Quote Originally Posted by JohnnFour View Post
Howdy. I have a few CC3 questions:

I have CC2 Pro and the Tome of Ultimate Mapping. I barely know how to use CC2 and am thinking of upgrading to CC3 and diving in. My main uses in 2009 will be mapping:

* The fantasy world I'm making
* Buildings
* Small outdoor regions (25 sq mi down to 1 sq mi)
* Outdoor encounter areas
* Fantasy planes and weird areas
* Small planar regions and encounter areas
* Making smaller maps of Ptolus neighbourhoods for my D&D campaign

Here are my questions:

* Does the Tome help with CC3? Should I maybe learn CC2 with it first then upgrade to CC3? Or are there better tutorials out there for CC3 and I can just upgrade, throw away the Tome, and start learning.

* Is Fractal Terrains a valuable add-on for what I want to map this year?

* What about City Designer, and the Fantasy Symbol Set?

* Any other add-ons I should consider?

Thanks for the help!
OK, gots some time to answer questions.

Fractal Terrains

Hard to say. Depends on what your uses are. It can make a mean, mean world map, and exports it to a file format viewable in CC3. Very useful in my opinion, but again, hard to say how much use you will get from it.

City Designer/Symbol Sets

CD3 is VERY useful. As said above once you become skilled in it's tools, you can crank out cities in no-time flat, and that is extremely important. The symbol sets are another great add on. Great to get additional symbol styles for mapping, especially the DD3 symbol add-ons.

As to other Add-Ons I cannot say enough about if you can I highly, HIGHLY recommend purchasing the annuals. These are basically monthly tutorials/Symbol Packs/Templates etc that give new ways to do things in CC3. Sure you could try and figure it all out yourself, but some of the add-ons from the tutorials are features that exist only if you purchase the annuals.