Jon Robert's City Water
Hi all, I'm mapping a northern fantasy city with a deep water harbor using CA63 Annual Jon Roberts Cities. The Terrain Fills for water feature Water, Default, Water, Darker and Water, Darkest. These are great for illustrating the deep water and the shallows. I assumed under Sheets & Effects I could "fade" the colors into each other so there is not such a sharp border between each color. Under Sheets there is Water/Rivers (2 glow effects), Contour Water & Contour Water 2 (both with inner edge fades). I used played with several settings on these with no visible result.
Any thoughts?
Cheers,
Mirithol
Any thoughts?
Cheers,
Mirithol
Comments
This is going to sound like a silly question, but did you check to make sure that the water contour entities you drew were actually on the right sheets? I sometimes encounter issues where a drawing tool or symbol doesn't automatically go where I think it should.
~Dogtag
Cheers, Miri - thanks for the help.
there are two easy ways to verify where an object is.
In the command line at the bottom type LIST then click on the object and say do it.
OR
On the drawing and sheet popup place your check on the sheet you think it should be on and then hit the hide all and hide all and ok. (You may need to refresh)
If they are on the wrong sheet you can right click on the change properties and select move to sheet, select what you want to move and then hit "do it".
That should get your stuff to the right sheet.
For effects I' try a combination of blur, edge fad and transparency to get the effects you are looking for so the water will blend better.
One of the most helpful things I did to learn this application better is to find some of the FSW files that people have posted for their maps and dissect them. Ralf has put out a ton of great maps with the supporting files, also check out the tutorials by JdR
KenG
Is there a way to change the medium blue water to Contour from Water/River and the dark blue water to Contour 2, or do I need to try to erase and redraw?
Also, thx for the transparency idea.
Cheers,
Miri
Back to the water:
My goal is to have three "depths" of water" in the harbor much like you would contour water in CC3 using the contour tool, which CD3 doesn't have as a button. So I have been using the water fills. I was able to erase and redraw the water, but no sheet effects seemed to work. Then I realized I was on the wrong sheet for the deeper and deepest water. Erased and redrew the water again with the shallow depth under the Waters/Rivers sheet. Redrew the deeper depth on the Contour Water sheet and the deepest depth on the Contour Water 2 sheet. Still no sheet effects seemed to work. Probably ruined the map style effects for water messing around here. Got inspired by Shessar's post about the Age of Conan map - Thanks! Tried transparency and some other stuff. I'm now sure I've destroyed the CA63 preset water effects - sigh. Still no love. Re-watched Joe Sweeney's tutorials. Bed. Realized in the shower that my layers could have been wrong. Sure enough - they were the buildings layer for the deeper contours. Erased, redrew with the Water/rivers layer on for Contour Water and CW2 sheet. Sheet effects still didn't work.
Do I need to create two new layers for the Contour Water and Contour Water 2 for sheet effects to work?
Any suggestions for the correct "effect"? I was going with 2 glow effects - inside and outside with strength 0 and blur radius of 25. I'm using the 1000x800 map.
To the ever-helpful Ralf and other staff I may not realize are staff - Is there a place with the original effect settings are posted so when we become experienced enough to get in trouble we can re-set the effects?
Thanks,
Miri
ps. Sorry for the long post, but like America's Test Kitchen, describing what didn't work is very helpful in gaining mastery.
These settings are saved as FCW files in CC3/System/Effects. You can also manually back them up there.
The default sheet is Water/Rivers. I have created two additional sheets Water-Mid and Water-Deep. Before I draw the 2nd shade of water I set the sheet to Water, Darker and also a layer Water - Mid. Then I click on Terrain Fills - water, darker smooth. This changes my Fill Style(FS) to Water 2_CA63, but then changes my sheet back to Water/Rivers. So I change my sheet back to Water - Mid. All looks good. I draw the outline and at the end I still end up with the mid-color on the same sheet as the water/rivers. Which means I cant fade the mid and darker colors with effects since CC3 sees all the water as the same entity for effect's purposes. Thanks to Shessar in the Age of Conan thread on this forum for the description and examples of blending.
So my question is how do I get the 2 darker water fill contours on different sheets from the water/rivers sheet?
Thanks - Miri
To KenG - having trouble uploading the map to the forum. I'll show the map in a bit.
1. After drawing them use the "Move to Sheet" command to place them on the correct sheets.
2. Open the "Advanced" version of the drawing tools dialog and in the tools' "Properties" set the sheet for the "darker" water tool to "CONTOUR WATER" and for "darkest" to "CONTOUR WATER 2". These are the pre-defined sheets for water contours already in the template.
or
3. if you want to use your own customer sheets, add a * to the tools' sheet property (i.e. name it WATER/RIVER* instead of just WATER/RIVER). You can then add sheets called WATER/RIVER MID, WATER/RIVER DEEP, etc. and if you choose those while drawing the contour, the polygon will be placed on it.