The August issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2021 is now available for download. Follow a detailed tutorial on using repeating textures in CC3+.

The 10-page tutorial focuses specifically on the repeating patterns that can become very apparent and distracting in large bitmap fills, and how to mitigate and remove them as far as possible.

The live mapping session on ProFantasy’s YouTube channel on August 19th 2021 (6pm GMT+2) will focus on and expand this tutorial.

The August 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 rather standard feature of most CC3+ maps that I see many people are somewhat confused over or fail to use properly is the screen. For example, I get a lot of atlas submissions that have things sticking out on the outside of the screen. Thus, I thought I would dedicate a small article to talk a little bit about this feature.

The screen is that white polygon that can be found right outside the map border on most maps. But why is it there? What is the intended functionality of it? And how to best manipulate it? And how to avoid it being part of our output when we export our map to an image? I’ll talk about all these things here, to hopefully give you a bit more insight into this feature.

Note that this article is about the screen entity found on most maps, and not the Screen Border sheet effect.

Continue reading »

Remy Monsen has published two new video tutorials on creating your own symbols in CC3+ on his own YouTube channel.

Symbols – Part 1: Finding and Preparing Images

Symbols – Part 2: Creating a Symbol Catalog

We’ve continued our weekly live mapping sessions to great fun and success. Here is a list of the new videos on available on YouTube:

Modern Streets with Symbol Set 3 (by Remy Monsen)

Starship with Cosmographer 3

The Watabou City style from the January Annual 2020

The Spectrum Overland style from the June Annual 2020

Fractal Terrains 3 to CC3+

We’ve continued our weekly live mapping sessions to great fun and success. Here is a list of the videos now available on YouTube:

An introduction to CC3+ and the Mike Schley Overland style

An introduction to creating battle-maps with CC3+ and Dungeon Designer 3

An introduction to creating city locations along with linked buiding floorplans.

Converting an existing temple floorplan into an isometric view of the inside and outside of the building.

Creating a dungeon map connected to a natural cave system.

Welcome to part 4 of the Shore and Ocean Effects for Overland Maps series.

The example map for this part may already be familiar to you, since it is Arumnia, which was used in Part 3 to demonstrate Rhumb lines.

This time I will use the same map to show you a fast and easy way to add beaches, and a couple of alternative ways of using a drop shadow effect.  The FCW file for this version of the map will be available at the end of the article. Continue reading »

Welcome to the third part in the Shore and Ocean Effects for Overland Maps series.

In this part we well be focussing on adding rhumb lines to beautify a relatively smooth ocean texture.

Arumnia, the example map used in this tutorial, was drawn in the John Roberts overland style, which was recently included with the core CC3 app as part of Update 25.  If your software is up to date you do not need to own any of the annuals or add-ons to make use of the FCW file included in this blog. Continue reading »

Welcome to the second part of the Shore and Ocean Effects for Overland Maps series.

The example map for this tutorial is Arokan and Demorak, and was created using the Herwin Wielink overland style.

Creating ocean contours will take you a little longer than applying the edge striping sheet effects described in the first part of this series, but I hope you will agree with me by the time you have completed your first contoured ocean that the process is still very much worth the time spent creating them. Continue reading »

The Shore and Ocean Effects for Overland Maps article series covers a range of techniques that can be used to modify the appearance of the open water in an overland map to make it work in greater harmony with the rest of the map.

The example map, the Allaluna-Meloa Isles, was created using the Mike Schley overland style that comes with CC3.  Links to the different versions of this map have been included in this article for you to examine at your leisure.

Continue reading »

So your New Year’s Resolution for 2020 was to finally start (or re-start) using Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus, but you don’t know where to begin? Let us help you out with a selection of great tutorials and starting points.

Video Tutorials

If you are a visual learner and want to follow video tutorials, here are some we would recommend to start out with.

Josh Plunkett does a great job at introducing you to the basics of CC3+ as a newcomer in his first video.

Follow that up with his tutorial on overland mapping and you’ve got the basics down for any overland map straight out of CC3+:

For a longer look at creating a whole overland map, check our own video with Ralf describing the process of creating a map.

PDF Guides

If you prefer reading your tutorials and follow a pdf guide, there are some great choices too.

Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus comes with a pdf Manual, that is probably still one of the best ways to learn the software. Check it out here, and follow the instructions starting on page 24 to draw your first map.

A slightly less detailed, but still very useful step by step guide to creating a map, comes with the mapping guide for the Herwin Wielink style, that comes with CC3+, available in the Documentation folder or from this link.