Importing from a png
Hi, i recently bought CC3+ to make better maps for my RPG.
I have some questions :
I have old maps (.png) that i made with Gimp.
I want to enhance this map with CC3+
Is it possible ? How can i import old maps in a layer or what is the best way to make a map with that existing .png ?
Sorry for my english, it's not my native language.
I have some questions :
I have old maps (.png) that i made with Gimp.
I want to enhance this map with CC3+
Is it possible ? How can i import old maps in a layer or what is the best way to make a map with that existing .png ?
Sorry for my english, it's not my native language.
Comments
CC3+ isn't an image editor, and as such cannot work with your .png directly, but you can import it as a background image and then trace over it.
To import it as an image, simply use Draw -> Insert file. Note that before you do this, I recommend you make a new sheet to hold the image, and make this sheet the active sheet before importing the image. Having it on it's own sheet means you can more easily move it up/down in the drawing order (Sheets in CC3+ are analogous to layers in gimp, while layers in CC3+ is just a grouping mechanism, which doesn't control drawing order of entities.
Note that when inserting an image files, CC3+ only inserts a reference to the file, so once you have done this, you cannot move/delete the source file, otherwise it will just show up as a missing image (red X) in CC3+.
Please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions about this. You'll also find some basic information about this starting on page 94 of the user manual (ignore that it talks about hand-drawn maps, the only difference between a hand-drawn one and one from an image editor is that you need to scan the hand drawn first to get it as an image)
I already figured out that sheets are like layers in Gimp, i see now :)
And I will come back with a lot of questions ;)
But yes, CONTOURSM can be a nice tool when importing a map, especially to get the outline of things like landmasses into CC3+.
I have a png with transparent, black where there's lands and transparent where there's sea.
I import this file on a new sheet.
Then i type contoursm and it ask for a selection, how can i select the sheet ? I tried to select with the tool, but it selected 8 entities, and seems to not working then (i enter 1.0 for distance, maybe it's too low ?)
- Make sure your landmass is a solid color with a sharp edge (i.e. no partial fading transparency at the edge) and the ocean is fully transparent
- Remember that the outline drawn by contoursm may be hidden behind the picture. Make sure to use LIST or similar to check if there is anything else than the image there.
- Try reducing the resolution of your image. Note that CC3+ cashes the image in memory, so if you do this with CC3+ open, you need to go into the display speed settings and click the clear bitmap cache button before issuing a map redraw.
- If your image contains multiple landmasses, try splitting it up in several images and do one landmass at a time.
The distance number you pick is the distance the contour will be drawn from the outline of the image. For testing, it is easier visible if you use a large (positive number), but when doing it for the actual trace you wish to keep, it should be as low as possible, such as 0. Below is an image of my test landmass and result (community atlas users may recognize that landmass). Original image is to the left, resulting contour is to the right. (I obviously manually moved the contour, since otherwise it would just overlap the image)
You can also right click the change properties button and select change as draw tool. Now right click again (inside the map) to bring up the drawing tools picker, pick the landmass one, and finally when prompted on the command line, select the outline contoursm made and hit Do It. That will convert the shape into the same style as the drawing tool.
I'll try this when i can.
I have so much to learn to use it, i'm comfortable with commands but not yet with the rest of the program. I will watch some basic tutorials, expert things looks easier than basics things to me XD
Sorry, just babbling about my new toys.
edit: Hmmm... this just might help me with drawng starships. I'll try and find time this month to see if I can do that in a way I have been looking at.
There might be a blog post showcasing this command in a few days.