Sounds interesting. I must say that one of the biggest problems of CC3+ to me at least is how the program blends textures, it doesnt do it well or does it with real effort. Other programs which are way simpler, as Inkarnate or Wonderdraft, made it much better and faster.
On this map the blending, without being perfect, is much better than the average mapping ive seen. So, kudos and keep bringing up fresh ideas!
Posted By: MedioI must say that one of the biggest problems of CC3+ to me at least is how the program blends textures, it doesnt do it well or does it with real effort. Other programs which are way simpler, as Inkarnate or Wonderdraft, made it much better and faster.
Can you elaborate? Are you looking at the notion of per-entity transparency or something else entirely?
Humm i guess i was just refering to the fact that in CC3+ it takes more time than in other programs to get a good texture blending, that´s all. What i can get in Photoshop, Inkarnate or Wonderdraft in a quite fast way, it´s ahead on what i can get on CC3+, in either time or final result. Maybe it could be my fault but to be honest, it´s also what i see when i check CC3+ maps compared with other maps from the above mentioned programs.
I understand that it´s due how CC3+ works, but still it´s something that bugs me out.
If I'm not mistaken, you're describing an alpha fade of the sort that you'd get with the "Edge Fade, Inner" effect. I was trying to get a set of effects that would hit most of the general blend features found in Photoshop and many other layered paint programs.
Just for information in this conversation, the only difference between what I did and what we normally do in a CC3 map is that I have many similar shades of a thing - each on their own sheet. Each sheet has a simple EFI on it, but the extents of the patches I drew are nowhere near as coordinated as they usually are. The overlap and cross over in several places - the EFI doing the work of blending each to it's underlying partner at any one point.
This is it without the sheet effects. Sorry! I decided to have another go at the land, so this is a different pattern and only the southern tip so far.
[Image_13607]
What I am doing to get the textures on the land to behave independent of the limitations of the coastline is putting the ocean right on top of the stack. Hence the need for a drawing tool that will cut all the way through those 5 sheets to the land when you draw the COASTLINE (itself a cut out shape, so that's 6 identical polygons in one go).
This is the texture set so far. Its very plain, and very basic (needs a lot more texture to get really interesting). I'm planning to make 3 of each basic colour with different patterns.
[Image_13606]
If I was doing this in KRITA (sorry - GIMP won't do it this way because its groupings don't work in as sophisticated a way as Krita's do) I would use an identical number of layers, group all the LAND textures together under a single land mask and give each of them their own sub-level mask so I could paint splodges of them visible according to the landscape. I would only be using probably one very basic soft edged brush to paint them.
I'm afraid the only way you could do it exactly like that in CC3 is if you had a built in bitmap tool that would paint a black and white transparency/opacity mask for each sheet, and a way of grouping the sheets into land and sea with the land group having a master mask to denote the extent of the land. Unfortunately I seem to remember that someone said having a bitmap editor built into CC3 would never be possible. So that's why I'm trying to get a reasonable compromise working. It will have to have many more sheets and many more textures than is usual for a CC3 map, and it might prove to be cumbersome in the end, but I thought it was worth a try.
Posted By: jslaytonIf I'm not mistaken, you're describing an alpha fade of the sort that you'd get with the "Edge Fade, Inner" effect. I was trying to get a set of effects that would hit most of the general blend features found in Photoshop and many other layered paint programs.
Yeah, i´ve used that effect for most of my maps; still it´s not intuitive, need some workaround, and it´s not fast. Still far from other programs blending features.
To me, it´s the main issue that PF should work in.
And yeah, Sue, i remember reading there was an issue about how CC3 is built which makes hard to do this on an easy way. The only way nowadays to do good blending is to create multiple sheets and play with transparency and fade inner edge to get the desired effect.
Doing it in, let´s say Inkarnate, with a single button pressing while takes me not less than 10 minutes to get the same effect in CC3+ irks me quite a bit.
Humm guess so. Or maybe prepare some transparent textures to use.
The thing is, what i really liked from CC3 was building the map, then do some postwork effects in PS. If i have to prepare it beforehand, and afterward... I´ll be tempted to do it all in the same program
I am a multi-media mapper myself, and I regard apps as tools in my toolbox. Each app has it's strengths and weaknesses, like a hammer makes a pretty poor spanner, and vice versa.
Most of the maps I've made that have won challenges on more general mapping sites were made in many different apps and pulled together as layers in GIMP. All of them have parts that are purely CC3 because CC3 can do stuff that I've never found a bitmap editor can do - like automatic roof shading for a start. If I need to use 5 different apps, I use them. It doesn't matter to me how many times I swap, as long as I get the result I'm after.
@Medio - I've tried out the free version of Inkarnate and found it maddening to try to use. I've seen some amazing maps made with it, but I guess it's all what you're used to using. I found it very limiting as are a number of other mapping apps that I've tried.
Posted By: Monsen The macro to do this would be: RDOFF SELSAVE SELBYP HIDESHTF * SHOWSHTF OCEAN* COPYVIS SHOWSHTF * SELREST RDON
(For this example, all the sheets involved in the operation, both the sheet you draw the entity on and the sheets you copy them to should be called OCEAN something, and no other sheets in the drawing should have OCEAN as a prefix)
This would make an excellent macro drawing tool. Could you post a link to a map file (or better yet a template) with this tool and the appropriate ocean sheet effects? Or is there an existing CA template I could use?
