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Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

Started by Battlecat, February 10, 2009, 06:39:50 PM

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BarbarossaS

#60
Really beautiful rural area you've created there, Battlecat.
I like the amount of detail you use on the riverside and such.

Big  :thumbsup: for this one.

I'll definitely be stopping by here more often  ;)

Edit: In picture 7-9, in the lower right corner, you use some kind of trail in that pasture. What is that exactly,
because I've looked everywhere, but haven't found it yet  :(

rooker1

Hello Battlecat,

This is a fantastic picture.  If you could cover some of those corners on the farm land with trees, just to round it off a little and get rid of the map edge, I would be willing to call it just about perfect.  &apls



Awesome work in here and I will be back for more for sure.

Robin  :thumbsup:
Call me Robin, please.

Battlecat

Update 9 – Mountain Rivers and Recreation

Hello everyone!  Welcome back once again.  Sorry it took so long to get this one ready, it's been a busy week!  As I mentioned in my last update, today I'm going to finish off the Delmar Junction area, specifically the valley indicated at the end of the last update.  But of course, first:

Corey (Nexis4Jersey): Glad you're continuing to enjoy the project!  I'd sure like to visit Adara in person as well!

Youcefk69: Thanks for stopping in and for your kind words!  Glad you like it!

Jim (jmyers2043): Welcome to Adara!  Thanks very much for all your hard work in creating many of the farms I've been using here.  I'm very glad you stopped in, and even more glad you approve of my alterations to that farm!

Guillaume (Sciurus): Hello once again!  Thanks for your kind words.  I'll quite happily put together some more detailed descriptions of how I'm creating all this and the methods and materials I'm using!  But the one key thing I've found is that using all the new plopable stuff makes a huge different particularly for rural areas.  Between the water, grasses, flowers shrubs and trees, incredible details are possible when compared with 2.5 years ago!

FrankU: Glad the improved farm selection works for you.  I actually haven't cleaned out my plugins folder, I'm just demolishing any undesireable farms that come up.  It does leave me space for an oddity once in a while! 

I was actually quite surprised that it was possible to remove the extra tiles from farms without disrupting the farm function.  It allows a great deal of flexibility in detailing.  Glad you like the blending!  Oh and don't worry about that little slip, I come close to doing the same thing in here every once in a while.

Boernie: Welcome!  Thanks very much for your kind words.

BarbarossaS: Hello!  Thanks for stopping in!  I sent you a PM on this one, but for anyone else who's wondering, the fences and gravel paths are part of the Rural Renewal project by ChrisAdams3997 and can be found here.  The lots appear in your water utilities menu. 

Robin (Rooker1): Hello once again!  Glad you like it, at this point the edges are hard to avoid.  Hopefully I'll be able to do something to deal with them in the future, but in the meantime I've got a new image in the same vein I see what you mean about a few of those square spots on the farms though.  I'll have to see what I can do about that in the future!  Thanks for stopping in!

Now, on with the update.  This mountain river posed several challenges and I've actually been creating and erasing details in this area since I started this journal.  After all, that lake was specifically pointed out in the very first update and yet I haven't come back to it until now.  I've finally figured out a style I like, I hope you all like it as well.  So here we go:

9-1: Here's the area that I'm going to work today.  First, I'll pick up where the details already exist in the lower valley.


9-2: And detailing the valley.  It's hard to see with all the other details, but if you look carefully you can see some river rocks scattered along the riverbanks to indicate the higher energy this stream has coming out of the mountains. 


9-3: Before I move any further up the river, I left this area clear specifically for some sort of detail other than trees. 


9-4: One small campground straight out of Pegasu.s Productions Mountain trails set.  I actually tweaked the layout a touch after creating this picture.  I moved the furthest out yellow tent up one tile further to make room for some more details. 


9-5: Here an example of what's been plaguing me with this area for so long.  I've been having a great deal of difficultly figuring out how to detail these shorelines so they are distinct from the rivers in the valley bottom.  I decided on a much rockier shore for this lake. 


9-6: Continuing on with the details, I'm using a mixture of the west coast rainforest controller and the spruce trees controller (same one used for the edge of  watercourses in David's Three Rivers Region project).  And as I mentioned in 9-3, I moved the tent to create a trailhead for the lakeshore walk to the head of the lake. 


