Show all the sheets, set the snap grid to 10’ grid 2 snap, and copy the whole house to one side, leaving about 30 feet between the original and its duplicate. Zoom in on the duplicate, edit the label to show that it is the map file, hide all the sheets except the two ***Separation shadow sheets and delete the shadows from the map file drawing. Show all the sheets again and delete the chimney pots.
Using the change properties button move the entire map file drawing to the MAP FILE OBJECTS layer, and make the MAP FILE OBJECTS layer the active layer. Right click the hourglass button on the left and choose Move to Sheet, and move all the parts of the house as follows:
You should now have something that looks like this, with a white line defining each section of roof.
Using the change properties tool, change the fill of all the roof ridges and the chimney stacks to solid white.
Back when we aligned the fills and amended the automatic shading for the image file drawing, that amendment only worked for the textures. As soon as you change the properties of these aligned fill polygons to a solid colour the shaded polygons will show again and affect the blue and red values of the map file drawing, so we need to undo the alignment on all the parts of the roof that are aligned.
To do this make each of the 3 ***MAP ROOF sheets active in turn, and explode all the roof parts that are aligned on the active sheet (not the ridges or chimneys) so that the texture falls back to its default state. It is important to be on the right sheet for each roof part or the explosion may have unexpected results.
Open the colour palette and look at the top row of map file colours – the one with four colours in it.
The first map shade (178) is correctly set up for a north facing roof of standard pitch. Select it, and change the properties of the north facing rooftops to solid colour and shade 178. The second map shade (179) is set up for an east facing roof. Change the properties of all the east facing roof parts to this shade. This is how mine looks at this half way stage.
The third and fourth map shades are for the south and west facing roof parts respectively. So when you have finished changing the properties you should have a map file drawing that looks something like this.
And that’s all there is to it. The map file drawing is now complete.
Rendering the files
Create a new folder in the C:\ProgramData\Profantasy\CC3Plus\Symbols\User folder to be the home of your new house symbol. Mine is simply called “My Houses”.
Ensure that you have the 10’ grid 10 snap grid active and set to Snap, then use Save As… from the File menu, and pick Rectangular section PNG as the file type. Click the Options button in the Save As dialog and set the Width and Height dimensions to the dimensions you calculated for the render area rectangle, and which you should be able to read off the map. The filename you want is above the drawing.
Turn OFF the Antialias option.
Click ok and ok again, and when prompted for the first corner of the rectangle by the command line click on the bottom left corner of the rectangle around the map drawing, and then on the top right corner when prompted again for the second corner.
When this is done pan back across the map and do exactly the same thing for the image file drawing.
Making the background of both files transparent
Open the GIMP and go to File/Open and navigate to the My Houses folder where you saved your rendered images from CC3.
Open the image file.
Click the magic wand tool in the toolbox on the left hand side and make sure the Tool Options in the panel below the toolbox are set up so that the Mode is set to add to the selection, none of the boxes are checked, the Threshold is set to 130, and the Select by is set to Composite.
Then zoom in really close to anywhere on the left hand edge of the image by pressing CTRL and scrolling the middle mouse button, and click on the white area away from the house.
You should be able to see a black line down the edge of the image if you have zoomed in close enough. You need to click this with the wand, and also the white line right down the extreme edge until all the area that is not part of the house is selected in an area of ‘crawling ants’.
Go to the little thumbnail of the file on the right hand panel and right click it.
Select Add Alpha Channel from the drop down list, hover the mouse over the image in the main window again and press DELETE on your keyboard. This should entirely clear the background from the image file and leave a chequered pattern in view.
Don’t worry about the fact that the area is still selected. Go to the File menu, find where it says “Overwrite House 01.PNG” and click it.
Close the open file without saving it. You have already overwritten it with the new transparent version of the image file.
Select the wand tool and lower the Threshold setting to 50, then repeat this entire process for the map file, remembering to click the wand tool in all the islands of white in the middle of the map image. Make sure that all the white parts are gone.
Importing the new symbol
Go back to CC3+ and click the little button on the left under the Options button on the catalogue browser. There may already be symbols in there, but just ignore these. I have purged my own map of unused symbols just to make things a bit easier to see.
Open the Symbol Manager (menu item).
Click the Import PNGs button.
