Thank you both so much! Yes, my export was set at 4 million and changing it to 40 million resolved it. Appreciate the help so much. Now to bring in the plaza furnishings from the daylight version, and then start working on floorplans.
Okay, I think this is set before starting on the interiors. For the daytime version, I removed the stained glass window reflections and the fog. For the nighttime version, I copied in the walkways, fountain, benches, statues, ivy (on the northern side of the northern wall), and flower box that I had added to the daytime version of the church plaza.
Slight tweak. I started to work on the interiors, but as I was working on the church, I decided that I really needed to add a few belltowers because it was the only place I could work out getting stairs up to the balcony at the rear (entrance side) of the church. Added some labels while I was at it, but only on the daytime map. Maybe I will be able to get some interiors posted before the end of the weekend.
Working on the inside of the church first before tackling the mansion, though I've been taking notes on the types of rooms one might expect in a medieval mansion. (Suggestions welcome.) I've just done the first floor so far.
Here's the outside.
The end portions of the right and left wings are actually covered porches, so the floorplan for Floor 1 will show the porches, and Floor 2 will show the roofs covering the porches.
Here's the inside. I used the parchment approach that Sue used with the Beaumaris Castle annual to cause the outside to fade out a bit. The four stairwells all go up and down.
Downstairs, the basement is mostly below ground, but a small portion is above ground, just enough for some high windows to let in daylight. The priests' offices are down there along other rooms. There might be some common rooms for church events (what's the medieval equivalent of Bingo?), but most of that sort of thing probably occurs at the Church Hall on the west side of the plaza. This level will include a room used to prepare bodies for funeral services. Another basement below that will contain catacomb crypts for VIP decedents buried beneath the church rather than in the graveyard beside it. The crypts will have a secret access to the sewers, which also connects to the sewers from the haunted mansion, allowing for secret travel between the church and the mansion (a plot point I'll share when all of the mapping is done.) The second floor will contain balconies. One will in the back between the belltowers, with more pews. The two sets of stairs on the north side of the church will lead to balconies on the east and west sides used primarily by the choir, although they can also accommodate more private seating for visiting nobles.
Here's a blow up of the altar area. The north side is raised a few steps up.
I've mapped the balcony areas on the second floor of the church, but I can't decide which effect I prefer to obscure the outdoor and lower floor areas. I did two "Parchment" sheets, one that covered just the outdoors and another that also covered the first floor of the church. That way both would be shadowed, but the outdoors even more so.
Here it is with the regular parchment:
Here it is adding a sepia effect to the parchment (not sure it helps):
Here it is putting the Solid 30 darker fill on each of the parchment layers instead of the parchment. My only fear with this approach is that it kind of makes it look like it's nighttime, though the reflections from the stained glass show that sunlight is coming in from outside. But it does make the balcony areas "pop" a little more.
Here it is using the Solid White 30 fill for both parchment layers.
And here's the third and fourth levels of the church. The main part of the church is covered by a dome, but it's all open air from the balconies up. The only portions with stairs going higher than the second floor balconies are the two towers on the southern side.
Level three of the towers has a light source shining through the windows, like mini-lighthouses. I like the look of the brazier on the right, but it didn't quite make sense unless it was on the top floor (where I put bells). Even if it were something like the DND Continual Flame spell, where the magical fire emits light but not heat or smoke, it still doesn't make sense if it engulfs the inner wall of a stairwell that is continuing up. So I did an alternate version on the left side using luminescent crystals.
And then there are great bells on the fourth floor of the towers, which come from Dundjinni Archives.
I'll be starting on the actual Haunted Mansion part of this Haunted Mansion Map today. But first, here's the rest (almost) of what's going on in the church and graveyard.
Here's the first level of the church's basement.