9-7: And here's the finished campground from another angle.  A gravel road makes it's way up to the main highway.  There are some rapids downstream from the lake in the upper right corner (Created by Dedgren for the 3RR project). 

9-8: Looking from another angle reveals a better view of the rapids and a waterfall on this river.


9-9: Halfway there now that trees are planted all along the highway side of the valley, just need to do some more work on the lakeshore. 


9-10: At the upper end of the lake, a small stream flows out of the mountains. 


9-11: Here is the outflow of the lake, now with the completed trees and details.  I added several more logs to the bottom of the lake as is often seen in mountain lakes around my region. 


9-12: And one more overview of the now finished lake area. 


That's it for construction in the Delmar Junction tile for the moment.  I might come back and tweak some things in the future but for now I'm happy.  Before I leave you today, here's one more picture for you, a composite showing the entire finished map tile.  Click on the picture below to load the full sized .png image that is 2.69 megabytes in size. 



If the picture doesn't work for any reason, just let me know and I'll upload an alternate version.  Next time, one more Delmar Junction related update, and then your first look at Delmar Junction's new neighbor.  Thanks for visiting, hope you continue to enjoy your visits to Adara.

LE0

Leoland coming Spring 2009


BarbarossaS

Wow, excellent update!
I'd love to go camping near that lake, it's beautiful  ;)

You're the first person (besides pegasus himself of course, LOL) I know who puts the
mountain theme pack from pegasus to good use  :P

Keep those awesome updates coming!

Stijn

btw: thanx for the pm, explaining the trails to me a little earlier than you did here  :thumbsup:

Simpson

WOW  :o
The two last updates are incredible, some of these pictures could be in HoF  &apls
The river is looking excellent, as well, nice wok with the TPW :thumbsup:

I'm looking forward to the next update
Take care,
David
My new city is now here
The région of Kaikoura

Teaser of Lopsas[+ How did I do it?]:Lopsas

FrankU

This is a really nicely detailed picture. Wow, indeed! :thumbsup:

I like the way you made the lake and the surroundings of it. You really put an effort in every part of your work. Make me jealous and you almost convince me to do a rural region myself.

But at the time I am working on an urban region with lots of seaport stuff. And now finally I want to get some skyscrapers. After having played SC4 for four years now I never got that far that I had skyscrapers growing.  :'(
Always being distracted by other interesting stuff.

This is really an endless game. &apls

Sciurus

L'atelier d'architecture
* * * * * Longwy * * * * *

io_bg

Visit my MD, The region of Pirgos!
Last updated: 28 November

Mulefisk

Excellent work. Probably some of the best stuff I've seen on Sc4D in a while. (Not that I'm here that often though).

My favorite area is probably the campsite. I really like the feeling you managed to create. The rocky shoreline works really well, and the way you make waterways in general is very impressive.

I don't really have much else to say except keep up the great work.

Battlecat

Update 10 – Concerning Maps

Hello everyone!  As you may have gathered from the title, I'm going to take a look at creating some maps for Adara.  However, there are some replies to check up on first!

LE0: Hello, thanks for stopping by again!  I would love to go camping at that lake; it is very similar to some campgrounds I visit during the summer. 

Neofita: Welcome to Adara!  Thanks for your kind words!

BarbarossaS: Hello once again, glad I could help you find those fence and path parts.  I've seen Mountain Theme Pack components in a few journals, but you are right that they are pretty rare.  I quite like it though, helps round out the rural theme I'm working on here.  Thanks for the kind words!

David (Simpson): Glad you like the last two updates so much, I think they represent some of my best work to date.  Thanks for your kind words about the picture competition.  I actually entered picture 8-13 from update 8 last week, and was pleasantly surprised to discover it made the Hall of Fame!

FrankU: Hello!  Thanks for your kind words!  You are absolutly right about this game being endless.  There are so many ways to approach construction in this game; it's really hard to pick just one.  I've had trouble developing large cities in the past as well, it's probably at least part of why I lean towards rural areas. 

Guillaume (Sciurus): Thanks very much!

io_bg: Thanks for stopping in!  Glad you like it!

Mulefisk: Welcome to Adara!  Thank you very much for stopping in!  I'm happy to hear the campsite turned out so well, that whole area has been a challenge for me right from the start! 