In the second dialog Browse to the My Houses folder in the Source folder box and double click on either of the files in the folder. The Highest Resolution should be set to 40 pixels per drawing unit, which is the default resolution for a city map. Check the Create other resolutions option and set the Symbol origin to the bottom right corner. Then click OK and wait for CC3+ to do its thing.
You will receive a short message letting you know that 1 new symbol was imported. Now check the view in the catalogue browser and scroll down to see if you can find your house waiting to be pasted.
And there it is.
Your new symbol has no specific settings, so you will have to manually choose the SYMBOLS sheet before pasting it to get the shadow around it.
You can carry on drawing and adding new house symbols in the same file until you have all that you want.
To make proper use of your new symbols you will need to make a catalogue of them. How to do this, and how to add the full functionality of a regular CD3 house symbol is covered in the Tome of Ultimate Mapping, and in part by a range of tutorials available from the sticky resources thread at the top of the Profantasy forum.
I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial, and that you get at least one new house symbol out of it. If you have any problems creating your new house symbols please drop by the Profantasy Forum and let us know. Have fun 🙂
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.
Software required:
Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus (CC3+) with the City Designer 3 (CD3) add-on
A bitmap editor (The GIMP v 2.10 is used in this tutorial, but any editor will suffice)
You can download a zip folder of the three files that comprise the template for this tutorial called
“House Builder (basic)” used in this tutorial from here.
Whenever we paste a house symbol into a map what we are actually pasting is a very flat image that probably looks a lot like this one.
CD3 symbols do not have roof shading. There are no ‘dark sides’ or ‘light sides’ in these flat-packed roof images, yet they appear on the map fully shaded the instant the symbol is pasted in the CC3 environment. So how is this happening?
CC3+ obtains information about the pitch and facing direction for each part of the roof by reading the colour coded message in a second file stored in the same location as the image, but which is never shown in the CC3+ environment. This second file has the same name as the image file, but with a “_map” suffix.
We need to make both types of file for our new house symbol, so to distinguish between them I will call them the image file and the map file respectively.
And here (below) is the symbol House 01 arranged in CC3 to show how the shading changes with the rotation of the building – all calculated by CC3 using the information contained in the map file, and adjusted to take account of the global sun setting and the rotation of the symbol. Continue reading »
The Town of Corvallen has gone through a number of iterations in its role as a model for the “Isometric Town” style of the February Annual issue.
In addition to seeing the final version in the now-available Annual, you can now read up on Sue Daniel’s method of constructing the map, as well as all the small adjustments she did to make the map the work of art it is.
In February’s Annual we are looking at city mapping once more, but with a twist: The Annual issue contains an isometric style that Sue Daniel has created by building house models in SketchUp and exporting them as CC3+ symbols.
Created as full 3D models the symbols are based on real-world Tudor-style houses and fit together seamlessly at various angles, allowing you to create streets lined by adjoining houses. resulting in a beautiful and evocative, three-dimensional view of the settlement.
If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe to the Annual 2019 here. If you are already subscribed, the February issue will be available for download on your registration page on the first of February.
We’re continuing Jay Johnson’s City Mapping article with the third and final part.
Adding Details
Little details add a great deal to a map. Look at these two images. The first is with trees and pathways in the courtyards. The second is without them. How much difference do these details make in your opinion? In my opinion, they make a big difference.
Shadows
Another detail you can work on is your shadows. I adjusted the shadow settings on my buildings so they intrude more into the streets. The places where the streets are covered in shadow creates a sense of danger and mystery, don’t you think.
The City’s History
Think about your city’s history and include details that suggest a city that has evolved. Your city should have a nucleus (the original settlement) from which it expanded. Consider how this expansion took place and the different phases through which it occurred. Think about how your city has grown. If there were old walls, roads that ran beside them most likely now mark where they once were. Maybe sections of these walls still stand or roads pass beneath old gates that are located far from what is now the city’s perimeter. What other changes may have occurred as your city grew?
Some More Advanced Techniques
Let’s take a minute to talk about some more advanced techniques I have used. Some that require using other programs in conjunction with CC3+ and its add-ons. Continue reading »
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We continue Jay Johnson’t city mapping article with part 2. Go here for part 1.
Building Construction Techniques
I think we are at the point where I should talk about some of my building construction methods. Here are some techniques for making complex structures utilizing the HBT.
Splicing
The first building we will construct is what I will call the Building with Enclosed Courtyard. The technique I used for this can be used to construct all kinds of variations and is also what I used to construct the city walls around Melekhir. We will refer to this technique as splicing.
