Inkarnate tool and maybe a suggestion for future CC3 implements
Medio
Surveyor
Greetings all.
Sorry being away some weeks (my daughter Sara was born 15 days ago).
While waiting for her to wake up,someone linked this to me on my Facebook:
www.inkarnate.com
Inkarnate is a program for doing fantasy maps. It´s pretty simple and miles away on quality compared with CC3, of course, but it has a good way of drawing landmass which i liked and considered i could share it with you all so you write your opinions about it.
While in CC3 you need to draw the entire coastline in a time and it´s relatively long to change it (let´s admit it, not all of us know exactly how is our landmass before we start creatign the map, and node edit is not fast enough sometimes specially if you want to change many things or add/subtract them), in that inkarnate program lets you draw circles of different shapes which are made from a texture and have their own border. The good thing is that if you want to add sharpness, you just take a smaller circle and draw over the landmass you drew. The new drawing inmediatly adds to the former one and makes a single one. You can "subtract" for even getting easily the shape you want.
I find that the way of doing landmass shapes is better than CC3´s one (humbly, and still my all my love and admiration for your work, Profantasy guys
). Maybe it cannot be done considering the progamming CC3 has, but... could be considered as a way of doing landmass for future CC3 editions?
Check them by yourselves, it´s free (it´s on some kind of beta). As i said, it´s a poor man´s CC3 but the landmass creation has a good point, imo.
Cheers
Sorry being away some weeks (my daughter Sara was born 15 days ago).
While waiting for her to wake up,someone linked this to me on my Facebook:
www.inkarnate.com
Inkarnate is a program for doing fantasy maps. It´s pretty simple and miles away on quality compared with CC3, of course, but it has a good way of drawing landmass which i liked and considered i could share it with you all so you write your opinions about it.
While in CC3 you need to draw the entire coastline in a time and it´s relatively long to change it (let´s admit it, not all of us know exactly how is our landmass before we start creatign the map, and node edit is not fast enough sometimes specially if you want to change many things or add/subtract them), in that inkarnate program lets you draw circles of different shapes which are made from a texture and have their own border. The good thing is that if you want to add sharpness, you just take a smaller circle and draw over the landmass you drew. The new drawing inmediatly adds to the former one and makes a single one. You can "subtract" for even getting easily the shape you want.
I find that the way of doing landmass shapes is better than CC3´s one (humbly, and still my all my love and admiration for your work, Profantasy guys
). Maybe it cannot be done considering the progamming CC3 has, but... could be considered as a way of doing landmass for future CC3 editions?Check them by yourselves, it´s free (it´s on some kind of beta). As i said, it´s a poor man´s CC3 but the landmass creation has a good point, imo.
Cheers
Comments
Nevertheless, it is always interesting of hearing about other methods of doing things, one shouldn't get too stuck in one's existing thought patterns. I've seen that program before, did try it out a long time ago, but I don't remember too much about my impression back then. Perhaps it is time to give it a new spin.
As for editing landmasses in cc3+, did you know that you don't have to use the add or subtract nodes to edit landmasses? If you click on the landmass button, then click E for edit, that also allows you to alter a coastline. It sounds similar to what incarnate is doing....but without the circles, unless I'm missing something...
Editing them with the node edit tool is then, unfortunately, a total waste of time, because the freehand tool generates loads more nodes than any other tool. I tend to just draw a correcting freehand line between point A and B (that being the bit that's wrong), then trace the continent with a suitable straight line drawing tool to keep the bits that are ok, while incorporating the correction line between points A and B by tracing along that instead of the wrong bit of coastline.
All in all, the most time consuming part of the operation from my point of view is drawing the new and improved piece of coastline by hand with the freehand drawing tool. Even taking that into account, however, I don't think I've ever taken more than ten minutes to completely redraw and amend even the largest of my freehand continents.
Also note, that fractalize something 3 times, will at the minimum settings, multiply the node count by 8. I rarely do more than once, two at the most. Of course, the actual resulting count depends on the complexity of original entity.
I someties use 30%, but I have used 20% or 10% for fractilizing. 30 I typically use on continents. The lesser amounts for islands. And then use the node commands for making bays and inlets. Or just use the polygon tool to make the inlets, and then gingerly fractalize them.
Yup, my own methods. I couldn't fathom the one for making smaller sections of larger maps, so I can up with my own.
I don´t always know exactly which kind of coastline i want; with this software, i can edit the coastline simply drawing and redrawing until the finalt outcome satisfies me.
EDIT: for future maps i´m probably using this, then attach it as PNG on my CC map, and draw a coastline following the Inkarnate coastline. Will tell you if that works for me.
Example:
Sorry if I'm starting to sound like a broken record! LOL!
Don´t get me wrong, the system has flaws but it´s way more users friendly than editing nodes and with the freehand tool you need to be cautious for joining the extremes of the lines you redraw. There is not such a thing on Inkarnate.
What i know is that for getting the coastline i got within ten minutes in Inkarnate, i would need about an hour in CC3. Maybe it´s my fault
Incarnate has its advantages in some areas, I won't dispute that, but comparing to doing node edits in CC3 isn't really fair.
Not every everyone do this, and I am one one of them. That's why I bought CC3
If it doesn´t fit me, i will use Inkarnate for drawing coastline, then CC3 for doing the map, then PS for the details and maybe labelling... ><
Maybe when i get a bamboo Wacom things will improve, but with mouse is hard and frustrating, at least for me.
Will try the other method Monsen suggested.
I usually draw the landmass in short segments to have great control over the shape though, only relying on the fractalization for definition, not for general shape.
But the important here is that you find a method that suits you obviously. I know my way of doing things doesn't suit everyone. Nothing wrong with using multiple programs in the process. I just felt that I needed to point out that node edits is not how you would normally approach larger edits in CC3 (although it is very helpful for minor edits when just a node or two needs to be changed)
I´ve been cheking those maps today and compared their landmasses with the one i did with Inkarnate; the conclusion is that they look much worse.
Still i´m not sure if the Inkarnate landmass into the CC3 will look fine. These next days will see it.
Drawing a coastline for one of my world´s continents. First step on Inkarnate done, now let´s see if on next days i got time for "translating" the coastline into CC3.
Thanks Monsen.
I´m adding also the same sheet with effects (13rd age annual)
EDIT: i´m doing several things to improve this drawing. Manually editing nodes as Monsen said, it´s relatively fast altough i can´t really control the drawing as well as i do in Inkarnate. I also transformed "straight to smooth" which improved a bit the quality of the coastline. Still, not close to the results i was rooting for.
It seems to me like you have tried to squeeze a continent sized map into an island type of space. If the map was larger overall the detail would be sharper and the bevel would look less like a 200 foot cliff all the way around the island.
Merelan City, for example, though nowhere near as detailed in general crinkliness as your map, is 5600 x 5600 map units. If I were to shrink it to 1000 x 1000 the effects I've carefully tuned to the larger size would make it look silly, since they are controlled by numbers of map units. All the many bevels I have used on each of the eight levels in that map would make the smaller map look really bad.
I hope it helps,
~Dogtag