It may seem odd that a basement has so many windows. This basement is only about 75% below ground. The top 25% is above ground, and that's where windows to let light in are located -- close to the ceiling from the inside, but at foot level from the outside. There's a set of double doors connecting to a interior ramp that leads out to the graveyard. The mortician has two rooms here, one for preparing the deceased for funerals, and another that connects to a lower storage room in Basement 2. This level also has a few offices for the priests and clergy staff, a few storage rooms, and lavatories. Other than the doors from the graveyard, it is primarily accessed from the four stone spiral staircases (the two southern ones going all the way up to the bell towers, and the two northern ones going to balconies for the choir in the main chapel.
Continuing down into Basement 2, we find the mortician's storage rooms (including a stack of unused coffins) and the church's crypts for VIP decedents. I kept the shafts for the wells here so that I wouldn't accidentally create passageways through them. The two shafts that aren't connected to the crypts come from the lavatories in Basement 1 as well as the drain in the mortician's room. They connect to the not-yet-mapped sewers one more level below. (Sinister Sewers will come in handy again!)
But wait! Not all is as it seems here. There are two secret passageways off of the mortician's storage rooms. (I love that the cut-away polygons used to carve out tunnels can be moved to the "Secret" layer so that they can be hidden or revealed so easily.) The passageway heading west connects to a secret spiral stairway entrance to the Rectory. Who knows how many generations ago it was put in -- the church's current head priest, who lives in the rectory, doesn't even know it's there! The second passageway heading north connects below the Brambleheath Tombs, created by the Brambleheath family who also built the now-haunted mansion.
But wait again! One more secret here. If you remove the lids to the sarcophagi and coffins, you'll notice that a few have moldering remains but most are actually empty. They all have proper plaques naming the supposed occupants. It's unclear if the bodies were remove after burial, or if they never made it into their coffins. One on the northern side is filled with rocks, suggesting for that one, at least, it was interred without a body.
The sewers will come later, after I've done the Mansion. For now, let's head over to the Brambleheath Tomb. When you enter the tomb, a Glyph of Warding protects it from graverobbers. For a family tomb, it's surprisingly small: one large sarcophagus on the floor, two smaller ones on ledges to either side of it, and two urns with the cremains of other ancestors.
Visitors who make it past the Glyph of Warding can trace their finger along a sigil on the sarcophagus lid that activates a temporary levitation spell, raising the lid to reveal a staircase heading down. (I love this symbol set!)
The lower level of the tomb reveals a "small"" family crypt.
But wait, more secrets! A passageway heading south on the eastern side (this is the passage that connects to the mortician's storage room beneath the church, and another passageway that heads down stairs and then turns to head beneath the graveyard towards the mansion. If we open the coffins and sarcophagi here, we see that most do have bodies. It's hard to tell because they're in shadows, but the northeastern-most one was buried with a sword, and the one next to it was buried with a staff. Plot hooks!
That's it for now. Haunted Mansion and sewers still to come...
I am experiencing a situation where wall-cutting symbols (doors, windows, and even the scissor tools) are not working on the exterior walls of my mansion, but are working on the interior walls.
These walls are on separate sheets (Walls 3 Inner and Walls 3 Outer). All of the walls are on the Walls layer. I thought maybe it was from the manner I created the exterior walls. I used the CD3 Floorplan tool to create the basic outline of the main building, separate from the tower since that was a separate symbol. I created a sketch tool to draw in the tower, and then used the Wall tool to create the actual wall, tracing the outline of both the structure and the tower, so that my exterior wall was one single entity. That's the same approach I used to create the outer walls of the church, which has two towers, and I didn't have any problems will wall-cutting symbols with that one.
I thought I could just work around it by using the Break tool to manually create the breaks where I need them to be, but that's not working, either. I have somehow created unbreakable walls! (I also checked to make sure that I didn't freeze any of the layers, but that doesn't appear to be the issue.)
Posting the FCW below the image. (Rooms will be changing -- I noticed I didn't account for where the chimneys are -- some may only connect to fireplaces on the upper floors, but there would be at least one on this floor.)
Following on from what Remy said above, you need to explode that outside wall once and everything should then work as expected.
