Campaign Cartographer Battle Map Creation

Recently I wrote an article about how to start a battlemap in CC3 and upload it into Roll20.  I omitted all of the details about how to create said map.   This article will discuss some of teh challenges I have faced and what I did about them.  Perhaps most importantly, it will have links to other pages that give nitty gritty advice.

Streams & Cliffs

DD3 Battlemap Tutorial - by Shessar

I ran across a handy pair of tutorials by Shessar:

• DD3 Battlemap Tutorial: Part 1 Streams
• DD3 Battlemap Tutorial: Part 2 Cliffs 

 They seem well written and complete on their topic, so no additional expansion on it here.
 

Hills

Hills and elevation changes seem to be a challenge in CC3/DD3.  I ran across a how to article by ChrisDSA on the ProFantasy boards that gives an approach to How to draw height differences in a city map or a dungeon. 

Below is the final image created in his walk through:

 

Its not fantastic, but the slopped areas are easy to see, I'm hoping to duplicate that effect. I've also noticed that the OP was sloppy when referring to sheets.  He suggests creating a sheet called "Ground Level" and another called "Bevel Level."  While those are descriptive, they sure sound like levels not sheets. I'll call my sheets, sheets, not levels.

From followup discussion, Dogtag pointed out: 

Bevel, Lighted effect also has a Smoothing setting that you can adjust to round off the edges of the bevel and give it a more hill-like appearance.

An alternative approach is to use shading to suggest the hills.  This approach seems more photo-realistic and works with rounded hills.   It is also discussed in the same thread.

Bizarre Modes 

I managed to get my CC3 program into a funky selection mode, where I pretty much couldn't select anything.  This can result from a macro ending abruptly.  To fix it:

1. Go to Tools/Options... on the top menus and click,
2. Click the Select method button,
3. Make sure a selection method is picked on the radio buttons (Dialog or Popup is default),
4. Commit any changes made.

Tavern Battle Map 

As I wrestle with the learning cliff that is Campaign Cartographer, I'm looking for videos or tutorials that do something close to what i want.  This section records some of my learnings watching Jason Hibdon's CC3/DD3 Tutorial.

Starting Template

Jason quickly mentions the Annual Jon Roberts style that can be downloaded from the ProFantasy web site.  The annuals are located at: https://www.profantasy.com/products/sub.asp.  The Jon Roberts styles discussed are sample free annual content:

• Go to Volume 5 (2011),
• Free Issue: Jon Robert's Dungeons,
• Download Issue 54 and install. 

After that is installed.  Here is an outline of the steps:

1. Start Campaign Cartographer,
2. Select File/New... from the top menus,
3. Select Dungeons on the pop-up window, be sure Decide settings myself is checked and hit Next > button,
4. Select Annual Jon Roberts as the map style in the next pop-up and click Next > button,
5. Set Dimensions (in feet) and the Map Title and click Next > button,
6. Set Fill Style for the background (grass_dry_dark CA54 in the example), grid overlay should be off, click Finish button,
7. Select an appropriate file name and location and save your starting map with a border and background.

The next step is to create a grid overlay:

1. Select Draw from the top menu,
2.  Select Hex or Square Overlay... from the drop down menu,
3. Setup the Grid Overlay as desired, typically:
1. Square Grid,
2. Labeling  off,
3. Grid Spacing usually 5 for a Battle Map, 
4. Snap Grid settings seem unimportant, accept defaults, 
5. Click Apply button
4. You should see a fresh grid applied (it can be turned on/off as needed later)