The Sidebar

In the sidebar you will find occasional asides, including little tips and tricks, pointers to more elaborate techniques or general comments.

They are not necessary for drawing the map; so if you are concentrating on following the steps in the actual guide, feel free to skip the sidebar.

Mapping Guide: CC3 Overland Black & White

IntroductionWelcome to this Campaign Cartographer 3 mapping guide. If you subscribe to the Cartographer's Annual, you will be familiar with the concept of mapping guides. If you do not, here are a few words on using the guide.

A mapping guide takes you through the process of creating a map in one of the many drawing styles available in CC3 and its add-ons. It assumes basic familiarity with the drawing interface, which you achieve through following the quick-start tutorial or Essentials guide.

The quick-start tutorial is accessible through the Help menu in CC3. The Essentials guide can be found as a pdf document in the documentation folder or, if you own a hardcopy of CC3, in the booklet that comes with the CD-ROM.

While the mapping guide assumes you use a specific drawing style – CC3 Overland Vector BW in this case – the basic techniques are usually applicable to any style in CC3. Note that the methods shown are usually only one way to achieve a good-looking map. Feel free to experiment and come up with your own way of doing things.

Enough preliminary talk, let's start drawing the actual map…

Creating a Black and White Overland Map Using Vector Symbols

Starting a New MapWe'll start the new map via the New Map Wizard by clicking the New button. Choose the map type Overland, select Decide

settings myself and click .

Choose the map style CC3 Overland Vector BW, and again click

.

In the next dialog you can set the dimensions for your new map and add cartouches like compass roses and scale bars. We will use the standard size of 1000x800 miles for this example. Click the Bottom Left button and add the compass rose symbol, and on the Bottom Right

add the scale bar. Then hit , as we can skip the rest of the wizard's options.

At this point we have an almost blank drawing, containing only the map border, a compass rose and a scale bar.

The Coastline

The next step is to draw the outline of our landmass. Click the Default Landmass button in the top left corner of the screen. The default drawing tool for landmasses starts and the

command line at the bottom of the screen asks for the first point . Draw whatever coastline you want for your map. After creating the main landmass, add islands and smaller continents as necessary. You can use the same default drawing tool for this, or

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choose one of the alternatives by right-clicking the Default Landmass button.

As it is, the simply black coastline looks a bit unspectacular. To spruce up the map you can add some sea contours to the coast. Click the Default Contour Line button and add a first outline to the coast with the Default Contour Sea 01 tool.

Continue adding outlines until you're satisfied with the look. I usually keep it to two or three outlines, otherwise the map might look too crowded. Note that the different contour tools are of decreasing width and it looks best if you keep to that progression with your outlines.

Mountain Ranges

Now for some mountainous terrain on our map. Click the Minerals/Mountains catalog button; the mountain symbols catalog loads up in the catalog window.

Use the symbols to create mountain ranges, hilly areas and special features like volcanoes on the map. Don't worry about ordering the symbols correctly when placing them – the Sort Symbols in Map command will take care of that later – but try to place the mountains as discernible ranges, not big blobs of symbols.

Afterwards use the Sort Symbols in Map command from the Symbols menu on all symbols to bring the mountains into the correctly overlapping order.

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Hiding the Source

Unless you want to draw the river ever smaller towards its source, the start of the river can look a bit jarring, especially if you zoom in closely.

There is an easy way to avoid that. Simply start the river behind one of the mountain or hill symbols on the map, so that it looks like the river starts in a valley behind that mountain.

Rivers and LakesNext up are the rivers and lakes. If you are fine with rivers that are all the same width, simply click on the Default River button and draw each river in one piece. Use the On modifier (F4) to connect the river to the coastline at its mouth.

If you'd rather like your rivers to grow wider towards their mouth, right-click the Default River button instead and begin a river with the River Small tool at its source. Stop after drawing about a third of its length and continue with the River Medium tool. Use the Endpoint

modifier (F5) to attach the new section of the river to the first one.

Again, switch to the River Wide tool after the second third of the river and continue until you can attach the river's end to the coastline (or wherever it ends) with the On modifier.

Lakes can be added after drawing the rivers with the River Lake drawing tool. Right-click the Default River button to access this tool. Don't hesitate to draw them right across an existing river, as the lake body will hide the river line, creating the impression the river flows into the lake and out again.

VegetationLet's continue with some forests. Click the Default Terrain button to see a collection drawing tools containing different forests. Use them to add the main bodies of forests to your map.

Note that the result will probably look a bit too regular. Load the Vegetation catalog and add single trees and small fill symbols along the edges of the forest to give it a more natural look. Compare the two forests on the right to see the difference.

Also add other vegetation features like swamps, grassland, marsh etc. to the map. For all of these both drawing tools (under Terrain ) and symbols (in the Vegetation catalog) are available.

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Re-sizing Symbols

All symbols in one style are usually carefully matched to fit each other. Therefore you should normally not need to resize any symbols.

If you do feel like you need a larger or smaller symbol, I recommend keeping the size change to at most 50% of the original. Otherwise the symbol's lines will look too thin or too thick when compared to other symbols.

Natural FeaturesWe have almost finished with the natural landscape of our map. Use the appropriate Terrain

drawing tools to add deserts or wastelands, and place matching features from the Natural Features symbol catalog on the map. The Coast/Sea catalog contains more things you can add at this point, like reefs or iceberg symbols.

Structures and RoadsNow it is time to look at the human-made structures on the map like cities, roads, fortresses, etc. Open the Structures catalog and place the symbols you need. I usually start with the largest cities and most important locations, working my way down to small villages and minor landmarks.

Afterwards connect the settlements by roads. Either simply use the Default Road drawing tool or right-click the button to see a selection of differently-sized road tools. Again, I find it convenient to work from the most important routes down to the less significant ones.

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Text LabelsNow it's time to label the features on the map. Set the current drawing color to something that stands out. I use red (color 166) for this map style, but of course you are free to use whatever color you like best.

This drawing style uses the true type font "Book Antiqua" by default. If you want to change that, you can do so through the Text Properties button. I recommend using only one font – or two at the most – within one map, otherwise it will look chaotic.

Click the Text button and start adding labels. You can change size and angle dynamically using the Ctrl and Shift keys, as well as adjust the text's alignment by hitting the L, C, and R keys for horizontal alignment, as well as T, M, and B for vertical positioning.

Sheet EffectsEach style has its own sheet effects defined, and you simply need to turn on the effects by right-clicking the Sheets and Effects button to see the map in its full glory. Left click the same button to adjust the effects to your liking. This might be necessary if you are creating maps that are much larger than the default size of 1000x800 miles. Simply increase the size of effects like the Glow effect on the LAND sheet to adjust them for larger maps.

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More Mapping GuidesIf you enjoyed this mapping guide and it helped you to create a great-looking map, you might want to check out the ProFantasy's subscription service, the Cartographer's Annual. Now in its third year, the Annual gives subscribers new creative content each month. Each issue comes with a mapping guide that takes you through the steps of using it; similar to the guide you followed here.

Previous Annual years can be purchased as one bundle package like any other add-on to CC3.

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