CC3 political boarders??

Hello all. I find myself in the extreme need of a highly detailed, nice looking map, and will be creating my first homebrew world with CC3. I am not that familiar with it yet, but I will stumble threw. Here is my issue: Is there a good way to show on map the political borders? you know, to divide the land mass into "Kingdoms". I tried to use the red border to do it, but it only does stright lines so the map ends up looking blocky. Thanks for any help you can give me.

Comments

  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    A smooth or fractal path might be the best option for you here. Use the modifiers (on, endpoint, midpoint, etc) to make sure the political borders ends where they are supposed to.

    You can also have a look at the 2007 Annual. The Mercator style borders are nice, depending on the style of your map.
  • I will give that a try, see if I can figure it out. thanks so much for your help Monsen
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    No problem. Good luck, and don't hesitate to ask if you need more help.
  • I use 'smooth line', with brick fille style, with a width of 3.0, fopr my 185 mile wide surface maps. After I place the line, I give it a slight, 15% or 20% fractal, you can see this on my surface maps at Crestar.
  • 6 days later
  • Thanks for the advise. I am still workin on the map, and as of yet, hardly have anything to show for it. I have to tell ya...this is hard software for me to use / understand...wow.
  • Do the tutorials. I find CC3 to be very easy to use.

    Select what you want to do first, then the object you want to do it to. The opposite of most paint programs. But then CC3 uses a CAD engine.
  • I'm also new to CC3, and I just did this last night. Here's what I did for political borders:

    CC3 has a Political Borders layer and sheet, so it's best to have both of those selected when drawing your borders. That way, you can do your map without the borders and can hide and/or show them as an overlay.

    I used the freehand drawing tool and just drew my borders in, selecting a different color for each border. I also applied a white glow to the sheet, with a strength of 1 (or 2, I forget, but more than 2 will just give you white glowing lines and wash out the color unless you make the lines really thick), and a blur of 5.

    You might want to play with line thickness and the glow effect, but it's that simple to get a really nice-looking border that stands out. Just make sure your borders are on the Political Border layer AND sheet. You can also freeze all the other layers while drawing and changing your borders so you don't mess up the map itself.

    Hope that helps!
  • 7 months later
  • you guys are great, thanks for all the advice. I have been licensed to produce a RP supplement, my main issue is, of course, the map making, concerning making political borders. I will use your guys's advice and try to make a good map. If I can get the political borders correct, I will post it for you all to advice me on...another question: I have seen maps, where kingdom boarders were a faded red color, faded blue color, faded yellow color, etc. How is that done? That would fit my mapping style very well and make a great "kingdom boarder".
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    edited February 2009
    Posted By: Baldur06I have seen maps, where kingdom boarders were a faded red color, faded blue color, faded yellow color, etc. How is that done?
    This can be done by using a solid polygon with an edge fade effect.

    The Tome of Ultimate Mapping describes one way of doing this (The old CC2 way, before effects were possible), while the January 2007 annual describes another way, using effects
  • Thanks Monsen! I will look it over and make a go of it! Will update you when I try it.
  • Well, the January 2007 annual link seems to be dead. I can't see a "solid polygon" drawing tool...what am I to use to accomplish such a thing?
  • RalfRalf Administrator, ProFantasy 🖼️ 18 images Mapmaker
    I've corrected the link to the Annual 2007 issue.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    Posted By: Baldur06I can't see a "solid polygon" drawing tool...what am I to use to accomplish such a thing?
    A solid polygon is one of the most basic CC3 shapes. Whenever you draw a polygon with a width of 0 and fill style "Solid" (Selectable from the Brush Patterns tab of the fill style dialog), you get a polygon filled in a single color.
  • JimPJimP 🖼️ 280 images Cartographer
    edited February 2009
    I use a smooth line, brick fill style, and around 3-5 miles wide line width on a 185x234 mile overland map for map borders.

    edit: sorry, I am tired and I didn't realize I had already posted this.
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