With or without sheet effects

I'm not sure what other effects would be particularly useful at this point. A programmable effect that allows construction of results from a combination of basic primitives (e.g. distance, clip, min, max, 2D texture, 1D texture, displace, blur, comparison, vector dot product, etc.) might be interesting, but I don't know that anyone would use it, much like the Spatial Matrix Process operation. I keep meaning to put together a basic square-kernel morphological dilate, erode, open, and close, but I am again uncertain how much use those would be to the general public. The same thing goes for min, max, average, and median filters (OK, average is just blur and there's always the question of window shape).

For a while I was just shoveling image processing algorithms (see the aforementioned Spatial Matrix Process) without a lot of thought about how useful they would be. Spatial Matrix Process can be useful, but I don't know that I've used it more than twice so far.

btw, the primitives mentioned above would allow things like:

assign(output.alpha,0.5))=50% transparency
assign(output.alpha,clip(innerdistance(input.alpha ), 10)/10)=edge fade
assign(output.rgb,constant.rgb);assign(output.alph a,blur(input.alpha))=replace image colored with glow
assign(output,rgb,texture(imagename))=texture overblend
modulate(input.color,dot(heightnormal(clip(innerdi stance(input.alpha), 10)),{light direction}))=lighted bevel 10 wide
modulate(input.color,dot(heightnormal(grayscale(te xture(imagename))),{light direction}))=texturize

Not terribly controllable or fast, but has the potential to do useful things. If I ever get the system to the point where the effects can be offloaded to a GPU, then the above concepts wouldn't even be very slow because they would be implemented as native kernel operations. There is an awful lot of work needed to get there, though (years and years).

Hmmm... That's an awful lot of speaking in tongues at the end there, isn't it?

LOL!!! I just draw stuff, and all this that you have just described and attempted to discuss with me is way beyond my understanding. I have tried all but the Spatial Matrix Process, and that is only because I have found I can do most of what I want to do so far with the rest of them. The truth is, I don't really understand what it does, although I will eventually have a play with it. If you were to describe it in terms of the appearance of the effect (ie "It makes the texture go wobbly like its under water" or something like that) I would understand it at once. You mention erode? I've had to import a 16 MB bitmap relief image that I made in Bryce (of all things) and impose it on the rest of the map in Merelan City, using a Blend Mode, but if there was an effect that somehow worked this out between the contour shapes between sheets... Now that would be out of this world... but it probably isn't what you meant

You should be able to apply a blend mode effect to each sheet, not just the whole drawing. It should also be possible to generate a set of images, one for each contour level, and then assemble those to make an image that you can erode in something like Wilbur (as shown at https://cartographersguild.com/showt...t=34269&page=2 or https://cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=29412 ).

The morphological erode operation is basically a minimum operation on a local area (the morphological dilate operation is effectively a maximum operation). The Spatial Matrix process mixes together local pixels and can achieve effects like blur, sharper, emboss, and many others ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_(image_processing) show some examples).

I have downloaded Wilbur, and will have a play later this evening. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction

Waldronate, remember when I made that map and someone on the guild mentioned that there seemed to be a space between the glow and the letters of text I had put on that drawing? And they said it was one thing they didn't like about cc3? And then you said you wanted to work on it but it would take a lot of code? I'm wondering, by a lot of code, do you mean years and years as well?

Wow! I hadn't even noticed that before!

The problem with the text is the same problem that happens with symbols that have semi-transparent shadows baked in: the effects system determines transparency for a sheet based on what changed after the initial draw of the sheet and what was there before. Those little antialiased bits that aren't fully on or off along the edges of the text and symbols get detected as fully opaque before they are passed to the individual effects. Because they aren't marked as transparent, things like outer glow that only affect transparent parts of the image miss those bits that should be rightly partially-transparent.

The most correct solution is to use a different technique for generating transparency on a sheet and that solution requires a significant rewrite of the effects engine.

How about if the glow effect started a whole pixel inside the edge of whatever its... um... 'glowing'? (does that make sense?) I suppose that would only work if the glow was behind the object being... 'glowed'.

There is a workaround for text, though, that you can do yourself: disable text antialiasing. It will make text ugly system-wide, but many folks don't care that much and it's far less noticeable on high-dpi displays. The general idea is to go to advanced system settings, click Settings on the Performance section, and then turn off "Smooth edges of screen fonts" on the list of options. You need admin permission for this change, but it will get rid of the spots around the edges of the text. I could not find a solution to do this just for the screen rendering on CC3+ the last time I looked. Note that this workaround in no way fixes the halos around antialiased or shadowed symbols, just the halo of speckles around text. If you don't want to mess with text antialising settings, a mitigation might be to use a small blur effect on the text to reduce the speckles before applying other effects.