First choose the building style you want in the HBT. Ensure the House shape is set to option nine which is the trapezoid shape and the Roof type to option one which is gable. Continue reading »
Before we get started with our conversation about mapping cities with Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus (CC3+), I should probably introduce myself. My name is Jay Johnson and I go by Texas Jake on both the ProFantasy Forum and the Cartographers Guild Forum. I have always loved maps and history and I am a bit of a perfectionist by nature. You can see examples of my maps on the ProFantasy Forum. My map of the border outpost of Tarkas was one of the ProFantasy Blog’s Maps of the Month for October 2018. You can also view the current map I am working on of the City of Melekhir. It is a map of a city that covers over one square mile of land area (that’s massive, what was I thinking when I started such a ginormous project!).
When I purchased CC3+ (to make a map for a series of books I am writing) and started down the road of mapping, I had no idea all I would discover—about the use of CC3+, about medieval cities and about the art of mapmaking. CC3+ opened up a whole new world of mapmaking to me. I started by doing some overland mapping (and was astonished by the quality of maps I could produce while still learning the basics of the program), but it wasn’t long before I ventured into the realm of city mapping. Mapping cities can be challenging, fun, sometimes frustrating, but in the end quite rewarding. I would like to take this opportunity to share some of what I have learned along the way.
First, let me define what kind of cities we are talking about. The type of cities we will be discussing are fantasy cities based on those from medieval Europe. The kind that can be found in many of the fantasy stories we have read or viewed. The purpose of our conversation is to learn not only the use of CC3+ to make maps of cities, but also to learn about the art of making city maps.
It could be argued that the art of mapmaking is more important to making good maps than the tools you use to accomplish it. I believe there is some truth to this argument. I would go on to say that a good mapmaker can make a good map whether he or she uses pen and paper, Photoshop, or CC3+. The more we understand about making a readable and believable map, the better map we will make regardless of the tools or medium we choose. Our objective is to make a map that effectively communicates to the viewer the information we desire to convey. If we fail to do this, everything else we do is pointless. We also want to make a believable map. To do this, we need to avoid pitfalls like using magic as an excuse to justify something that would be implausible in the real world. If we do deviate from the norm, there should be a good reason for doing so. We can make exceptions to reality, but they should be made for a reason, not as an excuse. Understand that the more exceptions we make, the less believable our map becomes.
As we make this journey together, I am going to assume a few things, one of them is that you have the City Designer 3 (CD3) add-on. We will be making use of tools and elements from CD3 and since I bought the Top Three bundle when I got CC3+ (which includes CD3 and Dungeon Designer 3), I am less conscious of what tool came with which product.
Let’s Get Started
Where to start? Now that is the question. Let’s start by determining what kind of city we want to map. You must think about the size of the city you plan to map and determine the size canvas you will need to map it on. If you are just starting on your journey as a mapmaker, this can be a hard question to answer accurately. I know that I have had to restart maps several times because I answered this question incorrectly. The problem of fantasy mapping is that we define what we are mapping and we create the data. If our conception of what we want is not entirely clear, we open the door for inaccurate conclusions to enter. So, take a little time and think about how big your city is going to be and then you may want to allow yourself just a bit more space than that. It is good to allow extra space so that the shape of your city is defined by design and not by the constraints of your canvas. How many times do fantasy cities end up square or rectangular because that is the boundaries of the canvas. Our cities should be defined by their terrain, not by our canvas. Do your research. Know as much as you reasonably can about your city before you start to draw it out. Understand, of course, you will learn more as you put it down on (digital) paper. Sometimes the discovery may amaze and surprise you.
A resource that may help you is this site which has many historic city maps.
If you are new to CC3+, get to know the software. You need to gain a bit of skill with your tools. One of the first things I did when I was new to CC3+ was watch the excellent videos by Joe Sweeney to get a handle on the software. You can find his videos here. After watching some of his videos I would do some mapping with CC3+. When I had a question or encountered a problem I would go back for more or break out the manual. One of the best ways to learn is by doing (at least for me it is). Make a few practice maps to develop some familiarity with the product. I have heard complaints that CC3+ is hard to learn. There is a bit of a learning curve to it, but there is with any product. I promise you if you put in the effort to learn to use the software you will be rewarded—and you will get past the steep end of the learning curve faster than you may think if you are diligent.
