Node Editing to remove landmass/Tome tutorial- help please???
LadieStorm
🖼️ 50 images Surveyor
I'm currently working on a an 'uncharted' arctic island, that my husband has asked me to make for him for his D&D game. Since I'm making this for him, I've been keeping him up to date on my progress so that he can tell me of any changes he might want.
Well, this last time, he decided that he didn't want as many forests as I had on the map(I've already erased them, no problem there), and he wanted me to remove some of the landmass, because my landmass is bigger than what he wanted(I don't really know how to do that yet, big problem here!).
Well, I've worked some of the tutorials from the cc3+ manual, and from the Tome, so I've added to a landmass before, but I've never REMOVED any. But I remembered one of the sets of instructions from Remy's wonderful Tome, and opened it up to once again use it as a walkthrough to fix my arctic landmass. Well, I didn't just hit a snag, I hit a major snafu!
I really need some help.
First Issue - According to the Tome, the first thing I'm supposed to do, is to click on info, click list, right click do it. Which I did. This is supposed to bring up a list of my nodes, so I can see where I need to edit. Which I did... and it did bring up my list of nodes. I was expecting 30 maybe 40 nodes in my landmass. There are 6976 nodes in my arctic island, according to my list. What?!? I thought the nodes were the points on the map that I clicked on to create the land mass. I KNOW I did NOT click on my map 6976 times! So why do I have so many nodes? And how am I supposed to keep them all straight?
Second Issue - When I was working with node editing tutorial with the Tome, I was working with a polygon that had 6-8 nodes. Those nodes were clearly marked, so I knew what to click on and hold down and move, add or remove. So when I clicked on the node editing button in cc3+, I admit I expected my nodes to appear on my map, so I knew what I was working with. Of course they didn't, so I can't even be sure if I'm clicking on a node when I click on part of my map. I'm also supposed to be able to hold the mouse button down and move the node around and it's supposed to show me how moving it(removing it) will affect my map. That didn't really happen either( I probably did something wrong), what I ended up with was blue(ocean) streaks on one part of my landmass right before cc3+ froze up.
I thought I understood the tutorial, and when working with the node editing in the tutorial it seemed fairly easy and straight forward. Putting it into actual mapping applications is turning into a nightmare for me. I am now extremely confused and completely overwhelmed. I know that there are usually more than one way to do something in cc3+, so here are my questions...
First and foremost, is there another, easier way to do this? One where I don't have to erase my whole map and redraw it? Is it possible to erase just part of a landmass?
Follow up, I need to have a better understanding of node editing, because I KNOW I'm going to need it someday, and when I do, I want to be able to use this aspect. Could someone explain to me how I ended up with so many nodes? Is this actually normal? Is there a way to make the node points show up on the map so I can see which points I'm editing? Or was that just for the tutorial? Oh, and one more thing... In the tutorial it mentioned something about the path. I was looking for the 'path' in the list, but didn't find anything that said path. What did the Tome mean by the path?
Here is my .fcw if it helps.
Well, this last time, he decided that he didn't want as many forests as I had on the map(I've already erased them, no problem there), and he wanted me to remove some of the landmass, because my landmass is bigger than what he wanted(I don't really know how to do that yet, big problem here!).
Well, I've worked some of the tutorials from the cc3+ manual, and from the Tome, so I've added to a landmass before, but I've never REMOVED any. But I remembered one of the sets of instructions from Remy's wonderful Tome, and opened it up to once again use it as a walkthrough to fix my arctic landmass. Well, I didn't just hit a snag, I hit a major snafu!
I really need some help.
First Issue - According to the Tome, the first thing I'm supposed to do, is to click on info, click list, right click do it. Which I did. This is supposed to bring up a list of my nodes, so I can see where I need to edit. Which I did... and it did bring up my list of nodes. I was expecting 30 maybe 40 nodes in my landmass. There are 6976 nodes in my arctic island, according to my list. What?!? I thought the nodes were the points on the map that I clicked on to create the land mass. I KNOW I did NOT click on my map 6976 times! So why do I have so many nodes? And how am I supposed to keep them all straight?
