Right. That's what I'm saying. Your original wasn't rotated far enough to make the stone floor the stone ceiling. The image above does make the stone floor the ceiling; I'm not sure what it does with the stairs.Below is an image where the brown wall is the floor, which is what your original image seemed to be doing (based on the pillars). Again, I kept your pillars and just added two of my own (the two in the middle.
I think the main problem is isometric projection — even the PER3 version, which uses 30° angles instead of 45°, is a projection and not true 3D, nor true perspective. As Loopysue pointed out, there's no vanishing point. I think you need to mirror a "floor" (and walls and symbols, as a group) or manually draw a mirror image, before rotating it 180°
If you rotate a floor, you don't get a ceiling because anything other than a square floor will go off in the wrong direction for the ceiling. If you line the stairs or the pits up in my first image above, you'll see the "ceiling" would extend up and to the right, away from the floor. To make a ceiling in PER3, you need to make it go off 30° from the horizontal up and to the left. Check out these proofs-of-concept. I've also attached the FCW. To show/hide the axes and angles, show/hide the Axes layer (not sheet).
EDIT: Looking it it again, I wonder if it would look better if I'd mirrored the spiral staircase symbol before placing it on the ceiling. Hm.
EDIT 2: Discussed and tested further down in this discussion — the best way to get the ceiling aligned properly may be to create a Mirror Copy using a horizontal "mirror" line.
I understand perspective and I can sometimes visualize in 3D.
My problem is getting the software to do it to.
The Isometric in CC3/CCPlus is indeed not true 3D; however, its two sides and a top. If I can get it to rotate the way I want to, its 2 sides and a bottom. Still only 3 parts of the 6 sided figure.
My problem is when I do the rotate, all of a sudden it rotates about a point, instead of rotating around a line.
If you can explain, in text, how to get it to rotate from a floor, to a ceiling, I can try more stuff at my end.
As for a rotate floor going off at a tangent if I tried to make it a ceiling, couldn't I use drag/rotate to move it back ?
JimP wrote:I understand perspective and I can sometimes visualize in 3D.
My problem is getting the software to do it to.
Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean to imply that you don't. I was merely trying to point out some limits of the software.
JimP continued:My problem is when I do the rotate, all of a sudden it rotates about a point, instead of rotating around a line.
If you can explain, in text, how to get it to rotate from a floor, to a ceiling, I can try more stuff at my end.
I'm not sure what you mean by "rotating around a line". In 2D, you can only rotate around a point (or an imaginary line perpendicular to the 2D plane that pierces the plane at that point). You can mirror something over a line, though, which might actually give you the result you're after — and incidentally shortcut my idea about mirroring, then rotating; I was thinking about mirroring L->R, then rotating, but mirroring bottom->top might do both in one step! I need to experiment but that might do it.
JimP finished with:As for a rotate floor going off at a tangent if I tried to make it a ceiling, couldn't I use drag/rotate to move it back ?
No, that won't work with ordinary rotation. If you look at my first edit to your FCW, the one with the stone floor as a ceiling, you can see that I did, just that, so it would fit in the frame. The "floor" and the "ceiling" are parallel in that image, but that is not how a ceiling would look in isometric projection (I suspect floors and ceilings don't often coexist in iso projections). The floor and ceiling would be at a 60° angle to each other, not parallel, as shown in the proof-of-concept, above.
I'm gonna try the horizontal MIrror Copy idea and then report back.
Yep! The horizontal Mirror Copy works great. As a bonus, you don't need to group anything when doing a mirror copy, but I still recommend doing it especially if you think you may move the copy around afterward. FCW attached below.
[Image_10991]
Simple steps:
Right-click the Copy button and select Mirror Copy from the context menu (or type MIRCPY for the command line).
Select the room elements you want to copy.
Right-click and then select Do It from the context menu. The command line changes to read, Mirror line start:
Click the starting point for the line around which you want to mirror your floor stuff. The command line changes to read, Mirror line end: Note: The line should be horizontal, between the floor and where the ceiling will be. You don't need an actual, drawn line as shown in the example above. You can just click the start point of an imaginary line.
Click the ending point for the mirror line. CC3+ copies a mirror image of the selected entities on the other side of the mirror line.
The mirror copy is what I used to work with a map I didn't post. After I got it to flip, I wanted to rotate just a bit, not a huge amount like mirror copy does.
So I used Rotate... which rotates around a point, not a line.
So it looks like I need to work on how I do a mirror copy... because the one I tried, and not posted, looks awful.
To my eyes, the mirror copy you have above should be turned just a bit more as the stone floor doesn't look flat enough to me. To me, it looks like an uprasied awning, not downward like an awning should look. But not too much, just right.
Sigh, I feel more likely to explain time travel verb conjugation than I do moving an iso floor plan so it looks correct... well, what I expect it to look like.
Sure, but the problem is that isometric projections used fixed angles. You can't adjust the angle of the ceiling without throwing everything off. Nothing will look right. All the symbols are made using the same angles. It has to be at the huge 30° angle, due to the restrictions of the isometric parameters. Also, isometric projections are pretty much intended to be top-down views. I don't think they were intended to show the bottom of the top of something. For example, an isometric box looks down at the box. If the top is open then it looks down into the box. If one of the sides is open, it shows the top of the box, the bottom of the box, the outside of one side, and the inside of another side, and can often hide the last (distant) side. But it does not show the inside of the top, which would be a ceiling in this case.
Changing the angles creates converging parallels, where if you extend a pair of parallel lines far enough the way you want to draw them at different angles to one another, they will eventually cross - even though that crossing point may be an actual physical mile away from the drawing, they are still converging.
