Thank you to all you cartographers out there who are sharing your work with the world, irrespective of borders and nationalities. Your continued support for our hobby and your fellow map-makers is much appreciated. Here are just a few samples of your glorious work in February!
WeathermanSweden used publicly available altitude data to import it into Fractal Terrains, export that to CC3+ and create this greant rendition of how northern Europe would have looked 15,000 years ago! Continue reading »
People who have browsed the Community Atlas website have probably noticed that you can search maps, not just by name, but also by text in the map. So, how to I manage to do that, the maps on the website is just images, right? Granted, there are tools available that tries to understand text in images, but these are not good with noisy backgrounds like a map is. However, the community atlas website is of course backed by the actual community atlas product, the .fcw files themselves, and this is where the text comes from.
This is all done by using an excellent command in CC3+, the create index command. This command was originally made for searching through multiple drawings quickly without the search function having to read each map file every time, but the index it generates is a nice plain text file which can also be used by other tools, such as a web search. If you own products such as the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas or World War II Interactive Atlas, these come with an index file out of the box allowing you to quickly search the maps therein, but of course, you can also easily make your own index file for your own set of maps.
Up in the far north where the northwind rules mountains and forests are shrouded in almost perpetual winter. Send your adventurers north into these forbidding lands with the March symbols by Mike Schley. You will find 20 new symbols and a new bitmap texture by Mike Schley in March’s catalog for snow-covered lands and forests.
To download the free content go to your registration page and on the Downloads tab, click the download button for Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. Mike’s new symbols are the last link in the list (see image on the right). All the content up to and including March 2022 is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
Fitting for the time of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere, the March issue of the Cartographer’s Annual brings you a wintry city style with snow-covered roofs and trees, frozen ground, deep snow drifts and frosty fields.
Sue Daniel’s Winter Village style contains more than hundred new symbols, new roof, house and street styles, as well as a host of drawing tools for those wintry settlements. The 4-page mapping guide talks you through creating such a village in a few easy steps.
The March issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2022 yet, you can do so here.
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Have you marveled at the beautiful city maps that Mike Schley has created for the D&D role-playing game and other brands? If not, head over to his web page to see a great selection. Myself, I am a particular fan of his isometric city views like the Candlekeep map you see as the first listed on that page. They give a great overall impression of the location, while also haviong enough precise information to make them really useful as a gaming tool.
Of course I’ve been advocating for a symbol set using this art style for a while here at Profantasy, and I’m now more than happy that I have the first symbols on my desk for by an upcoming set by Mike himself. He’s been busy creating the inked outlines ofr the buildings and kindly provided a few colored ones as well, that I can show off here. Take a look!
So far my job concerning this product has mostly been looking over the incoming symbols, nodding and saying “Yes, they are great, thank you” by way approval. I’m looking forward to diving into creating all the symbols for CC3+ when more of the colored versions come in, and trying my hand at creating isometric city maps with them myself.
Browse through the community’s Maps of the Month for February to see how your fellow map-makers have started the mapping year.
Articles
Matthew Verdini is producing and selling some very nice battle maps created with CC3+ for virtual and real tabletops. Check out some samples of his work.
Remy Monsen continues his development of dynamic dungeon tools. Follow this excellent exercise and tutorial on programming your own extensions for CC3+.
Reminders
CC3+ has been updated to version 3.97 (Update 27) which is available from your registration page.
Fractal Terrains 3+ has been released and is available from among your FT3 downloads on your registration page.
In Febuary Mike Schley sets out to expand the vegetation options for his overland style in CC3+. 24 new symbols of majestic giant trees, huge pines, weird alien forests, gigantic carnivorous plans and mammoth funghi allow you to build fantastic maps of strange locations.
To download the free content go to your registration page and on the Downloads tab, click the download button for Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. Mike’s new symbols are the last link in the list (see image on the right). All the content up to and including February 2022 is included in the one download.
You can always check the available monthly content on our dedicated page.
Comments Off on Free Monthly Content: Giant Trees and Alien Forests
Hello Cartographers and welcome to the first set of user maps of 2022. We’ve picked out a dozen beautiful maps from the user community for you to enjoy. Make sure to join the forum and/or the Facebook group to see many more each month, including the progress of many of these!
AleD used the Spectrum Overland style for this fantastic version of the lanscape of the same name in Northern Italy. Continue reading »
According to our End User License Agreement, you need our permission to publish floorplan-scale maps consisting predominantly of our artwork commercially (when the maps are a product of their own and not part of an adventure or such). This is mostly to protect our artwork rights and to keep the floorplan-market from getting flooded by cheap, extremely simple maps. Recently Matthew Verdini approached us to get such a permission, and seeing the quality of his maps, we were more than happy to grant that permission. See for yourself!
We also asked him to say a few words about himself and his work, so here he goes:
First off, I will admit to being a fan of the Profantasy line of products since they first debuted in the 90s. I remember seeing their ads in Dragon magazine and thinking how cool the software looked. I eventually mustered up some funds and got myself to the nearest gaming shop I could find so that I could buy a copy of Campaign Cartographer to use in my home brew world building.
The product was a far cry from the work that can be done today, but there was nothing like it at the time. As a student, I would slowly pick up additional products as I could while trying to build my worlds.
Graduating college and getting a graphic design job eventually afforded me the ability to buy all their products as I continued building worlds, cities and dungeons for my adventures. All my games were in person for a long while, therefore there was a great amount of time spent printing out pages and taping them together. However, now I play entirely online, allowing me to easily utilize the maps as needed.
The amount of time I put into my maps grew as I relied on them more and more in the digital landscape. Admittedly my work is not done strictly within the confines of the software or only using the assets they provide. The artist and designer in me adds some of my own tweaks to the assets as well as post production adjustments like lighting, textures and so on. In the end though, the heavy lifting has been done with Profantasy’s products.
When the pandemic hit, I began to explore some side businesses and ultimately opened up an Etsy shop for geek clothing and accessories, with a strong bend towards roleplaying. As I continued to grow the shop, I thought it might be interesting to explore a line of assets for Gamemasters. With that, I recently took my first step into attempting to sell premade maps.
Since my interest in cartography began with Profantasy, I thought it would only make sense that the work I share be part of that.
Continue reading »