However, I also discovered that the metal door isn't cutting. The wooden reinforced door works as expected. I dont' know if you edited the reinforced door symbol in this map, but if you didn't we might need to investigate the way it's set up.
Exploding it worked, and I was able to use the cutting symbols (both doors and windows) successfully. I suspect I used some symbols that didn't have the cutting feature. I used the non-cutting ones when I placed doors in the crypts.
Reversed my plan for the Mansion -- originally, the main entrance was going to be on the southern side, but things seemed to fit better with the main entrance on the other side. For the servant's areas are mostly a level below, with a small area here where they can serve the dining room. I couldn't find wooden stairs suitable for this style that went both up and down, or that could be stacked (Mike Schley's style didn't fit and the other wooden ones couldn't be stacked because they had landings drawn in), so I went with stone stairs for the servants. Used some of Shessar's lovely fireplaces, and some ghosts waltzing in the ballroom from Dundjinni Archives. (They might be a little big -- the ballroom is 30 feet wide.) Shadows didn't make sense for the ghosts, but I wasn't sure if it conveyed that they were floating, so I added some glows from DD3. Still need to add more furnishings, and then on to the upper and lower floors.
Thank you! Haven't decided whether I will keep them mixed like that, or move the blue-ish ones elsewhere and just have the green ones dancing. I'm leaning towards just having the green ones dancing, since they actually look like they're dancing. I can find another place for the other ones.
Probably won't have a chance to finish this by the end of Halloween, as I had planned, but that's okay. Here's the second floor. It has a few guest bedrooms and some common space for the family: an office, a library, and a solarium or sun room. The ballroom extends into this level, as it has high ceilings, but it is from this level that the family and VIP guests can make grand entrances into the ballroom from the stairway.
Not really sure why my roads outside now have a visible white line down the center. I tried changing the color to brown, but that didn't work.
Just noticed that in addition to failing to furnish the office, I also neglected to put in a doorway!
Still to come: floor 3 (bedrooms), the top floor of the tower, Basement 1 (kitchens, wine cellar, staff quarters, etc.), a secret Basement 2, and the sewers that connect everything together.
Made some tweaks to the second floor. I forgot that I planned to have a smaller family dining area on this floor. Ended up converting the office to a small dining room, as it has a nice fireplace and seemed cozier than the solarium. The head of household can do their books and office work in the library. Rearranged the appurtenant WC so that it's accessed from the hallway rather than the dining room. Still haven't figured out the white line with the paths (under the steps leading to the servants' area on the first floor).
Thank you! Yeah, I see the shadows — the spiral staircase wall shouldn’t have a shadow extending outside of the house, for example. I will have to look at the sheet order once I get everything in place.
I would be honored for you to use it. Eventually it will make its way into the Atlas when I find a home for it, but that could be a while. It's still a work in progress, but you're free to use these FCW files as well as the rest that I will post when they're ready.
Here's level 4 of the mansion. There were only supposed to be three floors of the main mansion plus the tower, but when I was halfway through the third floor, I noticed that the main mansion has a central section that rises above the others. I decided to make that more of a rough attic storage space with a few rough servants' rooms. The tower doesn't connect here, but you can see it has been turned into a wizard's workshop. It extends up one more flight.
And I just noticed that I never posted the third floor.
Comments
Thank you both so much! Yes, my export was set at 4 million and changing it to 40 million resolved it. Appreciate the help so much. Now to bring in the plaza furnishings from the daylight version, and then start working on floorplans.
Okay, I think this is set before starting on the interiors. For the daytime version, I removed the stained glass window reflections and the fog. For the nighttime version, I copied in the walkways, fountain, benches, statues, ivy (on the northern side of the northern wall), and flower box that I had added to the daytime version of the church plaza.
Daytime
Nighttime
Slight tweak. I started to work on the interiors, but as I was working on the church, I decided that I really needed to add a few belltowers because it was the only place I could work out getting stairs up to the balcony at the rear (entrance side) of the church. Added some labels while I was at it, but only on the daytime map. Maybe I will be able to get some interiors posted before the end of the weekend.
