We have reached the final article in the series about making mapping tiles. In previous articles (Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4) we discussed how to design such tiles, how to print or export them for use in other software, and how to make raster symbols in CC3+ from them so we could use the tiles for assembling maps quickly.

But, as we pointed out in the earlier articles, exporting static bitmap images have some limitations. For example, if you rotate them, you change the direction of shadows and patterns in the fill. One could just call it an acceptable tradeoff and move on, but there is a better way, and that is to turn these tiles into advanced symbols in CC3+. By making symbols that contain the actual entities in the tiles instead of static images, directions of fills and effects are calculated when the tiles are used, not when you originally make them, and it also allow you to actually change the content after placing them. In short, if you are going to make maps using the tiles inside CC3+, this is the best approach, so let us dig into how to achieve this.

The symbols we will be making here use advanced symbol techniques. Basically, what we will make is multi-sheet symbols. These symbols split unto multiple sheets when placed, so that the floors can go to the FLOORS sheet, the furniture to the SYMBOLS sheet, and so on. To achieve this, we do need to take some special considerations when making the symbols to tell CC3+ which part of the symbol should go on which sheet. It is also worth pointing out at this time that the map we use the symbols in should already have the appropriate sheets defined, otherwise the symbols will create the sheets at the end of the drawing order, which can cause them to appear really weird when placing them.

Now, before we start, it is important that each of our tiles are completely standalone and don’t have any shared entities (like floor) that goes through multiple of them. If you made the tiles as we discussed in part 1 and 2, your tiles should already be like this. To make the rest of the procedure as easy as possible for myself, I’ve copied them to fit on the snap grid, with a full tile between each (Kind of the opposite of what we did when we exported images in part 4, where the tight fitting was helpful for the render)

What we will need to do first is to figure out which sheets are actually in use in our tiles. The easiest way to do this is just to use the List command (From the Info menu), just select all the tiles and hit D to execute the command. Then just scroll through the blue text window to find the sheets.

Scrolling through that list shows me that my tiles currently have entities on the following sheets:

BACKGROUND
DECK
SYMBOLS
BULKHEAD
SYMBOLS WALL

The next thing we will need to do is to make a line style with the same name as each of those sheets. Note that these line styles are just a means to store the name of the sheets, we’re not actually caring about the line styles themselves.

To create a line style, hit the LS indicator near the right end of the status bar, and then simply make 5 new line styles matching the names of the sheets from above. Just hit New, give it the correct name, then hit OK, we do not care about any of the other settings of the line style, only the name. Do make sure you type the name 100% correct though, if you spell it wrongly, then the parts of the tile will go to the wrong sheet.

Now the prep work is out of the way, and we can start modifying our symbols. Of course, if you make more tiles later that utilize different sheets, just repeat the above and add line styles for the new sheets.

Click the Sheets and Effects button. In the dialog, set the BACKGROUND sheet active (The first sheet from our list of used sheets from above), and check the checkbox that says Auto Hide all sheets….., then hit OK.

Back in the drawing, you should now only see the entities on the background sheet, looking something like this, with only the background starfield visible on the tiles that had this:

There are now two things that needs to be done. First, IF there are any symbols among the visible entities, use Explode on them. We do this because we don’t want symbols inside of symbols, and explode reduces a symbol from being a symbol to the individual entities it is made up of.  Don’t use explode on anything other than symbols though (in our case, all entities on the SYMBOLS and SYMBOLS WALL sheets are symbols, and none of the entities on the other sheets are). Then, use Change Properties on all the visible entites, change the line style in the dialog to BACKGROUND and hit OK. This won’t make any visual change to the entities, but it will have set their line style property, something that will be used later by the symbol to decide which entities go on which sheet.

Now, just go back into the sheets and effects dialog and select the next sheet in our list (DECK)  and repeat the procedure above to explode symbols and set the line style (Since the auto hide checkbox is still checked, only the DECK sheet should be visible). Repeat for the remaining sheets, SYMBOLS, BULKHEAD and SYMBOLS WALL, each time exploding symbols and setting the line style of the visible entities to the same as the sheet they are on. Finally, go back into the sheets dialog and hit the Show All button to stop viewing a single sheet at a time.

Now, some of the symbols we used (like doors) contained control points. These can make issues when placing our tile, so we should get rid of them. Hit Erase and select all the tiles. Then right click inside the drawing area, and first pick Combine -> And, then right click again, and pick Entity Type and make sure Control Points is the only checked item in the list and hit OK. Finally, right click again and hit Do It. This will lead to all the control points in the selection being erased.

Our tiles are now ready, all that remains is to define them as symbols, and put them into a symbol catalog.

Use the Define Symbol command, and select all the entities belonging to one of the tiles. In the dialog, give it a name and set the Origin (I prefer Middle Center, since this makes more sense if we rotate the symbol). Once you hit OK, notice that the tile will disappear from the drawing as it has been turned into a symbol. As such, I like to do this to a copy of my original tile so I can keep it around for editing. Of course, it is easy to get it back simply by placing and exploding the symbol as well so that is more a matter of convenience. In any case, go on and define symbols from the rest of your tiles as well, make sure to only do a single tile in each operation.

After defining the symbols, open up symbol manager (from the symbols menu) and scroll down to the bottom where you will find our newly defined symbols. Select all of them, then hit the Options button, and set the “Convert Line Style Names to Sheets” option and hit ok. If you want, you can set other options like making them a collection, but I won’t cover that here.

While still in Symbol Manager and with our symbols selected, hit the “Save as Catalog” button. This will save our new tile symbols to a symbol catalog we can load up and use in any map. Of course, since our symbols are designed to split across various sheets, they will only work properly if the map we use them in have the appropriate sheets in the appropriate order. So in my case, since this was made using the Cosmographer 3 Bitmap Deckplan style, it will work best with maps in that style since the template should come with the appropriate sheets. Of course, consider that this is also the visual style of our tiles, this is where we would be likely to use it anyway.

Do note that this symbol catalog doesn’t come with a folder with art files. When we made the bitmap tiles in part 4, we would need to distribute those exported tile images along with the symbol catalog because it was based on them. These symbols however doesn’t come with their own images, since they are based on the original art resources we made them from. Thus, the catalog will work for anyone who has the right product installed (Cosmographer 3 in this case), and distributing this catalog file will not violate any copyrights since you don’t distribute artwork.

And that’s the end of this tutorial. You may download my map file and symbol catalog. I recommend just starting a new 800 by 800 Cosmographer Deckplan bitmap map, setting the snap grid in the map to 50 and try out my tiles from the symbol catalog. Remember they can be rotated easily with the arrow keys. Now try to change some sheet effects, and you will see that they work with my tiles correctly, instead of being “baked” into the tile as with the bitmap symbols from part 4. Keep in mind that when you place the symbols that even if each symbol is split into one symbol for each sheet it goes on, every part of the symbol that goes on one sheet will still stay together as one symbol, but if you want to edit the contents after placing, you can always explode it.

The image below shows how nicely the tiles fit together when using this approach. Even if they are rotated, you don’t get any of the issues that the bitmap tiles had, all the shadows do point the same way, there are no weird artifacts where the wall ends from different tiles meet, and the direction of the fills are all the same since these follows the definition of the fill, not the rotation of the tile (If you need fills that rotate with tiles, look into Shaded Polygons). Of course, this would be much nicer if I had bothered making more than 4 different tiles.

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