like an arrow to indicate "down" - I don't feel like trying anything fancy like angled polygon shading or the like. Is there an easy way to draw an arrow in CC3+ - like a line style with an arrow head? Trying to keep things simple, but I keep finding new rabbit holes to fall into with this program.
However, this doesn't always produce very satisfactory results. Dependent on the size of the arrow used and the line width, you often end up with an irritating piece of line extending beyond the arrowhead and spoiling the look. So the "cleaner" way is to just draw a line and then a separate solid-polygon triangle of appropriate size and shape which you can then move to the end of the line (or wherever else you may need it). If you'll need more such arrowed lines, just use the copy facility on the triangle each time.
Sometimes, you may also find a suitable arrow among the symbols for the style you're mapping with which could be used instead.
The mid-corridor artefact may be due to the Effects used on different Sheets near where this is happening. There are ways of avoiding the problem if so, usually by adding an identical polygon to the affected one, but on a Sheet with no Effects between whichever Sheets seem to be causing the problem. It's also possible there may be an unwanted short line, maybe on your Walls Sheet, at that point. Try the Info > List drop-down command on the affected area to check for this.
If you're willing to share the FCW file publicly here, I'm sure one of our more technically-savvy experts will be able to advise you more precisely about this oddment though!
I'm attaching the latest FCW if anyone wants to look into the weird artifact. Like I said, when I actually export at the size I need for my VTT, the problem isn't present, so it really won't affect me in game - mostly I was curious why it was doing that.
@seycyrus - Yes, exactly. The map is an underground arcane research facility and the circular rooms have metal spheres that block access to the other parts of the facility; the PCs will start out with one access charm, but they have to find others to fully explore the place. I have the metal spheres on another layer, but I think I'm going to end up rendering them as their own files and place them on the map as tokens on the VTT so I can rotate their orientation on the fly.