Best Way to Create Political Borders for FT3/CC3 world
I'm in the early stages of planning/creating a new world and a large part of that process will be using ProFantasy software. Right now, I've created the base world in FT3 but I'm stuck on the best way to proceed in creating political boundaries.
Since I'd like to export my FT3 world to CC3 as a macro view world map, and also as zoomed in nations etc. my thought is that it makes the most sense to try to put some sort of vector layer on my FT3 world with political borders. I'm not finding a super straightforward way to do it, so I thought I'd reach out to some collective wisdom.
Am I on a fool's errand? Is there a different option?
Comments
FT3+ doesn't support vector entities directly in FT3+. That's what CC3+ is for. (I really do recommend getting the FT3+ update as it has a lot of bug fixes compared to FT3).
FT3+ does support image overlays and named views, which may simplify some of the work. Creating an image overlay via the Image Overlays window that contains country areas in different colors can be useful when exporting images to CC3+. Creating a named view per country or area via the View Management window can make it easier to batch-export maps for your whole area and to return to a specific area.
The most direct way to get output from FT3+ to CC3+ is to generate a basic CC3+ export from within FT3+ and a corresponding image file (these can both be done from the View Management window). Insert the image file into CC3+ and use that image file as a guide when drawing your new things (some folks like to make a new CC3+ file and insert an image without ever exporting vector data from FT3+). The primary value for FT3+ in this scenario is mostly that FT3+ can provide images that are consistent across the whole set of maps for a world regardless of projection or resizing. FT3+ can do make great-circle distance calculations for spherical worlds, while CC3+ will only do flat-earth ones (FT3+ can also do flat worlds if required).