Jim, while I wholeheartedly applaud the spirit of exploration here, and your efforts so far, I'm still not sure why you're feeling the need to do this. It almost seems as if you're trying to create a virtual-reality 360° view of the scenery, rather than a map, and I'm not sure CC3+ is the right software for generating that.
For instance, pits don't "hang" from the floor above them like stalactites; they're cut into the substance of or below the floor, so aside from the stalactites, my impression is that the entire scene is just the wrong way up. To get the pit to look more like a pit, I think you'd need a cutaway showing it IS a pit, or maybe using a transparent/translucent "front wall" so you could see the trapdoor (if there is one) and any pit contents (floor spikes, say). Some impression of the overall floor thickness - again, perhaps using semi-transparent lines and/or textures - might help with the illusion too.
Just had a thought how about making the ceiling a mirror image of the floor but make the ceiling not as squashed as the floor that way it would appear to the person looking at the picture to be in between those two surfaces
Irfanview doesn't have a 'mirror' command but it does have vertical and horizontal flip. I know I can mirror symbols in CC3/CC3Plus, but I don't think that will work.
Since I think the perspective view is from 60 deg then depending on the height of your room you need to work out the angle of view , now I don’t know the maths part but to make it look convincing create a box in a 3D program the size of your room and rotate that box so it looks right to you , take a screen shot and import it into cc3+ in its own layer and use that to resize your drawing , I think that will make it look convincing Rob
I think you may both be thinking of point perspective, which is very different to isometric view.
Point perspective has a horizon and at least one vanishing point, which means that things get smaller as they get further away.
Isometric view doesn't have any vanishing points or horizons, and is used in maps more frequently than point perspective because the symbols stay the same size and orientation no matter where they are in the drawing. Isometric view will only ever show 3 faces of a cube, whether you have it the right way up, or upside down, and combining right way and upside down isometric views actually destroys the basic geometry of the view - which maybe why you simply cannot make it work.
Its like trying to find the fifth dimension in a four dimensional universe (if you accept that time is a dimension)
There's nothing stopping you from making a map in point perspective (I've done it several times in GMIP already). I just don't think that Perspectives is necessarily the best tool to do that in, since point perspective and isometric geometry don't really mix - a bit like oil and water
I've drawn vanishing point perspective by hand with a ruler and pencil.
But I don't think that is what I am trying to do.
If I flip a Perspective drawing. I still only see two sides and a top albeit it becomes two sides and a bottom. I'll work on some more ideas later on. The part that is the biggest problem is the floor angle. It should be at a less angle.
ok my quick and dirty method , the 3 magic numbers are , 45 deg , 150% , 86% , gimp or any other graphics package of your choice first get your floor , or ceiling ( top down view )to the size of room you need , then rotate by 45 deg , then turn off the constrain proportions and make the width 150% and the height 86% , do the same for the ceiling but put some transparency in it so you can see through it , now put then in the same drawing on different sheets so you can play with the effects
in the example i have shown i squished the ceiling a little more in the height but kept the width as it then looks like the viewer is not so high when looking at the room
Big problem at this point is the wood floor redraws so much at the slightest movement of my mouse, I'm going to have to switch to a plain floor. I can't tell what angle the floor is at unless I click to place it.
I think the main problem is the symbols are all drawn from the same angle and you need them drawn from a different angle it may work if instead of placing a stair symbol you place rectangular blocks with just the long corners touching
Try this create a floor from the floor symbols but befor you lay it down mirror image that floor symbol so for instance I think the stone floor has a bottom mud edging , turn that by 180 deg and lay that down so you see the mud edge on top instead of the bottom that would then be the ceiling , oh and set the background to black that may fool your eyes into thinking it’s a ceiling not a floor
I am getting a severe headache trying to rotate things in my head, and then do the same using Perspectives. So I am going to walk away from this for now.
In this png I drew a plain dirt wall, and put in two rows of stone 7.5' x 7.5' blocks. The square and round holes were added.
I then rotated it. Then added the other symbols. Using rotate again to place them.
Cool stuff! If you get the underbelly thing working that'll be cool!
I played around with something similar for Shessar's competition way back (as discussed here and here). I wanted to map a dungeon that was stuck in a pocket dimension of the Abyss (you know it is, those crazy demon-liches and their abyssal pocket dungeons). It's made up of several floating islands of stone, each at different angles and each with its own gravity. The idea was that I'd map the island as a normal, iso dungeon and then I'd group it using Tools>Groups>Group from the menu or simply GROUP on the command line. Once the island was grouped, I could rotate and move it as one item. The key is the group; all the symbols rotated in relation to the rest of the group. I made a proof-of-concept, using mainly one island that I copied (Clipboard Copy) and then pasted, rotated, and scaled as needed. I used the grid lines to help me approximate the angles needed to keep the isometric illusion going. I didn't make one upside down but maybe it's worth a shot?
(Right-click and "View image" for full size, or click the image for a high-resolution version)
I was just playing around with a proof-of-concept and trying different techniques at the time, so it isn't the best map, nor are the layers and sheets used as well as they should be. But it worked fairly well, I think. I've attached the FCW on the off-chance it could help spark some ideas.
