FWE imports and exports

Paragon

As an experiment, I ported a .bmp from an old Campaign Cartographer map into FWE and tried to export it into a FM file. The program simply hung indefinitely until I aborted out of it from Task Manager.

Is it fussy about what sort of maps it'll export, or is there something I'm missing?

Ed_NBOS

you'd need to provide more information. What the image looked like, what the settings were, etc. You say it hung, but if your contour levels were set too small, it was probably just still processing.

Paragon

Pulling up the program, it appears the "Minor Contour Band Interval" was set at 2000, the "Ocean Minor Countour Interval" also at 2000, and the other two at 0. It was an old CC1 map converted to greyscale, but was reasonably "busy".

Like I said, it was mostly an experiment; I'm going to try to import a map of the West Coast U.S. (if I can ever find one in bitmap) and bring it into FM to edit, but I wanted to see what it might look like.

And if it was processing, it was long enough task manager thought it was dead.

Ed_NBOS

When task manager says its not responding, that just means its not processing messages from the interface, not that the program isnt processing. Actually, in this case it would mean the app was still calculating.

What you might want to do is try a coastline-only export, and then fiddle with the settings some. Its possible there's something in the data thats throwing the contour calculation into a loop, or making it do extra work, thats found at one contour level but not others.

Paragon

Ed_NBOS wrote:

When task manager says its not responding, that just means its not processing messages from the interface, not that the program isnt processing. Actually, in this case it would mean the app was still calculating.

What you might want to do is try a coastline-only export, and then fiddle with the settings some. Its possible there's something in the data thats throwing the contour calculation into a loop, or making it do extra work, thats found at one contour level but not others.

I suspect, after trying a very basic map of California and Nevada and importing it, that the prior one was just too busy (it did include all kinds of map detail) and was taking forever.

That said, I'm now a little puzzled by something else; when importing the above Cali/Nevada map, it comes in in blue lines like the borders were rivers. When I try to change this coloration, I get these massive thick lines instead of a normal border. Any idea how to fix this?

Ed_NBOS

I'm not clear where you are seeing this ... there's no lines per se in FWE. Are you seeing this in FWE, or opening the created .fmp and seeing this in FM? I think what would be best is if you post the image you are trying to import so that I can see what you are referring to.

Paragon

Ed_NBOS wrote:

I'm not clear where you are seeing this ... there's no lines per se in FWE. Are you seeing this in FWE, or opening the created .fmp and seeing this in FM? I think what would be best is if you post the image you are trying to import so that I can see what you are referring to.

Basically I have a very simple map of the West Coast (just the political divisions and the coastal contour); once I import it into FWE and then save it as a FM file, it comes up fine, but the border and coast lines are the same blue and the same thickness as FM rivers. I tried to simply change the color, but instead of the same thickness I got very coarse, thick black lines.

I'll try and attach the file here.

MarkOliva

Strange result. I get black lines, not blue. That notwithstanding, the line color is the map background color that is set with Map/Map Setup/Background Color. The map's white background is on one of the layers named Layer #10 through Layer #256, however, I haven't taken the time to figure out on which one of those 247 layers it is. Good luck!

Ed_NBOS

ok, I see what you're referring to. I think the problem is a misunderstanding of what the bitmap import is in FWE. The bitmap import is for converting grayscale height maps (also called bump maps) into fractal mapper maps. What you are importing is not a height map, its a political map with borders. The results you are getting are 'correct', in that the white areas are being imported in as elevated terrain, and the black areas are interpreted as water. I've attached an example bump map that can be imported so you can see the difference between the two.

A better option might be, if you want to import shapes, to place the image on the background of an FM map, and then either draw over them or use the vector flood fill to create shapes for the states.

Paragon

Ed_NBOS wrote:

ok, I see what you're referring to. I think the problem is a misunderstanding of what the bitmap import is in FWE. The bitmap import is for converting grayscale height maps (also called bump maps) into fractal mapper maps. What you are importing is not a height map, its a political map with borders. The results you are getting are 'correct', in that the white areas are being imported in as elevated terrain, and the black areas are interpreted as water. I've attached an example bump map that can be imported so you can see the difference between the two.

A better option might be, if you want to import shapes, to place the image on the background of an FM map, and then either draw over them or use the vector flood fill to create shapes for the states.

Ah, well. I'll freely admit to being lazy and hoping I could use it the way I was trying to to make some work easier on an upcoming campaign project. I'll give what you suggest a try and see how much work it turns out to be.