Beginner question - Cave shadows

[TheNomeKing]

Hi there,

I'm new to this community and have recently purchased CC3 with DD3 & CD3, and I'm astonished with how powerful the program is. I've found it frustrating at the best of times, but I'm gradually getting the hang of it. I love the cave tool and have been trying to design a map for an upcoming campaign, but I have a question regarding the shading & effects; see below the example:



This was just a random picture I pulled of Google, but it's clearly been created in DD3. There is a very specific effect where there appear to be walls to the cave, and some shadows which give the appearance that the background is actually on top of the cavern, as if it's been 'cut away'

Is it possible for somebody to describe how this is done? I'm quite new to the software so I'm not quite aware of how to perform various functions that might be needed for this?

Any help would be highly appreciated!

Thanks!

[Midgardsormr]

It's been a while since I played with CC3, but it looks as though the cave walls sheet has two effects applied: The first is an inner glow with a dark color. The second looks like a bevel to me, but the shading is very subtle. It might also simply be an outer glow with a very low feather value and a moderate spread, causing it to push out from the wall, then end abruptly.

The sheet effects can be very powerful, but don't go crazy with them because as I recall they could be quite slow. Also, their appearance depends on the resolution of your image, so if you export at two different sizes, the sheet effects may not look the same on each one.