(The actual map took me forever though, In fact, it's still not finished and the relevant game session has long passed. I wound up using my pencil sketches instead, which the players loved anyway.)
In the two pillar map above I noticed mirror flips it on a line. Rotate works on a point. I need to be able to rotate on a line... at least I think that is what I want.
The stone was the floor. I tried to get the stone more above everything else. Rotate doesn't seem the way to do it. But I didn't try too long as I got a headache.
Cool. I'm out playing with Bargo (my Lab) but I'll check it out when I'm back in front of my computer.
In the meantime, can I ask, for the room you rotated above, was it 2 squares wide (horizontal, toward you) by 6 squares long (angled, away from you)? I ask because it looks like it was rotated 90° instead of 180°.
Yeah, it looks like it wasn't rotated far enough. I rotated it back so the floor was the floor, then I added two pillars to the wall (symbols rotated 90°). Then I grouped everything and rotated it 180°. Here's the result.
Uhm, but I want the stairs to be on the top, and the stone floor to be the top part of the map... so what I drew needs to be rotated a further 45 to 55 degrees forward.
Comments
For instance, pits don't "hang" from the floor above them like stalactites; they're cut into the substance of or below the floor, so aside from the stalactites, my impression is that the entire scene is just the wrong way up. To get the pit to look more like a pit, I think you'd need a cutaway showing it IS a pit, or maybe using a transparent/translucent "front wall" so you could see the trapdoor (if there is one) and any pit contents (floor spikes, say). Some impression of the overall floor thickness - again, perhaps using semi-transparent lines and/or textures - might help with the illusion too.
Not the entire level, just to show where the stairs, etc. attaches.
Here is the vertical flip.
Rob
Point perspective has a horizon and at least one vanishing point, which means that things get smaller as they get further away.
Isometric view doesn't have any vanishing points or horizons, and is used in maps more frequently than point perspective because the symbols stay the same size and orientation no matter where they are in the drawing. Isometric view will only ever show 3 faces of a cube, whether you have it the right way up, or upside down, and combining right way and upside down isometric views actually destroys the basic geometry of the view - which maybe why you simply cannot make it work.
Its like trying to find the fifth dimension in a four dimensional universe (if you accept that time is a dimension)
There's nothing stopping you from making a map in point perspective (I've done it several times in GMIP already). I just don't think that Perspectives is necessarily the best tool to do that in, since point perspective and isometric geometry don't really mix - a bit like oil and water
But I don't think that is what I am trying to do.
If I flip a Perspective drawing. I still only see two sides and a top albeit it becomes two sides and a bottom. I'll work on some more ideas later on. The part that is the biggest problem is the floor angle. It should be at a less angle.
first get your floor , or ceiling ( top down view )to the size of room you need , then rotate by 45 deg , then turn off the constrain proportions and make the width 150% and the height 86% , do the same for the ceiling but put some transparency in it so you can see through it , now put then in the same drawing on different sheets so you can play with the effects
in the example i have shown i squished the ceiling a little more in the height but kept the width as it then looks like the viewer is not so high when looking at the room
hope that has spurred you on in your quest
Rob
I did a standard Perspectives floor, with stairs and a hole in the floor.
Then did a mirror copy and got rid of the original bits.
Now its coming out of the wall. I will try command line rotate on the next map.
I see Shift=15 degrees. I'll try that to.
Rob
In this png I drew a plain dirt wall, and put in two rows of stone 7.5' x 7.5' blocks. The square and round holes were added.
I then rotated it. Then added the other symbols. Using rotate again to place them.
I played around with something similar for Shessar's competition way back (as discussed here and here). I wanted to map a dungeon that was stuck in a pocket dimension of the Abyss (you know it is, those crazy demon-liches and their abyssal pocket dungeons). It's made up of several floating islands of stone, each at different angles and each with its own gravity. The idea was that I'd map the island as a normal, iso dungeon and then I'd group it using Tools>Groups>Group from the menu or simply GROUP on the command line. Once the island was grouped, I could rotate and move it as one item. The key is the group; all the symbols rotated in relation to the rest of the group. I made a proof-of-concept, using mainly one island that I copied (Clipboard Copy) and then pasted, rotated, and scaled as needed. I used the grid lines to help me approximate the angles needed to keep the isometric illusion going. I didn't make one upside down but maybe it's worth a shot?
(Right-click and "View image" for full size, or click the image for a high-resolution version)
I was just playing around with a proof-of-concept and trying different techniques at the time, so it isn't the best map, nor are the layers and sheets used as well as they should be. But it worked fairly well, I think. I've attached the FCW on the off-chance it could help spark some ideas.
(The actual map took me forever though, In fact, it's still not finished and the relevant game session has long passed.
In the meantime, can I ask, for the room you rotated above, was it 2 squares wide (horizontal, toward you) by 6 squares long (angled, away from you)? I ask because it looks like it was rotated 90° instead of 180°.
Didn't write down what I did to get it turned the way it looks now.