Hey @Royal Scribe are these clouds by Alicia Faden? Amazing Effect <3
No, they’re actually Fog symbols from Creepy Crypts! I had to make them 4 times larger because they’re sized for a dungeon, not a city.
Working on the inside of the church first before tackling the mansion, though I've been taking notes on the types of rooms one might expect in a medieval mansion. (Suggestions welcome.) I've just done the first floor so far.
Here's the outside.
The end portions of the right and left wings are actually covered porches, so the floorplan for Floor 1 will show the porches, and Floor 2 will show the roofs covering the porches.
Here's the inside. I used the parchment approach that Sue used with the Beaumaris Castle annual to cause the outside to fade out a bit. The four stairwells all go up and down.
Downstairs, the basement is mostly below ground, but a small portion is above ground, just enough for some high windows to let in daylight. The priests' offices are down there along other rooms. There might be some common rooms for church events (what's the medieval equivalent of Bingo?), but most of that sort of thing probably occurs at the Church Hall on the west side of the plaza. This level will include a room used to prepare bodies for funeral services. Another basement below that will contain catacomb crypts for VIP decedents buried beneath the church rather than in the graveyard beside it. The crypts will have a secret access to the sewers, which also connects to the sewers from the haunted mansion, allowing for secret travel between the church and the mansion (a plot point I'll share when all of the mapping is done.) The second floor will contain balconies. One will in the back between the belltowers, with more pews. The two sets of stairs on the north side of the church will lead to balconies on the east and west sides used primarily by the choir, although they can also accommodate more private seating for visiting nobles.
Here's a blow up of the altar area. The north side is raised a few steps up.
I've mapped the balcony areas on the second floor of the church, but I can't decide which effect I prefer to obscure the outdoor and lower floor areas. I did two "Parchment" sheets, one that covered just the outdoors and another that also covered the first floor of the church. That way both would be shadowed, but the outdoors even more so.
Here it is with the regular parchment:
Here it is adding a sepia effect to the parchment (not sure it helps):
Here it is putting the Solid 30 darker fill on each of the parchment layers instead of the parchment. My only fear with this approach is that it kind of makes it look like it's nighttime, though the reflections from the stained glass show that sunlight is coming in from outside. But it does make the balcony areas "pop" a little more.
Here it is using the Solid White 30 fill for both parchment layers.
Preferences?
I think the last one is probably best, but have you thought of using the Solid White 10 Bitmap instead of the Solid White 30 Bitmap on those sheets?
Here it is with Solid White 10.
It's down to personal preference in the end, but that looks nicer to me.
Don't worry too much about what other people (including me) think and say if you feel it needs to be more obvious/darker than that.
And here's the third and fourth levels of the church. The main part of the church is covered by a dome, but it's all open air from the balconies up. The only portions with stairs going higher than the second floor balconies are the two towers on the southern side.
Level three of the towers has a light source shining through the windows, like mini-lighthouses. I like the look of the brazier on the right, but it didn't quite make sense unless it was on the top floor (where I put bells). Even if it were something like the DND Continual Flame spell, where the magical fire emits light but not heat or smoke, it still doesn't make sense if it engulfs the inner wall of a stairwell that is continuing up. So I did an alternate version on the left side using luminescent crystals.
And then there are great bells on the fourth floor of the towers, which come from Dundjinni Archives.
I'll be starting on the actual Haunted Mansion part of this Haunted Mansion Map today. But first, here's the rest (almost) of what's going on in the church and graveyard.
Here's the first level of the church's basement.
