using Random Street option

I've been trying to make a walled city from scratch and I've hit a brick wall in terms of the random street.

Making the walls was time consuming and many versions fell in the process, but eventually I succeeded. Then, I put houses in, using the Random Street tool(?). At that point I didn't realise I had to put roads in first if the houses were not to be in straight lines so houses went in first accepting the default colouring which I quite liked. Then the roads snaked their way between houses.

Then I exported the map to a pdf file. The roofing was a green-red-brown in colour - not the grey in Cities! Not to my taste at all, and definitely not the colour for my large part continent map I've got in my head.

My questions are

1. how do I change the colour so I get a colour I like and am expecting on export.
2. I've tried to resize the houses but I can't get it to work so I can shrink the walls and just put new houses in as the existing canvas size is massive.

The map is [b]not[/b] for gaming but for a story I'm working on.

I'm uploading a cropped pdf which has the only got the city so people can see the exported file. If anyone wants the FCW version I'll post it tomorrow.

Thanks for any input.

PS the roads are 3' Paved yet they suffer the same colour change!
Helen
Pnar.png 355.9K

Comments

  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    Colors change sounds weird. Colors aren't supposed to change on exporting. (Of course, color profiles for monitors and printers might lead to things looking different, but I am guessing that isn't what your problem is here).
    Do you have any effects that may change the color. Try to zoom real close into one of the problematic houses, and then toggle the effects to see if there is any difference

    What seems to be the problem resizing houses? Houses drawn by the random street tool should scale normally when using the Scale image command
  • Hi Monsen, I wasn't expecting any problems either - and colour profiles have never had any impact before. Mind you I've never built a city before, this is the first time I've worked on one house just for screen use.

    I zoomed right in on one roof from the Default setting and the roof did separate into the speckled effect just in the file I included above. It didn't have anything to do with effects; I don't know how to do anything apart from shadows.

    I don't know how to use the Scale command, I get as far as selecting an object and Right clicking to get to the " Do it " list. What is meant by scale origin for instance? I've always selected a house, for example, and then hit Enter and changed things thag way - that's why I'm struggling, that and having poor precision and spacial awareness.

    I'm attaching a trial FCW file so you can see what's going on. Oh, the roads are using a fill from Floorplans* -> Streets -> cobbles and the same thing is happening as the roof symbol from above.

    *Set B I think
    Z1a.FCW 150.3K
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    The scale origin helps you decide in which direction the scale should happen. The scale origin basically acts as a fixed point, and the entity scales out from it. This is useful if you need some part of the entity to stay in the same location, for example you want the corner of a table to stay in the corner of the room, and expand into the room when scaled instead of into the wall. Generally, if you don't have a preference, placing it in the middle of the entity works fine.

    I am still a bit unsure about this color change. I don't really see any color differences when I export the map. Could you provide two screenshots with a side-by-side comparison of what you see on the screen compared to what you get in the pdf? Might be best to do a zoomed in view that only contains a couple of houses so it becomes more apparent, it is difficult to pick out anything from that overview screenshot above.
  • hi again Monsen,

    I'll try but I'm typing this on my Mac and my PC laptop is where I make my maps, (obviously). It won't be for a few hours (from posting) as Monday mornings are when I have some weekly commitments.

    Thanks for your help with this and your explanation of what scale is.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    I can't really see a color difference there?

    There isn't the same number of pixels available when looking at the house when zoomed out compared to zoomed in, so some details in the pattern may not look the same when zoomed out since all the detailed cannot be represented in the smaller amount of pixels, so some of the pattern a speckles may vary a bit due to this, but as far as I can see, the coloration is the same.
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