Thanks Fersus :)

I think I can do that without too much trouble.

The basic idea is a forest trail with a secondary focus on ruins.

Ralf covered this in a relatively recent live mapping session here.

Welcome to the forum bakrin :)

Hi Everyone :)

I've just started working on a new style called Forest Trail, which is due out in November as an issue in the Cartographer's Annual. I thought you might like to see the strange little world I work with when I'm just starting to work out the colour scheme and the textures. A mixture of serious business with the texture swatches, and play time doodles with borrowed symbols from other styles I've made.

It's loosely related to Creepy Crypts, but with a brighter more cheerful colour scheme, and should include ruin bits, and of course lots of tree parts.

Oh I see!

It is rather complicated isn't it.

I think that if I were trying to do what you are trying to do I might massively simplify everything by dropping all those really complicated sheet effects, getting rid of all the Color Keys and so on, and just using a tracing of the visible trees in solid black (use TRACED to trace the symbols) on a separate sheet, and then adding just two sheet effects to that single shadow sheet - a blur, and a Blend Mode set to 15% opacity and Multiply.

I'd have to move everything on that sheet collectively away from the sun to actually 'cast' the shadows in a direction, but unless I wanted to change the global sun settings I wouldn't need to worry about it once it was done.

I'm sorry it took me so long to grasp the problem. I seem to be having a 'slow thinking' phase right now.

You can make drop shadows that behave according to the global sun by checking the 'Draw as drop shadow' box in a Wall Shadow, Directional sheet effect.