That layered look - help, please.
Using CC3 Update 10 on Windows 7 64-bit (not sure if that makes any difference, but figured I'd mention it). DD3 and CD3. Also the hi-res bitmaps.
In my world-level map (continents and VERY roughed out terrain), I'm having a problem with what I call layers, for lack of a better term. I'm referring to the color striations used to denote ocean depth - dark blue for the deepest water, etc. Obviously, close to land, your water is going to be shallower. I have come up with two ways to do this, and don't find either satisfactory.
1. Set the map background to the lightest blue. Draw in continents. Add polys of successively darker blues to denote deeper water. Two problems with this approach. If using a smooth poly for the darker blues, weird things happen when I try to crop them if I'm trying to make a more detailed map. It looks like the poly sort of gets turned inside-out. Second problem is that it's a real pain to build polys around multiple continents.
2. Set the map background to the darkest blue. Place continents. Add polys of successively lighter blues in bands around the aforementioned continents. This suffers from the same weird cropping effect as the other method. It also doesn't look as pretty, I don't think.
Additionally, my whaddayacallem buttons - bring to front, send to back, bring in front, send behind - do not work consistently. Sometimes they work as expected, but most of the time, they do nothing. It does not matter what map I'm using, or what I've done just immediately, or what. As you might imagine, that makes things a little interesting when it comes to map-making. I'm willing to do a reinstall of CC3 and its addons to fix it, but I figured I'd see if anyone had any other ideas first.
In my world-level map (continents and VERY roughed out terrain), I'm having a problem with what I call layers, for lack of a better term. I'm referring to the color striations used to denote ocean depth - dark blue for the deepest water, etc. Obviously, close to land, your water is going to be shallower. I have come up with two ways to do this, and don't find either satisfactory.
1. Set the map background to the lightest blue. Draw in continents. Add polys of successively darker blues to denote deeper water. Two problems with this approach. If using a smooth poly for the darker blues, weird things happen when I try to crop them if I'm trying to make a more detailed map. It looks like the poly sort of gets turned inside-out. Second problem is that it's a real pain to build polys around multiple continents.
2. Set the map background to the darkest blue. Place continents. Add polys of successively lighter blues in bands around the aforementioned continents. This suffers from the same weird cropping effect as the other method. It also doesn't look as pretty, I don't think.
Additionally, my whaddayacallem buttons - bring to front, send to back, bring in front, send behind - do not work consistently. Sometimes they work as expected, but most of the time, they do nothing. It does not matter what map I'm using, or what I've done just immediately, or what. As you might imagine, that makes things a little interesting when it comes to map-making. I'm willing to do a reinstall of CC3 and its addons to fix it, but I figured I'd see if anyone had any other ideas first.
Comments
You'll always encounter the cropping problem when exporting parts of the map to smaller sections. You can use "Smooth to Straight" on the smoth polys first and later - when you're done cropping - set them with "Straight to Smooth". This makes things a bit easer, but not perfect as you might have to add additional nodes on the corners where the contours meet the new map border. Generally I prefer fractalized contours over smooth ones, they look much more realistic and area easier to handle to boot.
The entity order buttons only work on the entities' sheet. So if you are ordering stuff within one sheet, you'll se it working fine. But as soon as you want to bring one entity in front of another that's on a different sheet, you'll see no effect. Otherwise all kinds of weirds things will happen, like sheet effects getting applied to wrong entities. So...
1. First make sure your entity to be re-ordered is on the correct sheet.
2. Change the sheet order if you need to have certain things always in front of others.
Hope that helps.