Icons and Commands: Varicolor Creation
By Matthew Lynn
Good morning, mappers! My name is Matthew Lynn, and this is yet another column written by me. This series is intended to reduce the learning curve for mapping with Campaign Cartographer 2. This particular column is going to cover the varicolor feature for CC2 symbols. In particular, this second part will cover the method of creating a varicolor symbol.
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Icons & Commands (in order as they appear in the text) |
What will you need for this tutorial? First, Campaign Cartographer 2 from Profantasy, Inc (sorry, if you have Campaign Mapper, some of these features will require an upgrade to CC2). Then, install Universal Update 4. How do you get UU4? Register!
Now, enough of my chatter. If you did my Symbol Creation tutorial, you should have a copy of the Wizards Lab.fsc symbol catalog. If you didn't do that tutorial, go and do it! Or you can download the catalog here. Ready yet? Slowpoke! Hurry up! We can't start without you!:) |
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Icon |
Command | Summary | |
| NA | SYMINFO | Opens the Symbol Settings dialogue. | |
| In Part II of "Varicolor explained!", you were introduced to the SYMINFO command, and it's related dialogue. And now you're probably wondering what the dickens is a "collection" and how does it relate to my symbols? Well, we'll be referencing Image 1, which is the symbol settings dialogue.
To get to this dialogue, open the Symbol Manager, select a symbol, and then click on Edit. Once you've drawn your window, type SYMINFO at the command prompt. You should see the symbol settings dialogue appear. It will look something like Image 1.
Image 1. First, we will define a collection. A collection is a set of related symbols. These symbols would typically be labeled something like Tree 1, Tree 2, Tree 3, etc. Now, the primary purpose of this dialogue is to set some extra settings for the symbols in your catalog. The two I've used are the "Varicolor symbol" check boxes, which is touched upon in Part II of "Varicolor explained!", and the "Symbol is one of a collection" check box. This is the option we will be discussing today. When we check the "Symbol is one of a collection" box, we tell CC2 that this symbol will be part of a collection of related symbols. The new options for your collection will then be useable. As mentioned earlier, most collections have the same basic name, with a different ending. The first option, is to decide if your symbols end with a number, or a letter. This will be used by CC2 to determine what symbols to include in this particular collection. This must be set the same for each symbol of the collection. Next, we have two options that determine how a symbol is selected from the collection. The first one, is "Randomly select from collection". This one is my favorite, because it really brings out the power of collections. Each time you click on the collections first symbol, CC2 will select one random symbol from the collection. You still need to select the scale and rotation of the symbol normally. The second option is to let you manually chose your symbol by means of the arrow keys. This is also handy if the symbol selected just doesn't fit your expectations, or you don't want to use the random symbols option. I usually select both, to give myself the greatest variety of options. When done, hit OK. This will have to be done for each and every symbol you intend to have in each collection. Each one should have exactly the same options selected, or you may have problems later on. Seems like a long process? Yes, it is, but it's well worth the effort! Now you may return to your mapping! Please, while you're mapping, feel free to stop by the Mysaniti Cartographer's Guild and subscribe to the Guild! Or just visit the Previews page! |
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