Creating Elevated Floors
I'm attempting to create some elevated floors (basically platforms) in DD3. My intent is to create a sort of stepped dais, with each layer of the dais casting its own shadows and suchlike, including using directional wall shadows to maintain consistency throughout.
So far what I've attempted to do is to right-click on the floors button, then changing the Layer and Sheet both to new ones, called Elevated Floors. After doing this, I draw the shape I want and right click as usual. This results in the 'elevated floor' disappearing, despite the fact that the Elevated Floors sheet is further down the list than Floors (or Walls, for that matter). I've considered that doubling up bitmaps on the same area might simply result in the Elevated Floor being camouflaged, however I've set up Sheet effects (Glow, RGB 0,0,0, intensity 1, blur distance 3) for the Elevated Floors sheet and hit redraw without any luck- and I can see the sheet effects occurring when I place an Elevated Floor against the background, so I haven't turned something off accidentally or anything like that. If I use a bitmap other than the one used for the Floors, this doesn't seem to happen- the new Elevated Floor shows up on top. I can then use Edit Properties to convert it to the bitmap I want, and it seems to work just fine- up until I attempt to add another Elevated Floor above the previous, using a smaller area. That seems to simply render the new Elevated Floor invisible, and having already confounded my only known fix, I'm out of ideas.
So is there a good way to do this? I've been trying to use the Bring Forward and Bring To Front buttons but those don't appear to have any effect.
So far what I've attempted to do is to right-click on the floors button, then changing the Layer and Sheet both to new ones, called Elevated Floors. After doing this, I draw the shape I want and right click as usual. This results in the 'elevated floor' disappearing, despite the fact that the Elevated Floors sheet is further down the list than Floors (or Walls, for that matter). I've considered that doubling up bitmaps on the same area might simply result in the Elevated Floor being camouflaged, however I've set up Sheet effects (Glow, RGB 0,0,0, intensity 1, blur distance 3) for the Elevated Floors sheet and hit redraw without any luck- and I can see the sheet effects occurring when I place an Elevated Floor against the background, so I haven't turned something off accidentally or anything like that. If I use a bitmap other than the one used for the Floors, this doesn't seem to happen- the new Elevated Floor shows up on top. I can then use Edit Properties to convert it to the bitmap I want, and it seems to work just fine- up until I attempt to add another Elevated Floor above the previous, using a smaller area. That seems to simply render the new Elevated Floor invisible, and having already confounded my only known fix, I'm out of ideas.
So is there a good way to do this? I've been trying to use the Bring Forward and Bring To Front buttons but those don't appear to have any effect.
Comments
Try to draw a elevated floor outside the map border, or in an empty area on your map, and then use
Info-->Liston it to see what sheet it resides on.Also make sure you don't draw them on a layer that is currently hidden.
If this should work, then I'll chalk it up as another potential error due to a maligned download file, and see if it corrects after I've reinstalled the program and add-ons.
You might wish to contact ProFantasy Tech Support, they might be able to help you out here.
Assuming the floor bitmaps is the same type for each 'step', you can easily solve this by creating a sheet simply called STEPS, and draw a thick line around where you want the steps.
However, what I personally do is I make sheets for each 'Step' of the dias, whatever. I then put down the floor, and make a 'HOLE' via the multi-poly tool in the floor bitmap where the dias will be (I did this because of weird effects that occured when the same bit map image is placed on-top of each other, if you are using different fill styles, omit making a HOLE).
I then make each step on seperate sheets (i.e. a 3 step dias is listed as: FLOOR, BOTTOM STEP, MIDDLE STEP, TOP STEP), and apply my glows, shadows whatever, and it seems to work out well.
Further, it appears that two shapes on the same Sheet that intersect cause some issues with regards to Sheet effects: placing two shapes on top of one another on the same Sheet means that they are treated as basically being a single object: if you draw two Floors, separately, then use a Sheet effect to create an inner Glow, each will maintain the glow around their perimeter. However, as soon as you move the two so that they overlap, the area of overlap no longer glows- it no longer counts as an edge, and therefore is ignored. This goes beyond edges, however: if you create two floors and set one inside the other, then set up a Transparency effect at 20%, you won't see the bitmap of the lower of the two floors layered on top of the upper one- you only have the upper bitmap translucently imposed upon the background.
This is interesting because it does not appear to affect Contours in CC3, where each contour appears to retain its own edge and alters accordingly. However, that is a statement made without any intense testing, so it may well be that what I think is happening there is mistaken. Regardless, the end result of this seems to be that if you want to create a stepped effect with multiple elevated floors (or you want to add stairs to your map the hard way), each elevation will require its own sheet in order to respond properly to glows, wall shadows, and so forth.Of course, you don't need a separate sheet for each object- just each elevation. To borrow NeonKnight's naming system, BOTTOM STEP can contain every bottom step on the map.
Listcommand is so important. It will tell you all you need to know to troubleshoot your entities.Note that if you need a drawing tool to operate on another sheet, you can very easily make a copy of the existing tool from the
Advanced >>dialog. Saves you from moving items manually afterward, or using the basic drawing tools in the right toolbar.