Now then, before I move forward with new mapping for Adara I'm going to revisit some of my very old maps from Terra to refresh my memory on where I've been so far.  I've seen a lot of amazing efforts with maps since I returned to the game, so I'm going to start with where I've been so far.  My first attempt at mapping used the oblique shots from Region Census with either the transportation layer (with zoning) or the image view.  Here's what came of that in my old City Journal, Terra way back in 2006.

10-1: Terra Oblique City Boundaries in 2006


Oblique maps present a fairly major problem with mapping.  When you draw features on an angle like this it's nearly impossible to get an accurate scale.  Plus, it limits the amount of information you can put on the map.  Also, I like to measure things.  Call it an idiosyncrasy of the job; it makes my fingers twitch when I do all this work and can't get scale information out of a data set.

The problems above lead me to the second and third map styles from Terra. 

10-2: Terra Map - Flat Style


10-3: Terra Map – Topographic Style


As a cartographer, these maps make me much happier.  The top down view means that the data can be measured and compared to the real world.  Most of the issues I had with these maps were behind the scenes with the styling, and the ease of updating. 

So, for my return to mapping, here are the first drafts of the Adara map.  Yes drafts!  I've been brainstorming various styles for the terrain on these maps and other theming techniques.  These particular are intended to be comprehensive topographic maps for each map tile.  I'll produce some smaller sized stuff in the future.  Each of the following maps links to a larger, more legible version of the map (about 1.5 megabytes).  Let me know if you have a preference, since I don't intend to produce all these styles on a regular basis going forward!

My apologies for the size of the images here, they're ever so slightly larger in size than the recommended image size (800 x 715).  Please let me know if it's breaking anything and I'll see what I can do about changing them to smaller versions!

10-4: Adara Map Style 1: This map just uses a white background.  Some of the improvements over Terra include improved contour lines, point features and more detailed road classifications. 


10-5: Adara Map Style 2: Theming the black and white .png from SC4 terraformer gives us this map style.  Still going to need to work on this data though, it's a bit blocky right now.  Hmmm, actually I just had an idea on how to fix that while writing this.  I'll shoot for it in a future update!


10-6: Adara Map Style 3: Finally the green wash.  This is the style used on the British Columbia Topographic maps.  The real world versions of these maps don't show details like zoning, but it seems to have worked out fairly nicely here.   


You might be interested to know that I used the exact same software and techniques that I used in my job to create this information.  If enough people are interested in hearing the details about how I've gone about this, I'd be happy to show you all the methods and software I'm using to do this. 

I'm still not entirely happy with all the line styling on the maps, the minor contour lines are a bit to thin and the major ones thicker than I expected.  Also, I'm going to have to look for a method to create more legible maps that will fit within the 800x600 image limits so I don't force you to link to every map I create.  But I'm generally happy with the start on this.  Besides, now that I've got maps, I can put them to use:

10-6: This is the next tile I will be developing.  I'm going to start creating the same free form city boundaries I used in Terra, I just like the organic feel it gives the region.  The working name for the entire tile and the main community on it is Alexandria. 


I believe I'll wrap it up here today.  It's been a productive update but there's still so much more to come.  Hope you all continue to enjoy your visits to Adara!

Simpson

Hi !
The region is looking fantastic  :o this update 10 is, as well, superb.
I also want to congrat you for the picture in HoF

Take care,

David
My new city is now here
The région of Kaikoura

Teaser of Lopsas[+ How did I do it?]:Lopsas

BarbarossaS

Yeah, congrats with the HoF, I helped to make sure you got there  :P

Like the maps a lot, but seeing as you're a cartographer, that shouldn't really come like a suprise  ;)

Keep those great updates coming, I'll be in the first row!

knuckleball

Nice work on this region!  I'm working on a region that's very similar to this so I will be sure to check back on this.  Looking forward to seeing more! :thumbsup:
It's just that I'm the quiet type, that's all.

dedgren

Mmmmmmmmmm!- maps.

OK, I'm officially green with envy.  I always wanted to be a cartographer.  Urban planner was about as close as I got, but I always made sure that I had a hand in developing the maps for whatever project I was assigned to.

What carto software are you using?  You always gotten great results with it.  Again, I'm jealous...