I've already implemented it in the example map I am working on - a style where it is necessary to place the entire map below the sea and cut a hole in the sea to 'make' the land. Since you can draw more sea texture on top of the Colour Key pieces, this means the rivers have no apparent join.
Unfortunately I cannot share the FCW, since it is very much a work in progress and highly experimental.
The ocean and rivers in this screen shot are drawn on 5 sheets all named "OCEAN X" where X is the name of the particular shade of blue ocean fill. Each sheet has a Colour Key effect on it set to magenta, so when I create a drawing tool that draws solid magenta polygons, and attach this macro to it, the drawing tool draws a magenta cutting shape on the top ocean sheet which is then instantly copied to all the other ocean sheets. So the feeling of it is one of having 'drawn' the land.
[Image_13630]
If you want to make a tool like this all you have to do is create your drawing tool with all the properties you want to draw your magenta polygon, and then check the "Use macro command" and "Apply macro after drawing" boxes. Then click the "Command to execute" button and paste the text of the macro into the little window that appears. Don't forget to hit return at the end of it just once and delete any other line spaces you may have copied with it. And with all ok'd that's your drawing tool.
[Image_13631]
The rivers in this example are drawn on the bottommost OCEAN sheet (which has the darkest water on it). They are drawn in the lightest water shade, but the mismatch isn't apparent because all the ocean sheets have been cut the same way with identical polygons and the topmost OCEAN sheet (with the lightest shade of ocean) overlaps the ends of the rivers.
The dark glow you can see on the coast can't be done the usual way using the land, because the land is a rectangular background. Instead I placed a glow effect on the bottommost OCEAN sheet *after* the Colour Key effect.
Comments
On this map the blending, without being perfect, is much better than the average mapping ive seen. So, kudos and keep bringing up fresh ideas!
I understand that it´s due how CC3+ works, but still it´s something that bugs me out.
This is it without the sheet effects. Sorry! I decided to have another go at the land, so this is a different pattern and only the southern tip so far.
[Image_13607]
What I am doing to get the textures on the land to behave independent of the limitations of the coastline is putting the ocean right on top of the stack. Hence the need for a drawing tool that will cut all the way through those 5 sheets to the land when you draw the COASTLINE (itself a cut out shape, so that's 6 identical polygons in one go).
This is the texture set so far. Its very plain, and very basic (needs a lot more texture to get really interesting). I'm planning to make 3 of each basic colour with different patterns.
[Image_13606]
If I was doing this in KRITA (sorry - GIMP won't do it this way because its groupings don't work in as sophisticated a way as Krita's do) I would use an identical number of layers, group all the LAND textures together under a single land mask and give each of them their own sub-level mask so I could paint splodges of them visible according to the landscape. I would only be using probably one very basic soft edged brush to paint them.
I'm afraid the only way you could do it exactly like that in CC3 is if you had a built in bitmap tool that would paint a black and white transparency/opacity mask for each sheet, and a way of grouping the sheets into land and sea with the land group having a master mask to denote the extent of the land. Unfortunately I seem to remember that someone said having a bitmap editor built into CC3 would never be possible. So that's why I'm trying to get a reasonable compromise working. It will have to have many more sheets and many more textures than is usual for a CC3 map, and it might prove to be cumbersome in the end, but I thought it was worth a try.
To me, it´s the main issue that PF should work in.
Doing it in, let´s say Inkarnate, with a single button pressing while takes me not less than 10 minutes to get the same effect in CC3+ irks me quite a bit.
The thing is, what i really liked from CC3 was building the map, then do some postwork effects in PS. If i have to prepare it beforehand, and afterward... I´ll be tempted to do it all in the same program
Most of the maps I've made that have won challenges on more general mapping sites were made in many different apps and pulled together as layers in GIMP. All of them have parts that are purely CC3 because CC3 can do stuff that I've never found a bitmap editor can do - like automatic roof shading for a start. If I need to use 5 different apps, I use them. It doesn't matter to me how many times I swap, as long as I get the result I'm after.
Thank you very much!
(That's the white background through the hole in the sea)
[Image_13625]
I'm a ProFantasy fangirl for life I guess.
Unfortunately I cannot share the FCW, since it is very much a work in progress and highly experimental.
The ocean and rivers in this screen shot are drawn on 5 sheets all named "OCEAN X" where X is the name of the particular shade of blue ocean fill. Each sheet has a Colour Key effect on it set to magenta, so when I create a drawing tool that draws solid magenta polygons, and attach this macro to it, the drawing tool draws a magenta cutting shape on the top ocean sheet which is then instantly copied to all the other ocean sheets. So the feeling of it is one of having 'drawn' the land.
[Image_13630]
If you want to make a tool like this all you have to do is create your drawing tool with all the properties you want to draw your magenta polygon, and then check the "Use macro command" and "Apply macro after drawing" boxes. Then click the "Command to execute" button and paste the text of the macro into the little window that appears. Don't forget to hit return at the end of it just once and delete any other line spaces you may have copied with it. And with all ok'd that's your drawing tool.
[Image_13631]
The rivers in this example are drawn on the bottommost OCEAN sheet (which has the darkest water on it). They are drawn in the lightest water shade, but the mismatch isn't apparent because all the ocean sheets have been cut the same way with identical polygons and the topmost OCEAN sheet (with the lightest shade of ocean) overlaps the ends of the rivers.
The dark glow you can see on the coast can't be done the usual way using the land, because the land is a rectangular background. Instead I placed a glow effect on the bottommost OCEAN sheet *after* the Colour Key effect.