Converging parallels create point perspective, where the crossing parallels form points of convergence. Whether it turns out to be 1, 2, or 3 point perspective, it isn't isometric anymore.
Symbols are, naturally, very limited in the number of angles you can use and, necessarily, in what gets shown. For example, the stairs you are using will always have a triangular block of stone facing the viewer. One way around that is to improvise. When I started making my abyssal dungeon (the real map, not the proof-of-concept I posted above), I used the "bridge start" symbol to make floating stairs. You can also use them to make non-floating stairs, though. Same with simple, small, floor pieces (some of these may require CA66, but I know you have that). Here's an example of what I mean. For the record, I had to turn Snap off and eyeball it.
I didn't see the posts you made before (weird!), about manipulating the floating islands I posted, so let me make a quick comment on that.
JimP wrote:I saw your floating islands on the map. Took the left one, moved to over, and copied it. Then used the drag/rotate to flip it over.
The right hand islands is more what I'm looking for. One above, one below. With stairs conecting them. So I can simulate a 3D drawing.
The problem is that you rotated it too far but can't see it because of the black poly. You didn't have the effects turned on so all you see is the opaque black poly I used to make a shadow. But if you delete that poly (or hide the Island Shadow sheet, or whatever I called it) you'll see that none of the symbols below it will look right. That's because the "flat" part of that island needs to be at a 30° angle (like the one on the left with the two black polys), not lie horizontal at a 0° angle. All the symbols on that flat portion (and in PER3, in general) are angled at 30°.
It's also hard to tell because the "floor" surface is a fractal poly and not a dungeon floor or floor symbols. So, the illusion you want is easier to get because there's no flat edge. If that island was a floating dungeon floor instead of a cave floor then you'd quickly see the problem with the angles of the near-side floor edge, especially when compared to the rotated "ceiling" edges.
I don't know enough math to say that with certainty, but I do think — and this is an informed guess (but a guess all the same) — that if it is possible, it would take a fair amount of work.
Comments
EDIT: Added the FCW
If you rotate a floor, you don't get a ceiling because anything other than a square floor will go off in the wrong direction for the ceiling. If you line the stairs or the pits up in my first image above, you'll see the "ceiling" would extend up and to the right, away from the floor. To make a ceiling in PER3, you need to make it go off 30° from the horizontal up and to the left. Check out these proofs-of-concept. I've also attached the FCW. To show/hide the axes and angles, show/hide the Axes layer (not sheet).
EDIT: Looking it it again, I wonder if it would look better if I'd mirrored the spiral staircase symbol before placing it on the ceiling. Hm.
EDIT 2: Discussed and tested further down in this discussion — the best way to get the ceiling aligned properly may be to create a Mirror Copy using a horizontal "mirror" line.
(Click the images for high-resolution versions)
My problem is getting the software to do it to.
The Isometric in CC3/CCPlus is indeed not true 3D; however, its two sides and a top. If I can get it to rotate the way I want to, its 2 sides and a bottom. Still only 3 parts of the 6 sided figure.
My problem is when I do the rotate, all of a sudden it rotates about a point, instead of rotating around a line.
If you can explain, in text, how to get it to rotate from a floor, to a ceiling, I can try more stuff at my end.
As for a rotate floor going off at a tangent if I tried to make it a ceiling, couldn't I use drag/rotate to move it back ?
I saw your floating islands on the map. Took the left one, moved to over, and copied it. Then used the drag/rotate to flip it over.
The right hand islands is more what I'm looking for. One above, one below. With stairs conecting them. So I can simulate a 3D drawing.
It definately doesn't look correct. I see what is necessary to rotate the top one so the stairs line up... but I don't think its possible.
I'm gonna try the horizontal MIrror Copy idea and then report back.
Cheers,
~Dogtag
[Image_10991]
Simple steps:
- Right-click the Copy
![[CC3 Button Image]](http://chronicles-of-arn.net/pf_maps_etc/cc3_interface/btnCC3+_Copy_border.png)
button and select Mirror Copy from the context menu (or type MIRCPY for the command line).
- Select the room elements you want to copy.
- Right-click and then select Do It from the context menu.
- Click the starting point for the line around which you want to mirror your floor stuff.
- Click the ending point for the mirror line.
Ta-daaa!The command line changes to read, Mirror line start:
The command line changes to read, Mirror line end:
Note: The line should be horizontal, between the floor and where the ceiling will be. You don't need an actual, drawn line as shown in the example above. You can just click the start point of an imaginary line.
CC3+ copies a mirror image of the selected entities on the other side of the mirror line.
So I used Rotate... which rotates around a point, not a line.
So it looks like I need to work on how I do a mirror copy... because the one I tried, and not posted, looks awful.
To my eyes, the mirror copy you have above should be turned just a bit more as the stone floor doesn't look flat enough to me. To me, it looks like an uprasied awning, not downward like an awning should look. But not too much, just right.
Sigh, I feel more likely to explain time travel verb conjugation than I do moving an iso floor plan so it looks correct... well, what I expect it to look like.
Converging parallels create point perspective, where the crossing parallels form points of convergence. Whether it turns out to be 1, 2, or 3 point perspective, it isn't isometric anymore.
[Image_10993]
Cheers,
~Dogtag
It's also hard to tell because the "floor" surface is a fractal poly and not a dungeon floor or floor symbols. So, the illusion you want is easier to get because there's no flat edge. If that island was a floating dungeon floor instead of a cave floor then you'd quickly see the problem with the angles of the near-side floor edge, especially when compared to the rotated "ceiling" edges.
I'll be working on other stuff and work on this later on.