Second Issue - When I was working with node editing tutorial with the Tome, I was working with a polygon that had 6-8 nodes. Those nodes were clearly marked, so I knew what to click on and hold down and move, add or remove. So when I clicked on the node editing button in cc3+, I admit I expected my nodes to appear on my map, so I knew what I was working with. Of course they didn't, so I can't even be sure if I'm clicking on a node when I click on part of my map. I'm also supposed to be able to hold the mouse button down and move the node around and it's supposed to show me how moving it(removing it) will affect my map. That didn't really happen either( I probably did something wrong), what I ended up with was blue(ocean) streaks on one part of my landmass right before cc3+ froze up.
I thought I understood the tutorial, and when working with the node editing in the tutorial it seemed fairly easy and straight forward. Putting it into actual mapping applications is turning into a nightmare for me. I am now extremely confused and completely overwhelmed. I know that there are usually more than one way to do something in cc3+, so here are my questions...
First and foremost, is there another, easier way to do this? One where I don't have to erase my whole map and redraw it? Is it possible to erase just part of a landmass?
Follow up, I need to have a better understanding of node editing, because I KNOW I'm going to need it someday, and when I do, I want to be able to use this aspect. Could someone explain to me how I ended up with so many nodes? Is this actually normal? Is there a way to make the node points show up on the map so I can see which points I'm editing? Or was that just for the tutorial? Oh, and one more thing... In the tutorial it mentioned something about the path. I was looking for the 'path' in the list, but didn't find anything that said path. What did the Tome mean by the path?
Here is my .fcw if it helps.
Comments
But, do not use node edits to edit such a landmass, that's simply going to be a nightmare. Instead, bring up the original drawing tool you use to draw the landmass (or a similar tool, for your map the default landmass tool works fine). Before placing the first point, note that in the command line, it hints that you can hit the E key for 'Edit'. Do so, and it tells you to pick a start node. Click on the edge of your landmass where you want to start the edit, and have at it. If your new line is inside the old landmass, the extra parts will be removed, while if your new line is outside, it wil add to the landmass. Finish the command by righ-clicking, followed by a left click where you want your edit line to merge in with the existing landmass. Check page 58 in the User Manual - The 'Editing with Drawing Tools' chapter.
So node editing is probably for more like... land fills and contures, I'm guessing? That would make much more sense, I suppose.
Node editing has many uses. I often remove or add single nodes from landmasses, and sometimes move troublesome nodes a bit, but this is basic detail editing, changing the shape of a section of the landmass is not a good use for node editing. Node editing is also very helpful when you have entities with a bit more distance between them, like dungeon corridors, roads, smooth lakes, rivers and so on.
If its coast line, I then fractalize with a strength of 20%. I don't fractalize more than 2 or 3 clicks as more adds too many nodes. Most of the time, I then re-edit using the node tools. So I use them to move the edges. Sometimes I have to edit by deleting nodes to get it to look the way I want to.
Not easy to explain, so it takes practice to learn how to do it. But I wind up with a landmass, etc. that matches the edge of the larger map.
... Scolding-armor donned.
Anyway, first time out, where I'm actually trying to create something (that I need to get finished before Friday.)
So, of course, the major landmass, as it hit the border of the canvas and was supposed to follow the canvas edge to the next location where it leaves the border, well... a mess was created. Sometimes, if the drawing scale is just right, I can even see that i have an intermediate node that was created on the entire other side of the map. This anomaly is breaking everything... I can't follow (Trace) that landmass border to add a new, bounded, marsh, because the anomaly just wreaks havoc.
But, according to the above posts, I can't locate, node-by-node, the actual errant node. So, short of deleting the element entirely (which I am loath to do, since it took me a while to create it) and starting over, I don't see a way out of this.
Suggestions?
Thanks,
- s.west