It may seem odd that a basement has so many windows. This basement is only about 75% below ground. The top 25% is above ground, and that's where windows to let light in are located -- close to the ceiling from the inside, but at foot level from the outside. There's a set of double doors connecting to a interior ramp that leads out to the graveyard. The mortician has two rooms here, one for preparing the deceased for funerals, and another that connects to a lower storage room in Basement 2. This level also has a few offices for the priests and clergy staff, a few storage rooms, and lavatories. Other than the doors from the graveyard, it is primarily accessed from the four stone spiral staircases (the two southern ones going all the way up to the bell towers, and the two northern ones going to balconies for the choir in the main chapel.
Continuing down into Basement 2, we find the mortician's storage rooms (including a stack of unused coffins) and the church's crypts for VIP decedents. I kept the shafts for the wells here so that I wouldn't accidentally create passageways through them. The two shafts that aren't connected to the crypts come from the lavatories in Basement 1 as well as the drain in the mortician's room. They connect to the not-yet-mapped sewers one more level below. (Sinister Sewers will come in handy again!)
But wait! Not all is as it seems here. There are two secret passageways off of the mortician's storage rooms. (I love that the cut-away polygons used to carve out tunnels can be moved to the "Secret" layer so that they can be hidden or revealed so easily.) The passageway heading west connects to a secret spiral stairway entrance to the Rectory. Who knows how many generations ago it was put in -- the church's current head priest, who lives in the rectory, doesn't even know it's there! The second passageway heading north connects below the Brambleheath Tombs, created by the Brambleheath family who also built the now-haunted mansion.
But wait again! One more secret here. If you remove the lids to the sarcophagi and coffins, you'll notice that a few have moldering remains but most are actually empty. They all have proper plaques naming the supposed occupants. It's unclear if the bodies were remove after burial, or if they never made it into their coffins. One on the northern side is filled with rocks, suggesting for that one, at least, it was interred without a body.
The sewers will come later, after I've done the Mansion. For now, let's head over to the Brambleheath Tomb. When you enter the tomb, a Glyph of Warding protects it from graverobbers. For a family tomb, it's surprisingly small: one large sarcophagus on the floor, two smaller ones on ledges to either side of it, and two urns with the cremains of other ancestors.
Visitors who make it past the Glyph of Warding can trace their finger along a sigil on the sarcophagus lid that activates a temporary levitation spell, raising the lid to reveal a staircase heading down. (I love this symbol set!)
The lower level of the tomb reveals a "small"" family crypt.
But wait, more secrets! A passageway heading south on the eastern side (this is the passage that connects to the mortician's storage room beneath the church, and another passageway that heads down stairs and then turns to head beneath the graveyard towards the mansion. If we open the coffins and sarcophagi here, we see that most do have bodies. It's hard to tell because they're in shadows, but the northeastern-most one was buried with a sword, and the one next to it was buried with a staff. Plot hooks!
That's it for now. Haunted Mansion and sewers still to come...
I am experiencing a situation where wall-cutting symbols (doors, windows, and even the scissor tools) are not working on the exterior walls of my mansion, but are working on the interior walls.
These walls are on separate sheets (Walls 3 Inner and Walls 3 Outer). All of the walls are on the Walls layer. I thought maybe it was from the manner I created the exterior walls. I used the CD3 Floorplan tool to create the basic outline of the main building, separate from the tower since that was a separate symbol. I created a sketch tool to draw in the tower, and then used the Wall tool to create the actual wall, tracing the outline of both the structure and the tower, so that my exterior wall was one single entity. That's the same approach I used to create the outer walls of the church, which has two towers, and I didn't have any problems will wall-cutting symbols with that one.
I thought I could just work around it by using the Break tool to manually create the breaks where I need them to be, but that's not working, either. I have somehow created unbreakable walls! (I also checked to make sure that I didn't freeze any of the layers, but that doesn't appear to be the issue.)
Posting the FCW below the image. (Rooms will be changing -- I noticed I didn't account for where the chimneys are -- some may only connect to fireplaces on the upper floors, but there would be at least one on this floor.)
It happens because those walls are a shaded polygon. Shaded polygons unfortunately cannot be edited, and thus doesn't react to the cut tools either.
