Thank you :)

I've done a bit more - a few ideas.

Hi Everyone :)

I was discussing various ideas with another member of the team when the subject of banners came up - how we don't seem to have very many.

I decided to make some for us.

As you know, there are many different types of banner and many different styles. I won't smother you here with lots of examples that are not my own work, but I've made a start with the biggest ones - the title banners. Shown here as a screen shot of the work in Affinity Designer (like PS Illustrator but not as expensive). I would be interested to know what you think.

The file here is representative of the standard 1000 x 800 map unit template, so this is the size the banners will appear to be in a standard overland map.

This is how the sheets lie (please ignore the Effects Presets, which refer to the base template I used to build this on and not the style I'm making):

The WATER sheet lies above the land, not underneath it. The BACKGROUND is a parchment texture, the TERRAIN is a sheet with lots of green and brown patches blurred and blended into the parchment.

These are the 3 sheet effects on the WATER sheet. Please bear in mind that all these effects are set to map units, and that you might have to adjust them to suit your own map. This is more about the balance between the second glow and the directional shadow - they need to balance for the effect to work.

Also bear in mind that this will only work over relatively narrow bands because it is only an illusion - a fake bevel.

First I have a thin dark line to properly define the coast

Then I have a pale glow set to Outside. I'm using a pale yellow here so that it hopefully matches any of the set terrain colours that might come to the coast.

And finally a dark directional shadow set in opposition to the default sun direction (which is 315 degrees)

If it doesn't work immediately on your map remember that this is not a true bevel. You may have to fiddle around with the numbers quite a bit to get it to look right.

I decided to work a bit on the coastline effects. I wanted to do a bevel, but at the same time leave myself (and eventually others) free to make coastlines as jagged as I want without the risk of those corner artefacts you sometimes get if you get a bit too ambitious with the Bevel. So instead of using the Bevel effect I put the water on top of the land like it would be in a city map, and added a pale glow and a dark directional shadow.

What do you think?

You can import any set of transparent background png files to use as a set of symbols using the Symbol Manager menu. The images should first be placed in a personal sub-folder of the Symbols folder here - C:\ProgramData\Profantasy\CC3Plus\Symbols.

You can import any set of seamless png texture files to be used as fills using Import bitmap fill styles in the Tools menu. The textures should first be placed in a personal sub-folder of the Bitmaps folder here - C:\ProgramData\Profantasy\CC3Plus\Bitmaps.

All these files must be in png format. CC3 is blind to any other kind of graphic file that may happen to be in the same folder, which can be useful at times if you happen to keep source graphics (GIMP, PS or Affinity files) in the same folder just temporarily while you are working on new symbols and fills.