Hi Jason :)

I'm much more of a City and overland mapper, and have only once used Cosmographer, so I'm probably not the best person to answer your main question. I just wanted to encourage you to create new assets. After all - once you've done it once you won't ever have to do it again, no matter how many maps you make.

You've done a great job :)

To be able to save new settings in FT3 you need to have opened it by right clicking the icon and picking "Run as administrator" This is because the folder FT3 wants to save the settings is a protected system folder and you need to have administrator access to save in it.

Thanks guys :)

@Maidhc O Casain A Tree of Life is already there. I just haven't drawn it yet.

Hi, shortstack :)

Did you turn off your AV and install all the software by right clicking the installer and picking "Run as administrator"?

If yes, did you allow the app to open when it wanted to open at the end of each installation process?

Have you downloaded and installed the most recent update for CC3+? (This needs to be done at the end of the whole process - again, if you already did it before but then installed something else)

Or, you could just draw the map first (minus the dead giveaway scale items like trees and such), and then scale it down by eye. That way the map is 'finished already'. You just need to agree the scale with the client - who maybe should be the one to be left with the headache anyway?

Hi Aramisdante :)

Here's a confession. I have no idea why I made that last comment above when Remy and Chris had already solved the matter. At a guess I probably drafted it, abandoned it, then posted it by mistake a couple of days later. It feels completely out of place.

However, it's there now, and its prompted you to ask a question I can answer, so here we go :)

I don't generally use bookmarks, but I believe they only operate within CC3. Hyperlinks are certainly only within CC3.

I learned sheet effects by reading the brief description of what each of them does in the manual and then playing with the ones I understood (and then some of the ones I didn't understand) for many hours, days and weeks, until I figured out how to get whatever specific visual result I was after. I can't remember seeing any videos made specifically about sheet effects bar one, and that was attached to a blog about sheet effects called "Day and Night" by Remy Monsen.

There are quite a number of blog articles about sheet effects. You might want to have a read of some of Remy's articles if you have time:

Here are some of mine, though they tend to concentrate on coastal and oceanic effects.

Happy Christmas yourself! :)

That's a beautiful map. Thanks for sharing :)

Is it possible to mess with the shadows on the strips?

If it is, then does it look better with longer shadows to cast the back of the strips in more shade?

Also, I think some of the labels are escaping into the fresh air over the edges of the strips.

That's fair enough - about the towns fitting in a single hex. I would recommend using the smaller symbols though, so that they are clearer. For instance call a hamlet a village, a village a town, and a town a city. That way you never have to fit a whole actual city symbol in such a tiny hex. Squished up symbols look bad.

Have you looked at the Options tab in the Save as... dialog?

Here is what you get when you click it (my personal settings shown here for an automatic 3000 px on the long side export cropped automatically to the MAP BORDER)

These particular settings mean you only have to export a simple straightforward image file without fussing about picking any corners, as long as your MAP BORDER layer has the right boundary on it.