Loopysue
Loopysue
About
- Username
- Loopysue
- Joined
- Visits
- 10,121
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member, ProFantasy
- Points
- 9,982
- Birthday
- June 29, 1966
- Location
- Dorset, England, UK
- Real Name
- Sue Daniel (aka 'Mouse')
- Rank
- Cartographer
- Badges
- 27
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Convert Map Style to Look Drawn
Here is how I would do it if I just wanted a background with nothing fancy, like scrolls or ragged edges.
- Add a new sheet on top of your map (bottom of the list)
- Add a Blend Mode sheet effect to the new sheet
- Set the Blend Mode to Multiply
- Draw a rectangle of the desired parchment fill over the entire map on that new sheet.
- Refresh the drawing
You may find that this trick works better with black and white styles, but it does depend on the style. Here is an example:
You will find parchment fills in the Bitmaps\Tiles folder and subfolders depending on what add ons you have. If you can't find any you like in there, there are some free here:
https://www.profantasy.com/products/subsamples.asp#&panel1-1
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WIP: Now, for something completely different...
It must be different in Australia ;)
I went on a photography course and was told off for not placing the flower right in the centre of the shot.
But the real point of what I was saying was that it actually doesn't matter at all - as long as it looks somehow balanced to the person who created it. Some of these rules make me giggle.
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WIP: Now, for something completely different...
Looking like a really attractive land shape there, Calibre :)
The interesting thing about the idea of centreing or not centreing the shot. Painters are taught never to plonk things centrally without thought for the overall composition with emphasis on thirds, fifths and sometimes sevenths - diagonals and golden rectangles... all kinds of stuff I learned and subsequently forgot over the years, while photographer's are taught exactly the opposite. Place the subject central to the shot.
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CC3+ crashes when trying to "change like draw tool"
It may be that you have too many nodes in the large landmass. This can be a problem with FT3 exports, since FT3 is capable of exporting many more nodes than CC3 can manage. Try reducing the number of nodes in that large landmass before you convert it by typing the command SIMPLIFY, hitting enter, and then adjusting the minimum distance between nodes in the command line to suit. If you get it too big you can undo and try again.
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Railroads
Ok.
You start by opening the drawing tools. Click the Advanced button at the bottom...
...and then highlight the tool you wish to copy and modify. I'm guessing this will be the Road, Railway, so I will use that one in this example.
Now click the New button and give your new custom made tool a name, like Road, Railway (mike) or Sue in my case.
Click the Properties button above the thumbnail image, and you will see the settings for the main unbroken black line that underlies the white dashed one.
Leave this as you find it, since it is the background colour of your railway. Click OK and then click the Outline button next to the Properties button.
Initially this calls up a much smaller dialog with the options set to Extra entity. This extra entity is the second dashed line of white drawn on top of the black line on it's own sheet.
You can see the properties of this extra entity by clicking the Properties button in this much smaller dialog.
This is the only really confusing bit of the process, because this properties box looks just like the first one at first glance, though it contains the properties of the extra entity, and not the properties of the main part of the drawing tool (the black line). If you compare the two of them you will see the differences. This one has a Use color: set to white instead of black, a width of 8 map units, and a Line style has been set to Railway instead of solid.
Change that Line style to the shortest dash line you can find. I picked ecw-3
Then ok, ok, and save the drawing tool, then try it out. I'm working on something completely different here, so please excuse the background.
If you need to make both the lines thinner now is the time to do it. Go to both the properties dialogs I showed you above and alter the line width accordingly. I will leave mine super-large so you can see what I do next a bit better.
To make the dashes into lines instead of dashes all we need to do is alter the scale of the line style.
Click the LS: box at the top and find ecw-3.
Then edit the line style and reduce the scale of the line in the bottom text box.
This might take a few tries, but you should be able to set it to something short enough that the result looks something like this.