David
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

threestooges

Sorry I've been a bit quiet in here lately (perhaps I could say I was rendered speechless by the pics). The little split in the river in 9-10 is really well done. At first glance it looked like it was three dimensional, and 9-12 just looks realistic. Vaguely reminds me of Donner Lake when driving past on I-80 (the top-down point of view). Very well done.

Now the maps... the maps are just incredible. I'd love to know how you made them (and perhaps if you're open for comissions, heh heh). Splendid work, I'll be keeping an eye out for more.
-Matt

RBC

I'm so much in awe of your work, Battlecat!

In some way I wish I had your skills, but in another way I'm happy I haven't - if so I wouldn't find time to do anything else than play SC4. Damn this is good...

Battlecat

Update 11: Method used to Create Adara Maps

As the title indicates, I'm going to continue discussing maps today.  Specifically, the core of the method I use to create the maps.  First though:

David (Simpson): Thank you for all you kind words, and for the congrats! 

BarbarossaS: Greetings and thanks for your vote in the competition!  Glad you like the maps, I've got a bit more on that today. 

Knuckleball: Welcome to Adara!  I'm glad you've found some inspiration here, hope to see you post your work someday in the future!

David (dedgren): Thanks very much for your kind words.  After seeing your work in 3RR it means a lot to me.  Your work there is easily on par with many professional cartographers simply because you pay attention to details.  I've written this update to help answer your question about how I'm making my maps. 

However keep in mind once you get past the tools that I use to make this easier for me to manipulate the data, catography really comes down to careful decisions about appropriate colors, line styles, lable placement and the overall layout of your map.  I've seen some utterly hideous maps made by professionals using the very software I'm working with since they were never taught how to make careful choices about style.

Matt (threestooges): Hello, and thanks for your kind words!  I was really surprised at how that small river turned out in the end.  You're right about it resembling Donner Lake (near Lake Tahoe right?).  My personal inspirations were the lakes in Cathedral Lakes Provincial Park in southern BC although they don't have a highway nearby. 

Also glad you like the maps!  I hope I've managed to answer your question about how I make them in this update.  As for the possibility of comissions, I'd have to think on that.  The biggest challenge in data creation from SC4 is that you really need to know what you're looking at on your maps.  There might be one or two things I could provide to help with your traditional map making, but further experiments will be necessary. 

RBC: Welcome!  Thanks for your kind words!  Most of the work I've done here just require patience and a willing to use the bulldozer tool when something doesn't look right! 

So, the most commonly asked question after the last update seems to be "how did you make those maps?" or "what software did you use to make those maps?"  This is not an answer easily provided in a single sentence.  So today I'm going to go through the processes and programs I use to do this.  I'm using the same software that I use to do my job on a day to day basis simply because it's the easiest solution for me. 

WARNING: The following is a fairly technical description of methods I use to manipulate map data!!

Part 1: Creating the Map Data

I break map creation into two separate parts.  The first part takes the raw data from Simcity 4 and turns it into something I can work with. 

11-1: First I use printscreen to obtain the data view screen shots from Simcity 4.  So far I've been using the transportation view and the zoning view.  Then I crop them down to size in the same way everyone else does.  Additionally, I also export the black and white .png file from SC4 terraformer for later use. 


11-2: I then fire up Autodesk Map, which is effectively Autocad with mapping tools included.  I use it because it's the software I'm most comfortable doing data entry in.  First I create a series of tiles 4000 meters x 4000 meters (the size of a large map tile).


11-3: Next I insert the picture into the drawing and scale it so it fits into the appropriate map tile. 


11-4: Now it's just a simple case of tracing all the edges and boundaries using the line tools in Autocad.  For some things such as the plopable water, I refer to my screenshots to make sure I'm getting it right.  Each class of thing I create is put on a different layer in Autocad. 

For example, I keep city streets separate from gravel roads out in the country on separate layers even though the game treats them the same.  The small amount of bookkeeping now makes the next steps much easier. 


While Autocad is great for creating data, it's not so useful for theming the map data so it looks (believe me, I've tried). 

11-5: This is where it gets a bit complicated.  I now load up a program called FME, which stands for Feature Manipulation Engine.  This is an extremely powerful program used for the translation and analysis of spatial data.  For my job it does about 8 hours of work per day in about an hour of computer time.  This is a workspace I'm using for Adara Maps. 


