In my opinion, it’s well worth the investment. Fractal Terrains is great, but limited without also having CC3. The community here has been so helpful to me. Lots of experienced mappers ready to give advice. But also: the staff is fantastic. I’ve never used a software product where so many people on staff were so ready, willing, and able to offer support on techniques, not just software bugs. As I understand it, most or all of the folks on staff were end users before moving the company.

Oh, fantastic! I will try that.

As soon as I posted it, I had an idea for how to do a semi-circular one using drawing lines to draw an irregular building that was 1/12th of a circle, and then copying 12 in a circular array. But yours will allow me to do an oval-shaped stadium. Thank you!

OMG, I discovered that if you set three steps across with the center one (moved to front) in varicolor, you can create a carpet runner down the center of your staircase. My grand ballrooms will have the grandest of grand staircases!

I promise not to spam this thread with more discoveries, and will wait until Ralf has a chance to do the Live, but I just couldn't hold back with this one.

I'm pretty new to Campaign Cartographer -- or, rather, I've owned the software for ages but I'm new to actually making maps.

I keep saying I bought the software five years ago, but upon reflection, I think it was around 2016. Eight years ago! I played around a bit with Fractal Terrains, but everything was so intimidating! I had this idea that I could just fiddle around and learn it through trial and error, much like I've learned various desktop publishing and illustration programs and over the years. Didn't work! I didn't grasp the approach of choosing what you want to do and then picking the objects you want to do it to. It was counterintuitive and opposite of the image editing software I've used before, where you select the object and then select what you want to do with it.

I thought I could sit down and read the PDFs and learn that way. Nope! Every time I tried to map something, it looked nothing like the pretty pictures I'd see here. (Pro Tip: Even when you understand that sheet effects exist, you still have to turn sheet effects on to see the pretty effects!)

Finally in mid-2023, I decided to watch one of the tutorials. I started with one of the then-more recent Lives, and that was way too advanced, but it gave me a hint at CC3+'s tremendous power and potential. Then I found Joe Sweeney's tutorials, and everything clicked. His "Parrot Island" tutorial gave me a basic foundation, and then I plowed through the rest of his, and then ProFantasy's more "Intro to CC3"-type tutorials and the brief videos about specific functions and techniques before making my way back to the Live videos.

I was fiddling around with map-making in the second half of 2023, but mostly it was to practice specific techniques rather than design a proper map. I created an account on these forums in December of 2023 and posted my first attempt at a proper map (my Castle on a Cloud) in January of 2024 -- mere months ago!

I still watch the Lives every time there's a new one (and I always, always learn something new). I was watching the old ones in the downtime, but I think I've watched almost every single Live already (a few more than once, especially when there's something I want to attempt that I remember Ralf or Remy demonstrating). I've also watched Jim Sweeney's, Dogtag's, Remy's, and Joachim de Ravenbel's tutorials as well. (I find it quite peaceful and Zen to watch a blank canvas get turned into a work of art in under an hour!)

Making progress on the symbols from Forest Trail. Cliff and river bank symbols have been swapped out for their snowy counterparts. Same with the ruins symbols, and the wooden bridge. Changed the trail on the western side of the wooden bridge to use the Forest Trail effects. Added breaks in the ice for the Spruce River, and as it continues down the Whispering Pines River.

For the ruins, there wasn't a snow-covered version that I saw. I thought about covering it entirely with a hill of snow, but discovered that I could make frosty patches using the "Terrain Default Cliffs Drifts" drawing tool, which I will also use (on separate sheets) to add a little snow to the rocky outcrops. This is how it looks on the ruins close-up:

Not sure I like the frost on the upper part of Whispering Pines River. Not sure if I should expand it, so it covers more of the iced-over part, or reduce/eliminate it.

Still need to swap out the trees and add snow to the outcrops.

Separate entrance for privacy makes sense.

I have done maps where I have discovered that I forgot to put in entrances to certain rooms. (My Sea Elves Outpost had three rooms with that problem!) Fortunately, the Color Key effect can solve that problem. If you look at the Outpost on the Atlas, you’d never know which rooms had forgotten doorways (until you turn off sheet effects, that is.)

If the ProFantasy Gods are listening: a future annual that I think could really complement the Marine Dungeons would be a "Jungle Adventures" dungeon. It would provide an opportunity to bring in palm trees and coconuts that could also enhance Marine Dungeons. Maybe some swamp building tools, including tree trunks with the ripples used in Marine Dungeons? Lots of colorful jungle foliage. Maybe some giant mosquitos or other bugs? Alligators or crocodiles? Think of the Indiana Jones-inspired adventures! Golden idols! Whips and fedora hats! Aztec-inspired ruins. Maybe a perfectly round boulder for traps. (The opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite action/adventure opening scene of all time.) Just planting an idea....

Okay, here's a larger town. I kept getting interruptions, but I'd say it took me about two hours. This time I imported the trees, but I must have been doing something wrong when I changed like draw tool, because I was just getting the outlines. I ended up manually adding the trees using the draw tool.

With this map and my previous ones, I changed the buildings in small batches, by blocks or neighborhoods. I did that in part because I kept missing roads, and then adding them as I was going neighborhood by neighborhood. When I tackle a big city, I will try it where I do everything else first, eliminate extraneous non-building import lines, and then select everything left to convert into buildings.

This is what Watabou gave me:

And this is what I turned it into:

Yes, I did use the draw tools for the trees - worked great! For the river, I used "Change like draw tool" to change it to the 75-foot river. I also used the "Change like draw tool" for the sea (the straight closed polygon water tool), the three main roads, the round towers, the square gatehouse towers, the docks, the parks, and the buildings. I used the draw tools (but not the "Change like draw tools") for the city walls, the bridges, the trees, the darker grass beneath the trees directly to the south-east of the castle, the fields, the hedges, the dirt roads, the town square, and the forest on the north side of the map. For the heraldic symbol, I did as you advised, moving the components to the appropriate sheets and changing to a solid color. (Interestingly, the deer didn't fill in completely, just the outline.)

There were some minor issues that had to do with how Watabou exported the data. The river was in multiple sections, broken by the bridges, and the stretch between the final bridge and the sea wasn't there at all, so I did that part using the draw tools. The major road coming in from the west continued up the river a bit, so I had to trim off that part. Same with the road coming in from the south: it continued down the river from where I put the wooden bridge. So you just have to pay attention to what's being changed to make sure the right things are being changed properly, knowing that you might have to trim a bit here and there, or use the drawing tools to add a bit.

But overall, worked great! I am going to do a larger town now, and will time it to see how long it takes.

You're right, the symbols are better. I scaled the settlements down to 0.25 scale because at full size, they felt cartoonishly overlarge, even though they're meant to be a symbolic representation and not to scale. For example, I put a full scale city off to the side (in the ocean) for comparison. It takes up 75 miles!

Here's the full map, though admittedly the settlement symbols are harder to see scaled down here. Do you think scaling them to half size instead of quarter size would be better?

I won't show zooms of every area until it's ready for final inspection, but I did want to show off the desert.

The symbols here have inspired me to expand on the maps I was planning to do. The oasis city will be where my ziggurat will go, and the town midway down the river will be for the Ancient Cities map I did (which I will expand to cover the whole town and not just the northern edge). I decided to add another city at the western edge of the desert so that I have an excuse to design something with the Desert Oasis style from the 2023 annual.