Thanks for sharing the solution, Calibre :)

I don't mind in the least. It clarifies what you want me to explain. I've quoted you so you can see what bits of my explanation related to which query you have. However, I haven't also quoted myself again as that would create a phenomenally long post, but I hope you can tie up the explanations.

You can do that by adding more light sources on candles and lamps, or just by giving the one light source in the fire a much wider range (say double it). Use Numeric Edit to adjust it's range.

If you adjust the shadow colour in the Finalize to a colour that is too pale you effectively have no shadows at all, and therefore no lighting effect. For there to be light, there must also be shadows to show that it is indeed light.

I think there may have been a misunderstanding. The Setup effect is used to cast shadows, so it's counterproductive to add it to the same sheet the light source is on. That's why I moved the light to it's own sheet without any sheet effects. Using a LIGHTS sheet will also help you keep things clearly organised if you add more lights and keep all your lights on a single sheet of their own.

The other counterproductive thing that was going on at the time was that the light source was placed within a symbol (the fireplace) that had a Setup sheet effect on it. This restricts the light from affecting the scene as much.

You had already found the solution to fitting the light to the opening of the hearth by setting the angle of the light to fit it. That was enough. No shadow on the fireplace was required so I deactivated it.

The magenta shapes are the air in the cave where the walls are cut away and no longer exist. The walls are what remains after the Color key. That's why I had to add a Color Key to the SHADOW STOPPER sheet before the Setup effect - to make the cave extent on that sheet identical to the actual cave.

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If you are wondering how I quoted this way, when you paste the paragraph you want to quote into your new comment, highlight the paragraph and click the bakcwards 'P' syntax mark in the buff border on the left

Ok. If you want help another time with this map just ask.

Yes.

There is a half way measure you can use, but it only lasts the session and may have unexpected results. You can switch off the redrawing of the symbols by typing DELAYDRAWSYM, and changing the value in the command bar to 0 (zero) from 1.

As you can see, it works to chop the top off this Mike Schley mountain, but look at the foot of the mountain - the semitransparent pixels in the symbol have been turned fully transparent.

Before:

After:

It all depends on whether you have semi-transparent pixels in any of the symbols in your map.

Next week, Ralf will be demonstrating the April 2025 Annual issue and its Bubble Gum Fantasy style.

Join us live on Youtube to be part of the chat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFdQCNPrpTI

Or watch the show later, either on Youtube or here on the forum*

*This thread isn't monitored during the session.

Yes, sorry Wyvern. I was trying to be clear and in my haste I made it rather unclear.

That's unusual. Generally speaking, if you have a very large city vector symbols like House entities and some of the more complex vector symbols the node count gets rather large and causes things to slow down.

Either way, an extremely large city will be slow, but you can put your districts on different layers and hide the ones you've finished already while you are working on the next one.

Incidentally, there is currently an unbelivable Humble Bundle deal for the whole caboodle at the price of a single Cartographer's Annual.

There are a lot of settings or variations of the basic commands that you can modify by right clicking the buttons. Check them out and see :)

Have you tried a fresh download? Maybe this is a recent download anyway. If so, please contact Tech Support for assistance, Steven.