Tome of Ultimate Mapping...what the heck did I do this time?

So, as you may have realized, I FINALLY bought the Tome of Ultimate Mapping. And even though I've already completed some decent maps, I'm going through the tome as if I've never completed a map. So I'm currently working through the Tariga tutorial, and I have to say.... I'm not all that pleased with how things are going. Let me show you why....


As you can see from my map, I'm having a couple of small issues.

#1- The tutorial calls for using a couple of fonts that I don't have... Garamond, and Marraige Script. One of these was supposed to come with the tome... but for some reason I didn't get it. This is a minor issue, but an issue none the less.

#2- If you look at my 'Eastern Peaks' mountain range, you may notice that it looks like I have a series of rocks hugging my northeastern coastline. Those are actually the tops of my mountains. For some reason, my landmass edge is cutting through my mountain range, instead of sitting behind it, like it's supposed to. Setting it to back puts my WHOLE landmass to back. Trying to set my mountains to front just screws up my shadows.... without changing that cut through coast line.

#3- You might also see that blue streak that cuts through my northeastern part of the island. I've tried to get rid of that streak.... without success. Funny thing about that blue streak... it's absent when I zoom in to capture it for the erase tool. It's simply not there. But it reappears as soon as I zoom back out.

So obviously I've screwed up somewhere. I'll be hanged if I can figure out what I did.... or how to fix it. Any ideas?

Comments

  • wait... where did my blue streak go?
  • I've had the same blue streak appear in my map (see: http://forum.profantasy.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=4872&page=1#Item_1 ) and it behaved just as you've described, including not showing up in printing. After much playing around, I've decided it's an... artifact of the default coastline line used in this style, only. (I can't recreate it in any other style.)

    To get rid of it, I hid every sheet except the one containing that line and then deleted it. I then used a combination of inner and outer glows described by Joe Sweeney in one of his videos to re-limn the coastline. Turned out I liked it better than the default, even without the annoying blue line. You can see an example here: http://forum.profantasy.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=5231&page=1#Item_1

    So, don't worry: It's not anything you're doing wrong in this case. :)
  • okay... but what about my northern coastline cutting my mountains in half? any thoughts on that?
  • DkarrDkarr Traveler
    If you can, post a copy of the FCW file for the map so we can see what might be causing the issue. At first view it would seem like a sheet order issue, but that is completely a wild guess.
  • Posted By: LadieStormokay... but what about my northern coastline cutting my mountains in half? any thoughts on that?
    Sheet order is the first thing that comes to mind, the sheet containing the coast line being "above" (i.e., lower in the list) than the sheet holding the mountains. As a test, you could hide the Coastline (or "Coast?") sheet, hit okay, refresh the map, and see if that problem disappears.
  • okay. And as for fcw... hang on, let me see if I can do this.
  • DkarrDkarr Traveler
    OK the problem with the "rocks" on the upper right hand side of your coast is due to your COASTLINE sheet. It is the last sheet drawn so it will be above ALL objects, including your mountains. The mountains are in the SYMBOLS sheet so you could move the COASTLINE sheet anywhere before the SYMBOLS sheet to correct the problem. I would recommend moving it to just after the COAST/SEA sheet.

    In addition the horizontal blue line is also on that COASTLINE sheet. If you hide all sheets and only leave the COASTLINE sheet visible you will see the effect. It is being caused by nodes that are overlapping. I'm not sure how the coast line was drawn so I can't say what caused the issue exactly. To see the issue hide all sheets except COASTLINE and zoom out, you will see the horizontal line. To see the origin of the problem zoom in to area 121.0,161.0. You might have to redraw it to correct it, or at least go through and find the offending nodes and correct their overlap.
  • DkarrDkarr Traveler
    edited March 2016
    I unraveled the nodes that were causing the horizontal line in the COASTLINE sheet and placed a RED box around them so you can see where the issue occurs. That is in case you want to work on your original drawing to fix them. It also seems like the coastline was possibly drawn as an attached fractal path, and it does not totally conform to the nodes on the land. But I placed a green box around the nodes on the LAND sheet that are probably the origin of the issue. There seems to be some tangled/overlapping nodes and they are probably the cause. With the effects turned on you can hide the coastline sheet and noticed that it has very little effect on the current drawing effects. So it is possible that you could eliminate it if you wanted. BTW there is no COAST/SEA sheet I misspoke, that should have been the SEA FEATURES sheet. Place the COASTLINE sheet right below that one on the sheets list to correct your mountains issue.

    I've attached the file so you can see the areas that are causing you grief.
  • You know... I wonder if that area has overlapping nodes because of the space bar fractalization. When I was creatiing the land mass, that top area looked too 'smooth' to me... not random enough. So I hit the space bar to change the fractal line I was drawing. Could that have caused this?

    On a side note... I'm considering going back to the drawing g board on this one. I have a lot of issues on this particular map...one being the shape of the map itself. I'm just not happy with it. Learning about things like continent tal drifts and whatnot... The island itself just doesn't look right to me.
  • DkarrDkarr Traveler
    It is possible that fractalization was the cause. I've usually had overlapping nodes when doing the clicking by eye. I might place a node and then place another node very quickly next to it and interpose their location (overlapping the line). In any case it simply becomes and issue of unraveling, or even just deleting one of the nodes. Depending on how you did the coastline you could simple fix the nodes on the LAND part and then redo the coast line. Or even easier unravel the land nodes and then unravel the coastline attaching to ENDPOINT on the nearest point on land. If you are zoomed in you can do this rather easily because you can see the details.
  • I've had overlapping contours when fractalizing. I saved the map, then zoomed in and looked for higher elevations extending out past lower elevations. The scale vwouldn't have worked for overhanging cliffs.

    I don't save to the same filename over and over... I save as like this:

    dwarfhome01_0001, make some changes, dwarfhiome01_0002, etc. Then save ass dwarfhome01 when I am done and want to upload it to my web site. I do this for 2 reasons, 1) computer crashes, 2) changing map directions. I have decided i didn't like the map and went back to an earlier version. Since I save as rather often, the undo command has rarely gone back far enoiugh, so I don't use it but rarely. This method has saved my maps more than once, but it does require an external USB hard drive to copy my files to.

    This is my old color chart for surface maps. It has a template and uses Natalya's bitmap fills. While its okay for small area maps, I found myself bogging down in map making time making an extire planet with this.
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