Importing Region from Wilbur to CC3+
So I recently got Fractal terrains 3+, I was able to import my map that started out in Wonderdraft. really enjoying the Fractal Terrains tool. However I have a region I wanted to base of the coast of B.C. Canada. I was able to get a greyscale of the region and import it to Wilbur and that worked as well. However now I have a dilemma. Fractal Terrain does not do regional maps, so is there an easy way to get it from Wilbur to CC3+, besides tracing it via overlay in CC3+? I don't have CC3+ yet, but was planning to get it soon.
Comments
In Wilbur, try File>>Save As with the file type "CC2 Contour File (*.fcw)". That should get you a basic set of altitude contours that you can load into CC3+. You can copy those contours in CC3+ and paste them into a new map of your choice to let you have proper CC3+ styling.
Another option is to use a new binary world in FT3+ based on your altitude data (use MDR as the transfer file format between Wilbur and FT). Use your regional map data as left=-180 longitude, top=+90 latitude, bottom=-90 latitude, and right=0 latitude (assuming square data). Select the Equirectangular projection and zoom in to your area of interest. Then save your CC3+ file as you would with a synthetic world. Because the Equirectangular projection is what FT uses for its editing data projection, exporting that data in the Equirectangular projection will prevent distortion. Basically, it bypasses the projection parts of FT entirely with regards to the binary data.
Thanks! though my region is about 4:9. I'll have to mess with it a bit but I'll give it a try this weekend, a related question. while not necessary i'd like to insert my regional map into my larger world map. I've seen islands copy pasted in-between projects on Profantasy's YouTube. Is that possible with an entire coastlines? or does it just get messy and shouldn't bother? I do have the region roughly made in my Fractal world map.
You can also set the boundaries to be from 0,0 to 40,90 instead of -180,-90 to x,+90: FT can zoom in to smaller areas as needed.
It may be possible to insert your regional map into the world map, but it depends on how much of an area your regional map covers and where on the world you want to insert it. The larger and more equatorial your regional map is, the easier it will be to import into FT. Small and/or polar areas can be quite messy to manually manage in FT. You need to increase the editing resolution in FT to get close to that of your desired regional map, export the world as an image using something like the Special MDR type and then merge your regional data into your world data using an external program like Wilbur. You'll need to manually manage map projections and that's usually where things get really messy.
It can be much easier to collage the CC3 images together than to do so in FT because you don't have to fight with FT's peculiarities.
If you're not overly interested in altitude data, but just in putting together world map images, then you might be able to do the job with image overlays in FT. They are a little easier to collage in FT and have the advantage that they will allow for smaller areas on the world map while keeping their original resolution. However, image overlays don't export as CC3 files.
Are you willing to share an example of your regional map and where you'd like it to go on a world map? That would make specific advice easier.
The top is the region and bottom is world map. Black triangle is indicating where the region resides. It is loosely made in the world map. I have tried overlays but they just stretch the image across the entire world whenever I tried. it doesn't need to be perfect by any means. but being able to get proportions right would be wonderful.
So I have imported my region map into CC3+ and i get the stepped height map(white background black lines for change of elevation. But how do I copy paste the contours and such into a proper CC3+ file in order to change into a proper land mass map?
(I realized that I had this composed last week, but never hit the "Post Comment" button. Sorry about that.)
That's a pretty small area of the world. I don't think that you'll get good practical results merging those two maps using FT because FT doesn't directly support splats (detail inserts).
Putting the inset into its final position shows the problem:
The final size of the inset is about 5 degrees in latitude and has a resolution on the order of 1500 pixels. That means that FT would need to have its editing resolution increased to about 180/5*1500=54 000 samples vertically (twice that horizontally) to preserve the full input data. FT has a hard (and silly high) cap at 80 000 editing resolution, which is slightly less than that. I've never tried to run FT at maximum resolution because it requires about 84GB of memory just to hold things in memory and several times that to edit any data and my machine isn't nearly that large.
How did you export the terrain inset into CC3?
Yeah i kind of figured it would be to much of a magnitude to properly insert it after a abit of fiddling around . For the Regional map I saved it as a CC2 contours (fcw) i believe it is considered a drawing .
If you used the CC2 Contours save as from Wilbur, then it will be single-color hollow contours. Converting those individual contours to filled and colored elements will require a great deal of manual work.
FT should be able to take the same Wilbur MDR file and import the altitudes, then use those altitudes to generate filled contours suitable for use with CC3+. To import a file like you have into FT, try this in FT: File>>New, Binary File, Choose Elevation File, pick your MDR file, and set the map edges to Top=15.00, Left=0, Right=8.48, Bottom=0. Click OK and Finish and your data should be shown in FT. Make sure your map is showing in the Equirectangular projection and you should be able to zoom in and export the data as a CC3+ file using File>>Save Campaign Cartographer File and an appropriate setting.
sweet it worked!! Thanks a ton! One last thing is there another way to change scale. With Wilbur I can change altitude scale within the Mathematical filter. and Fractal I can somewhat change land mass scale by change world circumference. is that something I can tweak in Fractal or later one in CC3+?
You are probably better off scaling the results in cc3+ than trying other workarounds. You can directly get the exact values you need in cc4+, but it would take a bit of manual calculation (and likely a few iterations plus some guesswork) in ft to get the same results.
Sweet i'll give it a go.