Best Way to Map Real World England in CC3

[EpicBradley129]

Yep, I just had to refresh the map. Once again, thank you very much sir. I probably can upload a screen shot, but that would require me to figure out how and so far I've been too lazy to google how to do that heheh. In the future if it becomes necessary I'll do that, but so far it hasn't seemed like it has been necessary, you've been answering all my questions perfectly.

I should probably mention that while I've used FT3 a fair amount and feel pretty comfortable with that program, this is basically my first time using CC3, so most of my problems have been and will likely be newbie problems

[Mouse]

Hehe - I'm a little girl mouse, but no bother - most people make the same mistake since the avatar name 'Mouse' has no implied gender to it

You're doing really well if you haven't used CC3 before, since my instructions aren't always the easiest things to follow. I have an atypical mind, and the things I say and the way I express them are often a little... well... 'atypical'. LOL! I quite often end up having to apologise for things that come out all wrong, so please forgive me if I do it to you some time in the future

NB - You can do a screen shot just by pressing CTRL+PRT SC (or CTRL+F12 most usually), which stores the shot on your PC clipboard. Then open an image processor like GIMP and use File/Create/From Clipboard to turn it into an image you can then export as JPG to be able to upload it to most forums

I hope your map comes out well. Looking forward to seeing it in finished maps someday

[EpicBradley129]

Whoops, my bad. I actually thought of saying "sir or madam," but it seemed to me at the time that "sir" could actually be taken as gender neutral. I think I was thinking of some military movie/tv show/video game where they referred to the female officers as "sir." I dunno *shrugs*

So I'm more or less finished with the tracing: I have the coastline and the rivers I want on the map all done, and I put down the towns/cities too. The only other core elements I think I need to add are the roads and the names of the roads, rivers, and towns. I'm including an image of my map so far with this post. Note that most of what you will see on that map is actually just the image I pulled off Wikipedia to trace, but you can see where I traced the coastline and where I placed the cities. The map is going to be pretty simple, which is fine for my purposes, given that it won't be showing that much and that this is basically my first time using CC3.

At this point I want to be able to hide the background image, which means I want to put it onto a sheet. Apparently right now the background image is not on any sheet at all, and I can't figure out how to put it onto a sheet or even how to select it in any capacity. So... how do you do that?

[Mouse]

Wow Bradley - that's a lot of tracing work you've done. Nice job

The image is on a sheet, believe me. You can't have it there without it being on a sheet. Try hiding all the sheets (there's a hide all button in the Sheets and Effects dialogue), and then un-hide them one at a time until it suddenly appears.

If the image wasn't covering the whole extent the way it seems to be, I'd say try using the info tool from the menu bar, but you're likely to pick up all the border and frame objects at the same time as the image if you do it that way, and then you'd get too much information about everything, rather than just about the image.

I bet its on the background sheet along with the actual background - your parchment fill? Whatever sheet its on, and once you've identified the edge of it so that you can separate it from anything else in the drawing, you might like to use the 'move to sheet' function available by right clicking the hour glass button on the left, and move it to a sheet all of its own (a new one most probably), so that you can hide and show it at will without also hiding and showing anything else at the same time.

Oh - and you don't have to be sorry about not being telepathic enough to know that I'm a girl. It really doesn't bother me what you call me - as long as its not shockingly rude!

[EpicBradley129]

Ok, so I haven't figured out how to change what sheet the image is on, but I have figured out how to change what layer it's on. I can hide layers, so I can hide the background image and just show my lines and dots, but then the black lines and dots disappear into the black background, so that's not what I want. My problem now is I don't know how to change what layers appear in front of or behind other layers. You can do that with sheets, but not with layers, it seems. When I inserted a parchment background into CC3, it appeared over all the lines and dots I had drawn. I could select the parchment background, change what layer it was on, then hide that layer so I could see my previous map, but I can't make my lines and dots appear over the parchment layer, which is what I want.

I don't have a sheet that's labelled as a background sheet. What I have is a sheet called "COMMON - Entities not on any sheet," which I think is where both my images (the map from Wikipedia and the parchment background) are right now. Besides that, I only have one other sheet called "Lines," which is where I have all the lines and dots that I've drawn so far. I can select those lines and dots and change what sheet they're in, but I can't select the background images and change their sheet.

So on the left hand side toolbar, I've found buttons called "Change properties" and "Edit properties." When I click "Change properties," I can select the lines and dots I've drawn and bring up a menu where I can change what sheets and layers they're in. But when I click "Change properties," I CAN'T select the background images at all. On the other hand, when I click "Edit properties," I can select both the lines and dots and the background images, but the menu that this takes me to only has an option to change those objects' layer, not their sheet.

So to sum up, my background images appear to be in a "Common Sheet," which is a sheet for "entities not on any sheet," and I can't get them off that sheet or edit that sheet in any way because the tool that I've found to change what sheet an entity is on won't select the background images on the "Common Sheet."

[Mouse]

Ok.

If you start hiding Layers then some really strange and unexpected stuff will start to happen since they control lots of things on multiple sheets, and the whole world of your map will start to do some really unexpected and peculiar things. They really are not the way to move forward with this problem.

Leave out the messing with the layers, and stick with the sheets.

The image you want to hide is on one of the sheets. It cannot exist in your map without being on a sheet. The only sheet I can definitely say the image isn't on, is the Common Sheet. You can't actually place anything on it (or shouldn't be able to anyway).

I think the only way we are going to solve this quickly is by taking this over to the Profantasy Forum, where you will need to register to be able to start a new thread for yourself and upload the actual FCW file to the forum as if its an image, so that I can root out that image and put it on its own sheet for you.

Sound like a good idea?

My avatar name over there, by the way, is 'LoopySue'

[Mouse]

PS - if you would rather keep the FCW file private you can start a thread on the PF forum, wait for my response (which should only take a couple of minutes at most), then attach the FCW file on a whisper to me after that.

[EpicBradley129]

Yeah okay. I actually do have a profile over there already, so posting there is not a problem. And I don't really have any problem sharing my map, so I can just upload it to the main post. The post should be up on the ProFantasy forum in just a sec. I'm whispering it to you so you should see when it comes up (I think). Thanks so much for your help.

[Mouse]

Not sure if you can start a thread with a whisper comment, but you can give it a try

No need to thank. I feel responsible for the problems you are having, since it was my unapproved method that seems to have got you into this situation in the first place!

We'll get it all sorted out in the next half hour or so. Don't worry

And yes - I did see your account a while back. It just took a couple of days for me to work out why your name seemed so familiar to me here at the Guild.

[waldronate]

Try typing MPEDIT, select your image, then right-click and "Do It". One of the options on that dialog is the sheet.