Not really sure why the botanical garden didn't post properly. Trying again.

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 am also ready to submit Eilân Danaäd, my sea elf village and harbor.

Primary Style: Marine Dungeons

Toggles: "Lighthouse Glow" layer turns on/off a glow indicating where light from the lighthouse emits.

It's located just north of an island off the coast of Enia, the elven kingdom on the north coast of the Gold Coast region previously submitted in this thread, in the area marked with the yellow box.

Made some tweaks. Got feedback that if the pyramid may be an adventure hook that someone may want to map, maybe it shouldn't get cropped off the screen. Moved a few things around on the outcrop so that it could fit on screen. Also added the scale bar. Figured out that to edit the text from "miles" to "feet," I had to explode it first, then ungroup it to edit the text. But now I have this nagging memory that we aren't supposed to include scale bars in the Atlas?

Any other feedback or thoughts?

I made a few tweaks per Jim's suggestion. I added some misty cloud coverage above the castle, and also added some cloud wisps above the mountains and on the right side. I also added a few more smaller birds meant to look like they were flying lower.

I also discovered that Mike Schley's Overland style already has cloud symbols, but I wasn't sure how they'd work semi-transparent. I added them as a base to the castle but most of the clouds are still from Forest Trails.

Also made a few other tweaks, like adding hills to separate the grasslands from the default terrain, and a few more trees below the castle peeking through the clouds.

I looked through my symbols to see if there were any other flying creatures, but couldn't find anything. Mike Schley's lovely dragons were sleeping, not flying. I even checked WikiMedia Commons to see if there was a flying pegasus or dragon in public domain that would be suitable, but didn't find anything. If anyone has any other recommendations for other flying symbols, please let me know.

I was looking for a peaceful, zen mapping project and was inspired by the expansion of Viking symbols released today. It also gave me an excuse to using some of the glacier and icy Overland symbols that I've never used.

I didn't want to lift from Norse mythology and decided to go with Icelandic names, which I stole freely from lists on Wikipedia.

I will also post this in my galleries if anyone wants to zoom in closer.

I have a habit of showing my work-in-progress and then forgetting to post the final. So here it is with two different roof styles. (For comparison, you can see the version done in the Marine Dungeons style in my gallery.)

Oh, and here's the FCW if anyone is interested in using it.

I'm ready to submit my desert village of Djayet for the competition.

Primary Style: Desert Oasis

Toggles: none

The village is located in the yellow boxed area of this area map. (The area map is the Eknapata Desert, on the eastern side of the Gold Coast -- both were previously submitted in this thread.)

Okay, I made some screen captures and JPG saves to illustrate the process.

The first thing to know is that there are 18 levels to the temple, with a wider landing (15 feet instead of 5) on the 6th and 12th levels. And the second thing to know is that every level actually has three sheets:

(1) the main sheet for the level, with the stone fill;

(2) a sheet below it of a different color, because the beveling effect on the main sheet can cause weird pockmarks if it gets confused with the colors below the sheet with the beveling effect; and

(3) a sheet above the main one for the level for the sandy debris.

I called the sheet below the main one for each level of the temple "Inlay," because at one point I thought I might have brass or gold inlays on each level, but I ended up only doing that at the top.

Here's what Level 6 looks like with all three of its sheets on but all of the other sheets hidden (except for the 5th level as well as the stairs, just to provide perspective):

You can see erosion around the sides as well as some cracks (like from the stairs on the south side, as well as a little above the western stairs).

On the "inlay" level below, I put a polygon of solid color. I made it brown, because if it was the same gray as the stonework above, the beveling on the sheet above it would get confused and create weird pockmarks. But I also added a gray inside GLOW effect so that it look gray when it showed through the erosion:

Okay, here's how I did the erosion. First, I added the COLOR KEY sheet effect to that sheet, using the default magenta #6. (Also, it's important to put that sheet effect first on the list, before the Glows and Bevel and Wall Shadow).

This effect tells CC3+ that when it sees anything of that magenta color on that sheet, cut through whatever's on that sheet and instead show the sheet below it (in this case, the brown-with-gray-glow on the Temple Level 6 Inlay sheet).

I then used the fractal polygon tool to create small bits with that same magenta color, as well as the fractal line drawing tool to create the cracks. Here it is with the sheet effects turned off so you can see the magenta color, along with a zoomed-in version to see it a little better:

(There's a fractal crack in the stone above the fractal blobs. You can barely see it but it works when the sheet effects are turned on.)

When the sheet effects are turned on, anything on that sheet that's covered by by the magenta polygon will be cut away, showing instead whatever is on the sheet behind the stone. It doesn't matter if the color key cutout extends onto the white part, because there's nothing to cut away there and the sheet below would have been shown anyway.

Here's what the whole thing looks like with sheet effects turned off.

Crazy how powerful CC3+ is to be able render all of those effects to turn this mess into an identifiable ziggurat.

If anyone is interested, here is the FCW file. (It's slow loading when the sheet effects are turned on because of all of the nodes added by the fractal bits.)

Another revelation that will be obvious to more experienced cartographers here: the TEXTURIZE effect!

I have been wanting to use heraldic symbols stitched onto fabric to make carpets, table runners, banners...and I kept looking in vain for fabric fills. The Modern set includes different colors of carpeting, but it was a little too photorealistic to work with things like Dungeons of Schley.

Through trial and lots of error, I stumbled across the Texture effect and was able to apply it to both a color polygon and the heraldic symbol on top of it to create the effect of fabric with the symbol stitched on. I experimented with a lot of textures, but the one that seemed most "fabric-like" to me was the DD3 Hay_Dry fill. (If anyone knows of a fill that looks more like linen or other woven fabric, please let me know. Maybe there's a good one in an Annual that I have not yet purchased.) And of course, different fills can create the effect of looking like your sigil was painted on wood, or the cobblestone floor (though with more trial and error, I learned that some fills don't really translate well when used with the Texturize effect).

Anyway, here are some heraldic banners or carpets or table runners or whatever: