Tracing woes
Confutus
Newcomer
I've been trying to use CC3+ for real-world mapping in fantasy styles using data imported from FS3. I've successfully copied coastlines to a new map in Mike Schley and Mercator Globe (CA 01) styles. When I use the default Land Mass tool to fill in continents and Islands, I frequently get unwanted spikes in the coastline, as for instance:
I need to either figure out how to do the fill without creating the spikes, or edit them out.
I can get as far as exploding the coastline, which removes them, but if I try to combine paths, it puts them back in. Is there someone familiar with the quirks of the Trace command that can give me some pointers?
Comments
Those spikes are miter joints, the issue happens when nodes are placed to create very sharp corners on wide lines. It happens more easily on highly detailed coastlines.
One way to get rid of them is to manually go in and remove some nodes from the coastline to fix it. Remember, it is caused by two close nodes at the base of the spike, there isn't a node at the end. And note that you only need to edit the coastline, which is a separate entity from the landmass. This problem doesn't happen to filled entities like the landmass is.
The second option is to just drop the coast outline altogether, and use a glow effect on the landmass instead, as this completely avoids the problem.
I had figured that it was only on the coastline. It's a bit tricky identifying the base of the spike, especially if there are overlapping spikes, and the coastline doesn't seem to be all that sharply bent. I've been experimenting with my technique for doing fills so that I don't create these kinds of spikes, and my method seems to be working. Thanks for your help.