CC3+ effects
OK, so this is all a bit weird.
I'm a long time user of CC3 and recently upgraded to CC3+. One of the things I use a lot is the texture overblend effect. So when I started up CC3+ I drew a simple map and then started adding texture overblends. Well that was a disaster. The overblends that were applied were horribly pixelated and were not in the original colours. Green lava for example and red grass. So I kind of gave up, I assumed that the bitmaps I was using weren't compatible or something. At any rate I went back to CC3 and did some more mapping. Then I returned to CC3+ because I don't like it when things don't work when they should. So, lo and behold when I open up the effects dialog I see many duplicate entries including my favourite Texture Overblend. I click on it and it's the CC3 dialog not the CC3+ one and what's more it works perfectly. Every bitmap is the correct size and colour. Now I'm happy enough to carry on like this but clearly something is wrong and I'm not really wanting to start drawing up maps in CC3+ if at some future point everything is going to break.
So, does anyone have a possible solution to this problem?
I'm a long time user of CC3 and recently upgraded to CC3+. One of the things I use a lot is the texture overblend effect. So when I started up CC3+ I drew a simple map and then started adding texture overblends. Well that was a disaster. The overblends that were applied were horribly pixelated and were not in the original colours. Green lava for example and red grass. So I kind of gave up, I assumed that the bitmaps I was using weren't compatible or something. At any rate I went back to CC3 and did some more mapping. Then I returned to CC3+ because I don't like it when things don't work when they should. So, lo and behold when I open up the effects dialog I see many duplicate entries including my favourite Texture Overblend. I click on it and it's the CC3 dialog not the CC3+ one and what's more it works perfectly. Every bitmap is the correct size and colour. Now I'm happy enough to carry on like this but clearly something is wrong and I'm not really wanting to start drawing up maps in CC3+ if at some future point everything is going to break.
So, does anyone have a possible solution to this problem?
Comments
I recommend putting in a tech support request with ProFantasy.
Secondly any ideas on what is happening with the colours? Reds are showing as Blue, blues are yellows etc, - for example Mike Schley's Lava_VH.png is showing vivid blue and his Water Blue 5_VH.png is showing as a muddy yellow. Some are correct such as grays.
I'm assuming here that texture overblend should be working as it did in CC3 or am I missing something, and if so where do I find the necessary documentation; the help file doesn't mention anything about colour changes or gross scale problems.
You mention that the bitmap is 200x200 and that your map units are in feet. The simplest way is to set the "Map Units" option on the Texture Overblend dialog and observe (or measure an edge using the DIST tool) the displayed size of the bitmap. You can adjust the size of the texture using the Texture Scale option (1 is the default; 2 will make the bitmap twice as large and 0.5 will make the bitmap half as large). The Texture Overblend effect wasn't intended for precision placement of texture elements; it was originally devised as a way for me to have multiple forest areas with a single texture across all of them.
As regards the sizing, it seems that CC3+ has made this more complicated than it was in CC3. I appreciate that you can resize the texture but how do I calculate how many units I need to get the bitmap to look like it should? I suppose what I need to know is now many pixels are there in a foot on the map? And if it's say 50 and my bitmap is 200x200 then I need a fraction of 0.25? At the moment I'm just bunging in random numbers to see what might work but I'm assuming there must be some kind of maths behind it which I don't know.
I suppose it's just the way I use it. For example I like the lava from some bitmap or other but I can't use that as a fill because it's not on the list of whatever style I'm using to draw the map. So I just bung down any old thing. Then I go into Texture overblend and pick the one that I want from wherever that bitmap is located. I'm not sure what you mean by precision placement. I'm just covering over whole things - even the background sometimes. As I say it's probably just the way I use it, since I don't understand half of what this program can do but it is the way that I draw every map and to not have it working (or at least not have it working like it did in CC3) is a pain in the arse.