Import CC3 data into FT
I want to transfer my CC3 map into FT (I have FT3 but am currently using FTPro until the patch comes out). Clearly FT won't know what CC3 symbol represents a hill or mountain so I don't expect to be able to transfer any features but I would like to reproduce the outline of the landmasses. Basically, I just want a FT file with all the water at a height of -100m and all the land at a height of +100m. I can recreate everything else from there. Any suggestions?
Comments
I suspect that it may not be possible - or at the least "easy", but I'm waiting until the experts chime in on this one to get the final word on it.
Make a new flat world to get everything at 0 altitude.
Use Tools>>Global Set>>Land Offset with a value of -100 to get the whole world to -100.
Load your selection using Select>>Load Selection.
Use Tools>>Global Set>>Land Offset with a value of +100 to get just the selected area of the world to +100.
There are many ways to get the land mass into the proper projection. Ralf showed one example in http://www.jhendor.de/tutorials/cc2-ft.pdf when he took his Jhendor maps into FT. He had several levels of altitude and used Wilbur as an intermediary, but if you're just doing a straight outline then the selection technique above will work.
http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/FunWithWilburVol4/index.html shows how you can use the mound operation instead of just a straight fill to get some areas that are higher than others. You can also draw separate land and mountain selections and then use them to get radiically different heights.
1. Hide everything but land in CC3 and save as bmp
2. Open as "Greyscale Image Surface" in Wilbur
3. Save as "Muse DTED Surface"
4. File > New > Binary > Select .dte file in FT
It worked but the inserted land mass was miniscule and squished 50% horizontally. Turns out that the map edges were set to 1/-1 in both axis. I changed the settings to 45/-45 vertically and 90/-90 horizontally and everything looked great.
There was a minor issue: Image was pixelated and flipped vertically. Next time I'll save the original bmp at a higher res and flip it in PS before loading into wilbur.
But it worked! I know how to get the outline into FT now. I'm very happy.
One day I'll have to go back and see what all that other stuff in Ralf's tutorial was about though.