Question about the sheets.
brandor
Traveler
Hello everyone,
I'm having a look at the sheets at the moment. The various predefined templates sometimes have very different sheets. On the one hand in terms of the number and use and on the other hand in terms of the name. At least that's how it seems to me at first glance.
Am I completely free in the use of my template? Or are there special sheets that have to be defined?
Thanks for your help
Brandor
Comments
Technically, yes. But normally, you'd find at least BACKGROUND, SYMBOLS, GRID, TEXT, SCREEN and MAP BORDER in all maps, as they are commonly used. Additionally, for a dungeon map, you would normally have at least FLOORS and WALLS.
Which sheets to include does depend a lot on the tools and symbols you want to use. If you make everything from scratch, you are pretty free since you then also configure this yourself on your tools and symbols, but if you want to be able to use tools and symbols from other styles, you should look at what they expect.
Great, with this small selection of sheets it will be much clearer :) Then I can tidy up my template a bit. Good, then I can see which of my own new sheets I really still need.
Do I understand the concept correctly then that I - as Ralf showed in one of his videos - really "just" place all new symbols on the symbols sheet and then sort them via the layers? With the layers, I then structure forests, paths, houses, mountains, meadows, etc., right?
On the other hand, if I want to arrange certain types of symbols above or below other types of symbols, then this is only possible via sheets, isn't it? I can't move the layers up or down ...
In practice, should I really always keep an eye on which sheet and which layer is currently selected before I place oceans, land masses, areas or symbols on the map?
Basically yes. You can consider sheets a feature for visual grouping/ordering (+ effects), while layers are logical grouping.
Layers only end up important if you actually use them though. Having everything grouped according to feature, such as one layer for hills/mountain is nice and all, but if you never use the features layers provide (select by layer, hide layer, freeze layer) it becomes less important. I do find it useful to be able to select things like all the mountains though, for things like sorting symbols. While the layers doesn't themselves determine what goes on top of what, the ability they give you to select just the correct symbols is nice.
Layers are actually more important for the interlaces of the software than sheets though. For example, dungeon corridor tools rely on layers to figure out what is a floor and what is a wall when connecting to existing parts, cutting symbols rely on layers to align to and cut that wall when inserting a cutting door, and the edit feature of drawing tools relies on the layer to determine if this is an appropriate entity to edit, the background of the map is figured out from the BACKGROUND layer, and the extent of the map is determined by entities on the MAP BORDER layer to name some.
Usually though, tools set their own layer when you use them, so you don't really need to keep to much an eye on that yourself. If you create your own tools and symbols, you should always set up layer information so your own tools can also set layers automatically, but unless actively use your layers manually, it is usually just fine to then let the tools do their thing, but don't otherwise think too much about it.
That was a very helpful explanation! Thank you very much :)
If there are special layers like MAP BORDER that have a special function, is there documentation somewhere that lists and describes these special sheets and layers? For example, the next questions immediately come to my mind:
- What exactly does the SCREEN sheet do?
- How do you define the MAP BORDER?
- etc.
Is this described only in the large "Tome"? Or is there also "leaner" documentation for this?
You'll find a lot of it in the tome somewhere, but there is no dedicated section just describing the special sheets, it's more a thing you pick up a bit from here and a bit from there.
For the SCREEN sheet, it's not that special, really, but because the canvas in CC3+ is unlimited in size, if you put a symbol at the "edge" of the the map, it won't be clipped, it will simply extend off it. The SCREEN sheet typically holds a white polygon that simply covers up all those bits sticking out.
For the MAP BORDER, the map border sheet just holds the graphical decorative map border. It is usually placed last in the list to put a nice frame on top of things. The "technical" map border, which define the size of the maps, and that drawing tools use as the edge to know where to stop drawing, is simply 4 lines on the MAP BORDER layer, they can be on any sheet, but usually the live on BACKGROUND.
I see, and that's why the SCREEN sheet has to be high up. Is this white polygon on the SCREEN sheet then also placed on the SHEET layer of the same name?
Yes, it covers symbols, rivers, etc. that go outside the map border.
All right! Thank you :)
If you are looking for documentation, I suggest the manual. Page 60 starts with sheet and that is followed by a description of how all the effects work.,
Ah, the manual! That's right, it still exists. I was so focussed on the videos, tutorials and texts here in the forum that I completely lost sight of the manual ;) Thank you :)