Borders and Glow
Hi Folks!
I'm working on a custom map for the Dune Boardgame, and was going for a more subtle approach for the borders in the desert. I was going for border lines that smoothly blend into a glow, such that the line entity vanishes into the glow. But I can't get it to work, either the glow is too dark or one can clearly see the line.
So I tried a second approach: I thought I could set up an extra Sheet with just a rectangle with the solid color of the borders and give the dessert an edge fade, such that I get a similar effect by letting the background shine through the edge fade. But the "problem" with this approach is that, of course, all desert regions are on the same sheet and so the border between two desert regions are not recognized as border.
Is there a way to suppress this behaviour without putting every desert region on a different Sheet? Or Is there a different approach and I'm just doing it wrong in general?
Comments
You can use Edge Fade to do that - all on one sheet.
I think you might have used the Edge Fade, Inner, which doesn't work all on one sheet.
Thanks Sue for your quick response!
I don't really get how edge fade works. I tried that but it just did either nothing, or, when inverted the colors it somehow behaved like a blend or transparency effect. But it is very jumpy. It doesn't do anything at first until I get the distance really low, then suddenly it jumps to almost invisible.
It certainly does not behave at all like Edge fade, inner :/
An alternative is to have the borders on one sheet, but do them as lines - nice thick lines, and then use an Edge Fade Inner on them.
Another alternative is to have them as lines (not too thick) and use a Blur effect on that sheet.
thick lines with edge fade inner was pretty much the look I was going for! Thanks a lot Sue!
In the meantime I played around with the Edge fade and I discovered, that the Edge fade did not make my bitmap filled polygon transparent, but filled it with small squares, each with it's own edge fade. Not at all the effect I was expecting...
I have to admit that while Ralf makes Edge Fade look simple, I frequently have quite a tussle with it myself. I thought it was just me.
I too thought it was just a compatibility thing like with the different glow effects. But it behaves so strange. Maybe Ralf can make an in depth explanation on how he uses it in one of his upcoming streams...
Note that as with any effect, Edge Fade doesn't work on a per entity basis. What it does is to find areas with a solid fill (i.e.) same color and fades the edge of those areas. This is basically usless to do if your entities have bitmap fills. In other words, this effects is mainly only usefull on a sheet where all the entities have fill style Solid.
Ah! That explains all the small squares, that where probably the small areas of the same colour.
Hmm... that is interesting.