Directional Fading? Possible ? How To?
Hello Everyone,
I am very new to CC3+ (about a week) and have watched some nice Youtube tutorials and have followed along on some of those. I am now contemplating and tinkering with my first map on my own and I have envisioned an island with a sea cliff along much of one side of it. I have been experimenting with the terrains and the sheet effects but I have yet to come up with a combination that is what I am picturing in my mind. I am seeking, and hoping for, a little experienced advice to get me pointed in the right direction.
My first map is going to be a large island. My thoughts are to have sea cliffs along most of the east side of the island. I would like them to start gradual and then get kind of steep on the west side as you might see in the inside of an extinct volcano. I think they look pretty impressive. Crater Lake here is Oregon is one that I've been in and another was on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia. The one is Moorea is so large on the inside that they do a large part of the island's farming there. Anyway, tutorials with mountains seem to mostly use the Edge Fade, Inner, sheet effect to blend the different colored terrains together and they look good to show the idea of slope but they are sloped on all sides like mountains usually are. I would like to have this Edge Fade, Inner only on the western side and then with the Directional Wall Shadow sheet effect on the East side of the cliff spreading out over the water and rocky coastline below I am thinking I should be able to get the impression of a sea cliff. However, I am completely at a loss to figure out how to get and Edge Fade, Inner to only be on the western edges. Is this even possible?
With what I have described that I would like to accomplish, is there a better (i.e. standard?) , way to achieve this type of effect?
Kindest regards,
Chris
I am very new to CC3+ (about a week) and have watched some nice Youtube tutorials and have followed along on some of those. I am now contemplating and tinkering with my first map on my own and I have envisioned an island with a sea cliff along much of one side of it. I have been experimenting with the terrains and the sheet effects but I have yet to come up with a combination that is what I am picturing in my mind. I am seeking, and hoping for, a little experienced advice to get me pointed in the right direction.
My first map is going to be a large island. My thoughts are to have sea cliffs along most of the east side of the island. I would like them to start gradual and then get kind of steep on the west side as you might see in the inside of an extinct volcano. I think they look pretty impressive. Crater Lake here is Oregon is one that I've been in and another was on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia. The one is Moorea is so large on the inside that they do a large part of the island's farming there. Anyway, tutorials with mountains seem to mostly use the Edge Fade, Inner, sheet effect to blend the different colored terrains together and they look good to show the idea of slope but they are sloped on all sides like mountains usually are. I would like to have this Edge Fade, Inner only on the western side and then with the Directional Wall Shadow sheet effect on the East side of the cliff spreading out over the water and rocky coastline below I am thinking I should be able to get the impression of a sea cliff. However, I am completely at a loss to figure out how to get and Edge Fade, Inner to only be on the western edges. Is this even possible?
With what I have described that I would like to accomplish, is there a better (i.e. standard?) , way to achieve this type of effect?
Kindest regards,
Chris
Comments
Is this something like you mean?
[Image_10711]
If it is of any use I have also attached the FCW file so that you can see what I have done. The shape of the cliff is a little 'off' at the southern end of the island, but this was drawn really quickly and with little care. I will leave you with it now, since I have to go out for a while.
Thank so much for your reply and example. I have downloaded it and opened it but due to a problem I have somehow created in my CC3+ I can't actually edit an effect to see what the settings of it are. Ralf is currently helping me with that via support. Until I can get my CC3+ working again I am at a bit of a standstill. :-( Of course everything breaks when I am really excited to tinker with this and learn from your example. :-/
What you have done is very similar to what I am after. The glow along the cliff though is not quite right in my mind. It seems that it should be at the interface between the water and rock cliff face, not the surface terrain and cliff face. Also, right now the slope up looks really gradual and even the whole way up. I was thinking that it should start gradual and then steep and my plan for that was just using multiple contour colors with closer spacing as it got steeper like contour lines on a topo map. But what you did, what-ever that was, to only have the fading on the west is exactly what I want. :-)
Now, I just need figure out how to get my ability to edit and add screen effects back so I can look at how you did it. As soon as I can do that I will post back.
Thank you again, Loopysue, your guidance is more than simply "of use".
P.S. I am probably using the wrong CC3+ and mapping lingo at this point, if so, I appologize for that. I've a lot to learn, and as read though old forum posts to glean from them what I can I will eventully get up to speed communicating correctly.
I was in two minds about the directional shadow cast by the cliff. It may look better if you switch that effect off. I think the lighted bevel works fine by itself at this scale, since its only really at battle map scale that a person should seriously consider casting shadows like that. If you switch the shadow off (when you can get to it) there are copies of the land glows on that sheet which you can switch on, and which will make a similar glow at the foot of the cliff to the one that surrounds the land, so that the cliff looks like its part of the land.
If you modify and use several Sheets just like the TERRIAN GRASSLAND sheet you can almost use them like contour colouring, bringing them closer together towards the edge of the cliff. That should help with the concave slope effect. The best thing about using a Colour Key to give you the sharp edge is that you can copy it to all the other sheets you want to use for your effect. You only have to draw it once.
I'm glad my scruffy little sketch was of some use to you
I am finally up and running again. It turns out that update 16 breaks my ability to edit and add effects and the fact that I am runnng CC3+ on a Mac in CrossOver just complicates support. So, for now no update 16 until they figure out what the incompatibility is.
So anyhow, now that I can look at what you did, my first question is about the color key. I click on the help for it and get a message that the file cannot be located but the user manual says you choose the color you want to effect. Okay that makes sense, but you have magenta selected. That is what I am confused about, why magenta? Why does that give a sharp edge?
The sharp edge:
Please bear with me. This might not seem to be relevant to start with, but it really is.
When I first started with CC3 I wasn't familiar with the way sheet effects worked - particularly the Edge Fade Inner effect. So I thought that if I drew a nice big desert on the TERRAIN DESERT sheet, and then added patches of scrubland to break it up a bit on the same sheet, the one would fade into the other because of the EFI effect. Wrong. All the polygons on the TERRAIN DESERT sheet were taken as a single outline by the effect, so only the outside edge was faded into the landscape, while the scrub remained crystal sharp.
The same thing happens with the bright magenta patch I have drawn on the TERRAIN GRASSLAND sheet. The first sheet effect to be processed (the EFI effect) sees only one large blob and fades the edges of that blob. The line between magenta and grass, however, remains crystal clear because it lies within that blob. So when the second effect - the Colour Key is processed and the magenta knocks out the grassland, the edge is crisp and sharp.
If you move the Colour Key effect to the top of the stack of effects on that Sheet, you will see that the sharpness disappears. That is because the colour key knocks out that side of the grassland before the EFI is processed, so when the EFI comes into play that cliff edge is faded like all the rest.
I hope that explains what is happening there?
The order of the effects on a sheet is as critical as the order of the sheets themselves.