Need a quick city? Dislike (like myself) laying out a city grid and dotting it with houses? Well the Random Cities Annual is for you. This annual is available for anyone who has City Designer 3. The Random City command allows you some creative license with the houses you place, though in this example, I did not make any adjustments and just used the basic CD3 Bitmap B set.
(Download the FCW-File)
After starting a map in either the Bitmap A or B styles (I chose B) you choose Random City from the City menu or just enter on the command line CITY – this brings up the City Wizard and make any adjustments to the settings you’d like, hitting next at each option. For this map, the only changes I made, were to mute the colors by adding a RGB Matrix to several sheets with different settings (I got those settings by just playing around with the adjustments one .1 at a time till it was the right shade). A quick city name at the bottom and done. A map such as this can easily be done last minute before a gaming session – this one took me 15 minutes.
About the author: Lorelei was my very first D&D character I created more years back than i’d like to remember. When I decided to venture into creating maps for my and others rpgs, I thought I owed it to her to name myself Lorelei Cartography, since it was her that led me to the wonderful world of tabletop gaming in the first place. Since then I have been honored to have worked with companies such as WizKids, Pelgrane Press, and ProFantasy.
Every week (with a few exceptions) we do a live mapping session on YouTube, showcasing a certain style or set of tools in CC3+. Here are the most recent Live Mapping videos, as archived on YouTube:
The June issue of the Cartographer’s Annual is now available. Depict the lineage of your noble house, show the ancestry of an important character or delve into your actual family history.
The 5-page mapping guide teaches you not only how to use the style itself, but also how to enlarge and expand the provided templates to your needs.
The June issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2021 yet, you can do so here.
One of the most powerful effects in CC3+ is also the least used one. And that is kind of understandable, because it is also one of the more complicated ones. So in this article, I’m going to give you a bit of an introduction to the Spatial Matrix Process (SMP) effect (Not to be confused with the RGB Matrix Effect).
SMP is a custom filter where you have a lot of control over what the effect will do, it doesn’t have a pre-defined purpose like the other effects, but can be used to create a variety of different effects. Note that some of the results you can accomplish using this effect is already implemented as separate effects, such as blur.
Hello fellow map-makers, welcome to the May newsletter. We’ve got lots of example maps for you, by Sue Daniel, Christina Trani and the whole user community, as well as another great technical article by Remy Monsen.
Every week we do a live mapping session on YouTube, showcasing a certain style or set of tools in CC3+. Here are the most recent Live Mapping videos, as archived on YouTube:
Welcome dear cartographers to another instance of the Maps of the Month post. We’ve got another selection of gorgeous commmunity maps for you, posted during April on the Profantasy forum or the CC3+ Facebook group. Enjoy, and thanks to everybody out there sharing their maps, whether they are featured or not!
Jacob Hicks’ drew his Twin’s Crossing map with the Ferraris style by Sue Daniel, plus some modifications of his own and a few other bits and pieces. Continue reading »
This month’s annual, by fellow mapper Jon C. Munson II, was meant to be used alone or in conjunction with Symbol Set 4. I decided to map out a small abandoned mine using only the symbols provided in the annual, since I realize not everyone has Symbol Set 4 available to them.
This map is pretty basic, with no special bells or whistles. Though I can be known for using some original, creative techniques with this program, I wanted to showcase some maps with those tricks and others with nothing but the basics, I’ve done this for the average mapper, to show that you can still produce quality maps for your gaming needs and not need the skill that some of the Master Mappers and longtime, proficient users out there.
About the author: Lorelei was my very first D&D character I created more years back than i’d like to remember. When I decided to venture into creating maps for my and others rpgs, I thought I owed it to her to name myself Lorelei Cartography, since it was her that led me to the wonderful world of tabletop gaming in the first place. Since then I have been honored to have worked with companies such as WizKids, Pelgrane Press, and ProFantasy.
Comments Off on All the Annuals: Munson’s Mines (May 2017)
The May issue of the Annual 2021 is now available. Dive into more sinister styles of overland mapping with Sue Daniel’s new Darklands drawing style.
More than 150 new symbols, beautiful bitmap textures and a 5-page mapping guide let you design your own darker fantasy maps. Sue’s detailed and beautiful sheet effects make sure everything comes together as one good-looking package.
The May issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2021 yet, you can do so here.
While most CC3+ styles have a good selection of symbols, including multiple variations of the same symbols, such as multiple different trees, mountains, tables or statues, you can get into an issue of repetition if you need lots of these symbols.
One of the ways to alleviate this is to apply different scaling, rotation and mirroring to these symbols. Just a subtle change of scale or orientation helps reduce the monotony of a lot of the same symbols. This can of course be done manually, but CC3+ symbol catalogs contain a cool feature for helping with this, namely random transformations. Random transformations are a configurable way to automate this process on a symbol by symbol basis, ensuring that it makes sense for each symbol it is applied to. For example, it doesn’t make much sense to have a random rotation of a mountain in an overland map, that would probably look weird given the isometric view of these symbols in most styles, while a table in a tavern may benefit from free rotation. The same mountain may find use in random scaling to vary it that way instead.
You’ll find that many of the official symbol catalog already use this technique by default, but it is easy to set up yourself, either to apply it to your own custom symbols, or to existing symbols when using them.