Following on from what Remy said above, you need to explode that outside wall once and everything should then work as expected.
However, I also discovered that the metal door isn't cutting. The wooden reinforced door works as expected. I dont' know if you edited the reinforced door symbol in this map, but if you didn't we might need to investigate the way it's set up.
Ahhh, thank you! With the metal door, it's possible that I might have selected the non-cutting version? I will experiment.
Exploding it worked, and I was able to use the cutting symbols (both doors and windows) successfully. I suspect I used some symbols that didn't have the cutting feature. I used the non-cutting ones when I placed doors in the crypts.
Reversed my plan for the Mansion -- originally, the main entrance was going to be on the southern side, but things seemed to fit better with the main entrance on the other side. For the servant's areas are mostly a level below, with a small area here where they can serve the dining room. I couldn't find wooden stairs suitable for this style that went both up and down, or that could be stacked (Mike Schley's style didn't fit and the other wooden ones couldn't be stacked because they had landings drawn in), so I went with stone stairs for the servants. Used some of Shessar's lovely fireplaces, and some ghosts waltzing in the ballroom from Dundjinni Archives. (They might be a little big -- the ballroom is 30 feet wide.) Shadows didn't make sense for the ghosts, but I wasn't sure if it conveyed that they were floating, so I added some glows from DD3. Still need to add more furnishings, and then on to the upper and lower floors.
The spirits is amazing <3
Thank you! Haven't decided whether I will keep them mixed like that, or move the blue-ish ones elsewhere and just have the green ones dancing. I'm leaning towards just having the green ones dancing, since they actually look like they're dancing. I can find another place for the other ones.
Probably won't have a chance to finish this by the end of Halloween, as I had planned, but that's okay. Here's the second floor. It has a few guest bedrooms and some common space for the family: an office, a library, and a solarium or sun room. The ballroom extends into this level, as it has high ceilings, but it is from this level that the family and VIP guests can make grand entrances into the ballroom from the stairway.
Not really sure why my roads outside now have a visible white line down the center. I tried changing the color to brown, but that didn't work.
Just noticed that in addition to failing to furnish the office, I also neglected to put in a doorway!
Still to come: floor 3 (bedrooms), the top floor of the tower, Basement 1 (kitchens, wine cellar, staff quarters, etc.), a secret Basement 2, and the sewers that connect everything together.
Made some tweaks to the second floor. I forgot that I planned to have a smaller family dining area on this floor. Ended up converting the office to a small dining room, as it has a nice fireplace and seemed cozier than the solarium. The head of household can do their books and office work in the library. Rearranged the appurtenant WC so that it's accessed from the hallway rather than the dining room. Still haven't figured out the white line with the paths (under the steps leading to the servants' area on the first floor).
RS, this is just some awesome work on all your maps. Vivot!
Some shadow issues, I see. But I love how you are blending fills together. Just makes everything look better, don't you think?
Cal
Thank you! Yeah, I see the shadows — the spiral staircase wall shouldn’t have a shadow extending outside of the house, for example. I will have to look at the sheet order once I get everything in place.
Hey, RS
Mind if I borrow this map for my own uses? Understandable if you don't wish to release it.
thanks
Cal
Hi Cal,
I would be honored for you to use it. Eventually it will make its way into the Atlas when I find a home for it, but that could be a while. It's still a work in progress, but you're free to use these FCW files as well as the rest that I will post when they're ready.
Thank you, sir!
This will work excellently for my adventure :)
A Herculean task!
Wait ‘til I get to the sewers!
Here's level 4 of the mansion. There were only supposed to be three floors of the main mansion plus the tower, but when I was halfway through the third floor, I noticed that the main mansion has a central section that rises above the others. I decided to make that more of a rough attic storage space with a few rough servants' rooms. The tower doesn't connect here, but you can see it has been turned into a wizard's workshop. It extends up one more flight.
And I just noticed that I never posted the third floor.
Third Floor
Fourth Floor