Another tremendous resource is the Tome of Ultimate Mapping by Remy Monsen. It is available from ProFantasy and is a wealth of knowledge. It also includes an excellent tutorial on mapping cities to help you learn the basics.
Your city should have a reason for being. What resources are available: minerals, lumber, stone, etc.? There must be sources of food and water (unless, of course, your inhabitants are stone statues that do not eat or drink, but I think they are probably not). What about trade routes? Think about these things and their locations in relation to your city and what impact they have on it.
After you have determined the size of your city and have achieved some degree of proficiency in the use of CC3+, you need to determine what CC3+ style you want to use for your city. Understand you can
borrow elements from other styles to supplement your choice. You can even create your own style if you care to. If you are unfamiliar with CC3+ city styles I would recommend making a small sample map with the styles you are considering to see which one will best suit your needs.
Time to Make a Map
Okay, now let’s get into my process for mapping cities (finally, you say). The first thing I do is define the terrain. If you’re mapping a city that is on an overland map, you can look to that map for information. Locate the hills, the mountains, and very importantly, the rivers. After you define the terrain, determine the location of the city on the terrain.
The next thing I do is lay out the major roads. The roads that connect the cities to the rest of the world and resources and the roads that are the major arteries inside your city. This will give you a skeleton, so to speak, to work off of and flesh out. At this stage I determine where the main marketplace will be. If there is a castle or palace, this would be a good time to locate it. It will influence your roads and was probably there before, or near to the beginning of, the city. During this stage it is also good to consider what important structures, locations and features you want to include in your city—maybe an important temple, or a large arena where chariots race or gladiators fight. Now would be a good time to place them on the map. That way you make sure there is a place for them, and major sites like these will have a great influence on your road network.
When you place buildings, you can put roads down first then add the buildings or you can add the buildings then place the roads. I have done it both ways and either will work. It is a matter of preference and, at different points in your mapping, one way may prove better for you than the other.
Talking about buildings. If you look at historic maps and at old sections of cities that have survived from the medieval period, buildings tend to be built right up against each other. They are also right on the street, not set back as is common in the residential neighborhoods many of us are familiar with. This will be the preferred situation in our map. Because of this, the random street tool (which is great for laying down houses fast) will not be our preferred method of adding buildings. I also don’t use the premade buildings very often in my maps. I prefer to make my own using the House Builder Tool (which we will henceforth refer to as the HBT). This allows us to have much greater flexibility concerning the design of the buildings we are placing on our map.
When I was early in the process of mapping out Melekhir, I struggled to come up with convincing-looking buildings and building clusters. After several attempts (which I quickly deleted) I stumbled on an ingenious idea (okay, maybe ingenious is a bit much). I decided to bring up the city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Google Earth and copy some buildings. Why Rothenburg? Because I had visited the city a few times when I was living in Germany and I knew it was an authentic walled city that had maintained its medieval charm. I replicated a few buildings—they weren’t exact copies—but I liked the results. I copied a block of buildings and I really liked the results. Hey, this felt authentic (of course it felt authentic because it was authentic). I copied several more sections of the old city. And you know what? After this exercise in replication, I was able to create buildings and clusters of my own that felt authentic. I had acquired a feel for it.
Let’s take a step back. Before I made this amazing discovery (okay, maybe amazing is a bit much also), I had used Google Earth to take measurements of streets and buildings and blocks of several historic cities. I recorded my findings and developed some standards to guide me in my mapping.
Did you know Google Earth has a nifty measure tool that will measure distance in meters (and also feet for us backwards Americans).
My measurements told me that main streets were usually between 16-18 meters (52-59 feet) wide, building face to building face. So, to keep it simple, I set my main streets at a width of fifty feet. Side streets were 6-8 meters (20-26 feet) wide, so I set my side streets at 20 or 25 feet wide. Alleys were as narrow as 4 meters (13 feet) so alleys would be approximately 12 feet wide. I also used my building measurements as a guide to how big buildings should be. Based on the measurement of several marketplaces I determined my main marketplace would be approximately 100 feet by 300 feet.
