Hi Everyone :)

In this week's Live Mapping Session Ralf will be showing us how to add a parchment background to an existing map, and how to use the tools provided by the June issue of the 2007 Cartographer's Annual.

Come along and join in the fun :)

Hi kalnaren :)

This may be being caused by nodes in that very detailed line being too close together - close enough as to be nearly right on top of one another. Try using the Keyboard command SIMPLIFY on that wall. Since this is a dungeon map I would set the factor to about 0.2 or so - that being a fifth of a foot, or if the map is metric it will be equivalent to 20 cm. SIMPLIFY removes nodes that are closer together than that. Using SIMPLIFY will also speed up your map just a bit by reducing the overall node count.

I can see that you have a floor texture there as well. So before you start with anything hide all the sheets but the WALLS sheet.

You may need to do the same to the floor as you did to the wall, but you might get away with just leaving it as it is if there aren't any obvious mismatches.

Distort has been possible for at least 5 years. All I did was work out how to affect the whole map by adding the effect to just the one sheet, called OPTIONAL DISTORT. The distort is optional because it doesn't make reading the map all that easy. It's more of an artistic effect.

A rectangle of transparent white that covers the map on the OPTIONAL DISTORT sheet is multiplied (Blend mode sheet effect) to the result of the render so far. The Distort effect is then applied. The white of the rectangle itself is no longer visible thanks to the multiply effect (which removes all the white on it's own sheet) but those other colours it has been blended to are treated as part of the white rectangle and distorted by the following Distort effect.

Blend and Distort. Just two effects in that order.

The only thing you need to be careful about is making sure that all your backgrounds and anything that vanishes off the edge of the map extend as far beyond the edge of the map as the distort is set to act, or you get the edges of things pulled back into the map by the distort.

Thanks Wyvern - that's good to know.

Most of the detailed stuff you mention is controlled by sheet effects, so it can all be adjusted quite easily.

The colour of the water is causing quite a lot of comments both here and on the FB page. It appears that what one person finds wonderful and perfect is a psychedelic and completely artificial horror to others. So to solve that issue I will include a range of colour palettes with the annual so that you can pick a theme and modify it if it isn't quite to taste. PALLOAD will access them, but to 'fix' them to each map individually mappers will have to 'Attach to drawing' in the Drawing Presets dialog.

There is even a brand new optional distort sheet that distorts the underwater scene as if it really was underwater, but this will be more useful for people more interested in the illustrative side of things rather than the mapping side, since it plays hell with the clarity of the map :P

@Wyvern - take away the coral, leave the starfish and urchin, and add barnacles, mussels and limpets instead... do you think these colours would be a nice compromise for both tropical and temperate seas?

I've also split the rocks so that the underwater ones are darker, and the shore ones have wet sides.