Qs: Creating floor mask cavern, lave, river?

Hi Team,

I'm practically brand new to this.

I'm attempting to create a floor mask. I believe this is necessary to stop the shadow effects from appearing in un-dugout dirt sections within my cavern once effects are enabled. The floor mask will sit above the wall and floor sheet basically hiding the shadows once enabled.

This is a simple task for basic shapes like rooms and corridors. But how do you achieve this with objects like a cavern or river? If I was working with PS I would use the magic want to select the cavern and then invert the selection effectively selecting everything I want very easily.

I tried playing with trace but that only really helps create the same shape as the cavern which is great except I want the area outside the cavern to be selected.

Does this make sense? Any idea id this is possible?

Example Section

Comments

  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    Two options
    - Since you mention tracing. Tracing will work fine, but remember to draw the actual part of the entity outside the cave too. From your drawing, if you start tracing where the cave meets the wall, then trace around the entire cave, ending the trace where the cave hits the wall on the other side, and the, instead of ending your polygon there, proceed to follow along your outer red line all the way around again, you will get a shape that is identical to the one you drew in red. Note that I recommend to use a polygon that masks everywhere though, and not just a shape like this, since the edges will be visible around the background. But you can easily do that with trace too, just use it around your entire dungeon complex, including the cave, and around the map border as the outer limits.
    - The other option is to use a multipoly. Make a copy of both your cave and dungeon floors (just the main floor entities, not everything inside them) and the background to the mask sheet, and then use the multipoly command to merge them. The result is that the floors will appear as holes in the larger polygon.
  • Brilliant! I didn't realize the TRACE tool could be used to trace and keep drawing. That makes it a very powerful feature.

    Certainly going to go seeking training on multipoly. Sounds handy. Thanks for your help.

    Got it!
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    Posted By: SkloreBrilliant! I didn't realize the TRACE tool could be used to trace and keep drawing. That makes it a very powerful feature.
    Well, that's mainly because trace isn't a seperate tool, but really a part of the drawing tool functionality. This is very handy handy when you need a piece of terrain to follow along with a coastline for part of the entity for example, and also in your example here.
    There are a lot of powerful tools in CC3 though. Learning to use them is generally what helps you become an advanced CC3 user. I would recommend you stop thinking about things the same way as in PS though, CC3+ is based on a CAD engine, and is therefore VERY different from how PS and other image editing software works.

    Posted By: SkloreCertainly going to go seeking training on multipoly. Sounds handy.
    Multipoly is a very nice tool for the right situations, especially when you need entities with holes in them. I recommend you play with them on a simple test map first, to get a feel for them.
  • It's an amazing tool... once you learn how to use it ;)
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