Welcome to another detailed tutorial by Sue Daniel, looking at how you can create the shading for complex shapes – in this cased domed roofs. As the tutorial is fairly detailed we are providing it in pdf format for ease of access and printing.

About the author: Sue Daniel is active as a cartographer and artist both on the ProFantasy community forum and the Cartographer’s Guild. There, she has won 1 Lite Challenge and 3 Main Challenges, and just recently one of the annual Atlas Awards for most creative map in 2017. She has produced many beautiful art assets for CC3+ (such as the “Sue’s Parchments” Annual issue) and mapping in general that are free to use for anyone.

Here is this month’s collection of maps that have caught our eyes. They are taken from the CC3+ Facebook community and the ProFantasy forum, and as usual are just a quasi-random selection from the multitude of maps that have been posted. Enjoy!

Camp Cedarcrest by Jason Place is a wonderful example of mapping a real-world place in Campaign Cartographer and thereby giving it that little fantastical spin.

Another camp, but this time a fully fictitious one, the Forest Camp map by Jonathan Garrison serves as a beautiful location or battle map for that night attack on the heroes’ resting spot.

Linda Böckstiegel created this awesome map of an everburning ruin. I don’t even know what resources she used, but the Dungeon Walls Annual issue must have been one!

Jensen’s campaign map “Die Kronlande” is a blast from the past for me, since it is based on a very old German rpg.

ScottA has produced another beautiful map with his Huntsman’s Green village map. Great use of City Designer 3!

GenCon 2018 – the Best 4 Days in Gaming – is coming up next week, and of course ProFantasy will be at the show.

Stop by at booth #1317 (we are sharing the booth with Pelgrane Press) to check out the new Dioramas 3, get a glimpse of what we are working on, or just chat with Simon, Ralf or Doug. We are looking forward to seeing you there!

When you make a map, you may desire to have different kinds of views for it. For example, if you make a floorplan, you may wish to be able to see the roof of the house too, or if you make a dungeon map, you don’t want to show your players the version that also includes all the traps.

For this article, we’ll see how we can easily make features in our maps togglable. As an example, I will take a small building from CD3 and make a floorplan from it, and then add a togglable roof and trap.

I start by picking the building symbol I want to use as a base. After that, I start a new dungeon map, and simply use the dungeon room/wall/floor tools to draw the floorplan on top of the building I just inserted to make it match the building shape (I could also have used the automatic floorplan generator from CD3 to make this based on the outline).

Once I am happy with the floorplan, I simply make a new sheet to hold the building symbol, naming it ROOF. Then I move the building symbol to this new sheet, and finally hide the sheet since I don’t want to see the roof as I am working on the floorplan.

Next, I draw the floorplan. For my trap, I place a pit trap just behind the door, and then cover it up with a carpet.

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The World War 2 Interactive Atlas has always been the odd one out in our range. It mostly appeals to WW2 aficionados and history buffs, since it is a huge collection of historical maps on the largest conflict of the 20th century. Its maps are all linked together and referenced to a timeline of events. In that capacity as a reference work, it installs as a stand-alone product.

But the Atlas also contains tools, templates and symbols to use in Campaign Cartographer, to create similar maps or edit the existing WW2IA maps. This functionality has previously not been usable in CC3+, but a compatibility update makes it available now. If you own WW2IA, you can download it from your registration page.

With WW2IA the last of the add-ons has now been updated to work with CC3+.

Here it is: the full release of Dioramas 3. Pimp your game and create your own paper models with hundreds of new bitmaps and symbols to choose from.

Design your model in real-world scale and then print at whatever modeling scale you want to build. Pick a pre-defined model from our large range of samples and adjust it to your requirements, or build something new completely from scratch.

Dioramas 3 includes instructions for printing and assembling your paper model so you don’t need any prior experience in paper modelling and the included examples give you plenty of material to practice on.

Dioramas 3 is available as an upgrade from Dioramas Pro and features the following new material:

• Two new bitmap drawings styles in addition to the updated vector style.
• 275 new bitmap textures (compared to 22 in Dioramas Pro)
• 700 bitmap symbols of doors, windows and other wall features
• Loading/saving of diorama panel settings (no more setting them up for each new panel)
• Sheet support for Dioramas tools

Get Dioramas 3 now from the ProFantasy online store. Or log into your registration page to grab the upgrade from Dioramas Pro.

