You might need to do all those split level differences on the deck with a separate set of sheets for each one, so that you can cause the upper ones to cast a shadow or a dark glow over the lower ones. You've got 3 levels, as far as I can see. The highest one is the stern, or aft deck (and now we are going to see if I can remember all the terminology!). The next level down is the mid and fore deck, and the lowest level between them is... ummm. I've run out of terms, but that's kind of a mid deck also! LOL! And its about the same level as the bow, so you could put them on the same set of deck sheets as well.

I'm not sure how that would translate as far as the general outline goes, but if there's a step up or down in the deck level, then there will also be a step up or down in the freeboard. The bit that sticks up above the water line. So you could draw it as 4 separate decks (on different sets of sheets) that just happen to make the shape of a ship.

I think you might find that the part of the plan view not shown as planked down the sides is the bulge of the lower decks, which if you look at the stern elevation plan stick out beyond the extent of the deck. If you look at where the gun ports are located in all the plans you will suddenly see what I mean. The true extent of the deck is where you have drawn the paler planking. The extra extent should be very steep flanks with the guns poking out of them.

Another way is to hold down both the CTRL and SHIFT keys at the same time. The disadvantage of using them together like that is that its very easy to press only the CTRL key for a split second before you hit the SHIFT key, which makes it easy to accidentally scale the label instead of rotating it.

Transparency acne (the pitting) happens when the same or similar textures are used on top of one another on different sheets and the overlying sheet has either an Edge Fade Inner or one of the bevels on it. The rendering engine finds the edges of the polygon on the topmost of the two sheets by comparing the pixels with those underneath it. Where those pixels are the same it interprets an edge. So if the pixel in the top polygon is the same colour as the underlying one the rendering engine sees a pinhole, and will apply the sheet effects to the edges of that hole. It looks particularly bad with this texture because there is quite a pronounced bevel effect on the upper sheet, which is being applied to all those little pinholes right across the polygon.

The reason these pinholes tend to shift around as you zoom in and out is because CC3 is switching between the different resolutions of the textures and the pinholes will appear in different places on the different resolutions where different pixels suddenly match colour and others become different again.

The copy polygon is a backing sheet to separate those two to make sure the pixels don't match. Normally, and logically, you then use change properties on that copy to make sure it's a different colour so that none of the pixels match, but sometimes a straightforward copy is all it takes

Hi Gianluca :)

I recommend you contact Profantasy directly with your question.

The email address for licencing questions is at the bottom of the list of contact emails on this page:

https://www.profantasy.com/service/default.asp

Hi Everyone :)

In tomorrow's Live Mapping Session Ralf will be mapping a rank and file Napoleonic-era battle, based on the Napoleonic Battle Maps style from the Cartographer's Annual Vol 3.

Come along and join in the fun, or watch later :)