City Designer 3 Tutorials

[Zorian]

Hello everyone,

I'm new here and have been working with City Designer 3 and CC3+. I did some searches for tutorials on here to see what I can do to improve my map making skills but didn't find that much. The tutorial on the site while helpful is a little out of date and doesn't contain a ton of information. I was hoping to find some advice on shading things and how to make my walls easier to put up as well as look more real etc.

Can anyone point me to some post or a site that can give me some more indepth tips?

Thanks!

[JoeyD473]

There are some video tutorials on YouTube for CC3. For your purposes it doesn't matter they are for CC3 and Not CC3+

[markem]

CC3 and CC3+ take some getting used to. Both use FastCAD's engine to do everything. FastCAD is built in the style they used to do architectural drawings up to around 1990. In 1990 personal computer usage was in full swing and most places converted over to a more forwards approach to drawing. AutoCAD (which was originally developed by the same people who made FastCAD) slowly migrated to having both ways of doing drawings while FastCAD stayed doing it the older, traditional way.

Now - what do I mean by the above? Basically, you are doing things in reverse. Instead of picking what you want to do, putting it on the screen, and then adjusting it - you are encouraged to think ahead to what you want the object to look like, adjust your settings accordingly, and then place the item on the map. You can see the difference if you try using something like Visio or Inkscape versus CC3 or FastCAD. Visio and Inkscape you pick something, place it on your map and then adjust it. CC3 and FastCAD you pick something, adjust it, and then put it on the map. Also, if you do an adjustment CC3 sometimes DOES and sometimes DOES NOT remember this which makes for some interesting outcomes. With Visio and Inkscape you always start with a new object that is set to the default values. If you SET those default values differently - then ALL new objects obey those new rules you have set.

Knowing this ahead of time can save you a lot of heartache and frustration. Most people are - now - used to the way Visio and Inkscape work and not the way CC3 works. So my suggestion is - sketch out what you want ahead of time before starting a project with CC3 and then - after you have what you want it to look like (or a general idea) - use that to work with CC3. That can take a lot of the frustration out because you know what you want and you aren't both trying to learn how to make it happen as well as trying to decide if what you create is what you actually want.

I also suggest using the layering capabilities A LOT. Do one section of the city (like a city block) and put it all on a layer. Entitle it something like Burbon&Smith if that is where the streets cross. In this way you break down the process into mangeable parts rather than trying to do all of it at once. Since the different layers can lay in front of other layers - you can keep all of one section together on the same layer and when a layer gets out of whack - it makes it a lot easier to put them back into proper order.

You also might want to take a look at Inkscape or even something like Adobe's Fireworks (which used to be Macromedia's Fireworks). Inkscape is a vector based CAD system. Fireworks is a vector based graphics system. Fireworks was originally designed for handling internet graphics but now it does a whole lot more. I have waffled over which is better for years (Visio or Fireworks) for producing maps. The advantage of Fireworks over Visio is you can create an unlimited sized map and it doesn't chew up memory like Visio does. Visio's advantage for me is - I'm very familiar with it and how it works. I can turn out decent maps (not production maps - you need Photoshop or Fireworks for that) which are usale in an RPG game. To see some Visio produced maps see my portfolio on here. Game quality but not nearly as good as CC3 or what can be done via Fireworks.