If you want to try your hand at paper modeling with craft knife and glue before you jump fully into Dioramas 3, we have two examples buildings for you to download in pdf format.

Sage’s Tower
The reclusive sage dwells in this lonely tower somehwere on the outskirts of cilized lands. What will the adventurers find inside when they arrive to get his advice?

Village House, Church and Tower
A tiny village nestles into hills, sporting a few houses, a church and a lonely tower, guarding the townsfolk from marauding orcs and goblins.

The release of Dioramas 3 is imminent and we’re celebrating the occasion with a map and tutorial pack of a Bridge Diorama. The 9-page tutorial takes you through the design, construction and assembly of a multi-part bridge model. By printing and assembling as many parts as desired you can create a bridge of any required length.

The July issue of the Annual 2018 previews a few of the new bitmap textures included in Dioramas 3, and once that is released, you can replace or expand the included textures in the drawing with the full set. The model is included both as a FCW file and a set of three A4/US Letter pdf pages that you can print as often as you like and need.

You can subscribe to the Annual 2018 here. Once you have subscribed, the July issue will immediately become available for download on your registration page.

Welcome to the June newsletter, dear cartographers! We take a look at the progress of Dioramas 3, and Remy helps us Understanding Styles in CC3+. Mike Schley writes about Mapping Narratives and Pär Lindström finishes his series with the third article on overland mapping. Finally, check out new Maps of the Month from the user community.

News

• Dioramas 3 is coming along nicely and should be in beta testing soon. Take a look at what’s on the Cartographer’s Desk to complete it.
• The June issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2018 is available.

Resources

• Remy explains the concept and details of drawing styles in CC3+. Check out this especially useful article!
• Check out some highlights of community-made maps in our Maps of the Month selection.

Articles

• Pär Lindström finishes his tutorial about drawing overland maps in CC3+.
• Mike Schley talks about Mapping Narratives, giving as an exclusive look into his thought processes when designing his beautiful maps.

As mentioned before on this blog, I am currently working on the full new version of our paper-miniature building add-on – Dioramas 3. I am pleased to report that we have a completed alpha version and release of the beta version is not far off. All the new assets are in place, and have been arranged in multiple drawing styles: two different bitmap styles and one vector style, recreating the old Pro-version style with some sheet effects added.

Next up is updating the Essentials Guide to take all the new stuff into account and producing a nice, big new example Diorama set. Checking on the Facebook community group people seem to be mostly looking for some common village buildings, so it’ll be a inn and tavern I’ll be creating – I’m looking at you, Tendril’s Oak Inn.

This will probably also mean breaking out my paper cutter, ruler and glue and getting my hands sticky to actually build the thing. It’s been a while since I’ve done that and I’m looking forward to it!

Here is the very first Dioramas building I ever designed and built, updated with the new bitmaps of Dioramas 3. It’s a rough recreation of the Sage’s Tower symbol from the “Fantasy Colors” set included in Symbol Set 1. The actual model I built has long gone the tragic way of all paper models: crumbled up and vanished into the recycling bin. But hey, now it can reincarnate as a new and prettier one.

Here is another collection of maps that have caught our eyes during the past month. They are taken from the CC3+ Facebook community and the ProFantasy forum, and as usual are just a quasi-random selection from the multitude of maps that have been posted. Enjoy!

A Small Castle by Linda Böckstiegel is a perfect little adventure environment somehwere out on the border. Mapped with a combinatin of City Designer 3 and Dungeon Designer 3 it also uses a variety of community assets for the symbols and textures (from the Vintyri colelction).

Edward Mark Dakin created the timeless desert city of Fahraj using City Designer 3.

The Inn of the Welcome Wench, a map from the Temple of Elemental Evil adventure, was recreated by Hans Anders Bergström in this beautiful version.

David Roush showcases the Ancient Realms style from the Annual Vol 9 beautifully in this little regional map. Who doesn’t want to explore the Enchanted Forest?

The little lakeside village of Plissken (any snakes here?) is a first map created by forum user Amadeus. Great use of Mike Schley’s overland style to create a local map!