Grids
One of the first things I do when setting up a map in CC3+ is create several square grids on their own sheets, but on a common layer. This way I can turn them on and off individually. For a city map, I create the following grids: 5 feet, 25 feet, 100 feet, 250 feet, and 1000 feet (if the map is very large like Melekhir). I set the transparency of these grids to 50% or less so I can see through them and make sure they are contrasting colors (so I can distinguish between them). If you make sure they are all on the same layer you can turn on and off whatever combination is active via layers. These grids prove very valuable in keeping everything scaled properly. That said, I often map with them off once I get a feel for scale. If you do this, be sure to zoom out every once in a while. If you are working zoomed-in, things can get out of proportion to the rest of the map. I have stayed zoomed-in for extended periods of mapping only to zoom out and realize I have gotten dreadfully out of scale. That said, don’t be afraid to redo something that is off. If you fix it early it is usually a fairly simple and relatively painless operation (and you will be able to sleep at night knowing it is fixed).
The City Mapping article by Jay Johnson will continue next month.
Jay Johnson is an aspiring author working on an epic fantasy series. He has always loved maps and, like many of us, was introduced to fantasy cartography through the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. His map-making has become an integral part of his writing process — a process he says often seems more like discovery than creation.
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Joe Sweeney has started a new series of video tutorials – this time on mapping a city using City Designer 3. Check it out and follow his progress on YouTube:
Scott created this wonderful little symbol catalog of celtic dwellings which fits perfectly in with the symbols of City Designer 3, so we decided to make it available as a mini-add on. The download is available from your registration page if you have City Designer 3 registered. Here is Scott’s introduction to the catalog:
The Celtic symbol set started quite by accident. I was building a set of texture fills in Genetica and decided to include a thatch. That was achieved by layering dried grass patterns in Genetica and then using GIMP to hand-drawn in individual strands before finishing it back in Genetica by softening and blurring the image and making it seamlessly tileable. Once finished, I wanted to test it out on a typical round Celtic house and was mostly pleased with the way it looked. That just happened to coincide with something I was reading about the Iron Age, so I delved deeper into the details of Celtic villages. The variety of building styles intrigued me. While the majority of the structures were round, they did raise the more traditional square buildings, as well, for barns and storehouses and eventually as houses.
Typical Celtic villages were set up around a large common structure where the village could meet. Security was in the form of either an earth and stone berm, or a stockade fence built from sharpened logs, sometimes with an elevated walkway used as a lookout and for defensive purposes. Buildings started with a stone base; log supports were added and covered in thick bound thatch, overlapping bottom to top to keep out rain. Trenches were often dug around buildings to move rainwater away from the structures.
The lack of chimneys is not an oversight. Celtic structures had no chimneys. Holes in the roofing caused updrafts which threatened to set fire to the thatch, so fires were built in the center of the structures and the smoke simply rose and seeped out through the thatching. The smoke was also a deterrent to mold and fungal growth in the damp thatch.
The final set of symbols is quite different from the originals, with ragged edging and steeper pitches to the roofs. Numerous color shades from greens to yellows to browns were tested on the thatch texture until I decided on the hue. The various symbols represent different types of Celtic structures, from small grain silos to houses and barns to large meetinghouses. Still others existed. The initial symbols were created in CC3+ and then modified in GIMP.
The map was made in CD3, Bitmap A style, with a few fills imported from the Overland catalog. It is just a quick example. I’m very excited that ProFantasy deemed my little collection of symbols worthy enough to offer to CC3+ users, and hope people enjoy and can use them. Besides thanks to the ProFantasy staff, a thanks needs to go out to mapping maestra, Sue Daniels, who was instrumental in helping me get the symbols to their final finished stage!
We are very happy to present a new drawing style by Sue Daniel for the September Annual 2018. At heart it is a city style using City Designer 3 functionality for the roofs of the temples to generate automatic shading, and it is specifically designed to create Japanese-style temples in high detail. Later in the year we will expand on this to create a full-blown Asian city style.
In the meantime this style has all the material to create beautiful temple layouts with a variety of roof styles and many bitmap fills and vegetation symbols. After all, what would a Japanese temple be without a veritable host of blossoming cherry trees?
You can subscribe to the Annual 2018 here. If you are already subscribed, the September issue is now available for download on your registration page.
Building Construction Techniques
Okay, now let’s get into my process for mapping cities (finally, you say). The first thing I do is define the terrain. If you’re mapping a city that is on an overland map, you can look to that map for information. Locate the hills, the mountains, and very importantly, the rivers. After you define the terrain, determine the location of the city on the terrain.
