Hi Ryan,

Welcome! I see that your hometown was chosen as the inspiration for Mayberry because it was where Andy Griffith grew up. Very cool.

I also started with Fractal Terrains. It took me a while to get my head around how FT and CC3 do and do not interact with one another. I finally started watching some of the older tutorials, and it was watching Joe Sweeney's that Ricko recommends above where things really start to click for me. Before that, I was trying to teach myself using the PDFs and I wasn't really absorbing it.

Joe Sweeney has some videos that show how to use Fractal Terrains, and here are some more from ProFantasy from a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuhB_LXr3Sg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khNR-BBPSRo

There are some others that show how to take what you've built in Fractal Terrains and then elaborate on them in CC3. They're a bit advanced, though, but if you want to take a peek, here is one from early 2024:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd78fcQc1YA

(The beginning covers taking part of a continent from FT to CC3.)

But don't get intimidated if it seems like a lot. I started with Joe Sweeney's, then watched some of Remy Monsen's that were about specific techniques and tools, and then graduated to the ProFantasy's "Live" sessions. The Lives are great, and I always learn something new from every one, but you never know (unless it's the main focus on the session) what techniques you'll learn from them. I'd recommend getting a good foundation from the other videos first.

And also, this forum is very welcoming, and we are all happy to answer any questions you have.

Funny, that’s what I was doing all afternoon. Went down to the Old San Francisco Mint to take pics, because the floor plans I found online had conflicting info about the exterior. (Some had fountains outside that I don’t remember seeing — must have been when it was an operational mint up into the 1930s.) Then I went to the main branch of the public library to see if they had floor plans of the original main branch (1917-1993, which is now the Asian Art Museum) — and they did! Lots of mapping inspiration.

Thank you, @Wyvern!

I do have Character Artist, but I haven't used it much and didn't realize those were there. This vastly expands my heraldic symbol options! Here it is using the traditional dragon with a tower icon background. I also tried one with a wyvern off to the side. Which is your favorite?

I actually did have a cave hole there, but it was kind of small and I used a fill that ended up being kind of a washed-out gray at this zoom. I deleted it and drew in an oversized black "cave mouth" polygon.

Sure! I like having multiple options.

Oh no, I am so sorry to hear that. Thank you for staying in touch with his family sharing the news with us. I first started becoming active here a year ago, and Jim was always one of the first to reply and give me feedback and encouragement. Such a kind cartographer. I will miss him.

Wanted to try out the new Mike Schley cartouche/decorative border symbols, and decided to tweak an existing map rather than create a new one. Really love the new compass rose options.

While I was in there, I deleted the jungle fill in the southwest corner as well as the northwestern edge of the northern island, and replaced them with individual jungle trees.

Remy did a two part video tutorial about this several years ago own his own channel if you want a bit more: Part 1 and Part 2.

Makes sense. It occurs to me that I would probably want to keep them as separate cutout tools anyway. Sometimes I would want to cut through the wall to the sill, and sometimes wall to floor, and sometimes sill to floor, so that would be a lot of tools to create. Simpler to have one wall-to-sill tool and another sill-to-floor tool (unless I figure out effects that prevent the transparency acne without needing a mask, so I then I can just have wall-to-sill and wall+sill-to-floor tools).

Hence the old expression, "The British and the Americans are two great peoples divided by a common tongue."

Ahhh, ok. Not sure when I will get to creating the library layout, but if you're interested, I can email you the photographs of the blueprints from a book the librarian allowed me to photograph. They are in the public domain now in part because of their age but mainly because they're government documents (in the U.S., all government documents are public domain, though classified docs can still be restricted).