It's just a simple flow chart but each of those little boxes do a specific function such as adding an attribute to a line or moving a picture to the right location in space.  For the purpose of making maps here I use this program for two tasks.  First it takes all those lines I drew in Autocad and turns them into shapefiles.  Shapefiles are spatial data with attributes attached to it.  I can then use those attributes to add a theme style in the third program I use. 

The second and more difficult task it does is it takes the black and white PNG from SC4 terraformer and generates contour lines from it at specific intervals.  The resulting contours are also converted to shapefiles.  It takes approximately 5 minutes to create the contour lines for the entire Adara Region using this program. 

11-6: Just to give you an idea of what's going on, here's a shot of the flow chart above:


Step 1: This transformer removes all the contours below the value I've identified as sea level.  The next one renumbers them starting from the new zero point.

Step 2: This transformer identifies all the contours which fall at an even 100 meter interval.  Then the testing transfomer routes all the ones that pass that test to a route that gives them a new attribute "Major" and everything else gets give the value "Minor".  It will make classification much easier later.

Step 3: This one box looks at all the lines I've generated so far and removes any jagged edges from it creating a smoother edge. 

Step 4: This box takes the smooth contours above and creates a new black and white image from them which should be much softer than the one presented in picture 10-5.

Step 5: This cluster does the exact same thing as Step 2 except this time at a 50 meter interval. 

Step 6: This box creates a shapefile which will contain all the contour lines. 

All this work leads me to the second part of my method. 

Part 2: Theming the Map Data

11-7: Finally I take the shapefiles and bring them into the third program called ArcGIS.  This program can do most of the things I did with the previous programs, it's just a lot more time consuming.  What it does well is theming.  From here it's just a case of working with the tools in this program to generate an appearance I like.  The image below has the roads and railway in their default appearance when they're brought into the program. 


11-8: Obviously this appearance isn't very useful to anyone.  So I bring up the theming window for the roads to define their appearance.  Using this program, I can define a separate appearance for each type of road I created back in autocad. 


11-9: So, starting with the minor highway, I'm going to just quickly grab a set of default styles that are included with the software.  Most of the time I create these styles myself using the advanced tools. 


11-10: Moving quickly down the list of roads gives me this.  Not my first choice of styles but for the purposes of this demo, it will do. 


The power of this tool is that if I'm not happy with the appearance of one of these lines, I can quickly define a new style for it.  More importantly, if the shapefile is changed as I update the world; the new features are automatically themed as long as they have a classification already defined in the program. 

11-11: So just to wrap this up, I'm going to finish todays update by continuing on with the map I've started.  I'm going to turn the map above into a detailed shot of the urban center of Delmar Junction on the West side of the river.  I'll add in the land use and a few other detail layers for context (such as waterways).  Then a title, key, scale bar and north arrow to get this map:


I wish I could say these tools are as easy to use as I make it seem.  But they're all very complex programs, each with their own oddities related to the tasks they are capable of.  I've been working with them for almost 5 years now, and they're integral to the way I think about maps and mapping. 

For all intents and purposes, I've shown you one aspect of my job.  I do data entry in Autocad so I can share data with the engineering department.  FME takes the autocad data and information from other sources and transforms it to shapefiles.  I use those shapefiles in ArcGIS to create visually appealling maps for reports and public use.

You may be wondering why I use three software packages to do this.  The simple truth is that I'm taking advantage of the strengths of Autocad (data entry) and ArcGIS (theming).  FME acts the bridge between them.  Anyhow, apparently my enthusiasim for mapping has caused me to ramble on a bit. 

Before I wrap up here, let me just re-iterate what I said to David (dedgren) above.  The tools I use are professional tools designed to make map creation easier.  They are far from necessary to make excellent maps, as the work by all the other talented artists here at SC4D shows.  The key to making good maps really does come down to artistic choices; colors, shapes and layout are far more important when the final product is posted here or handed in for a council report! 

Next time I'll give you a first look at the Alexandria tile that I introduced in Update 10.  Remember, I always enjoy hearing what you think, your comments are always appreciated!  But thanks to everyone for taking the time to stop in!

threestooges

Excellent summary. Oddly enough, I've learned at least the basics of ArcGIS (and boy it it a picky program when it comes to entries) so it's really neat to see it being used. One thing I never learned about the system though was how to create shape files. Is there a way to generate them outside of FME? Thanks for the quick lesson, and I'll be interested to see what you have in store next.
-Matt