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Cutting apart objects to make countries & other problems

silvercatssilvercat
edited March 2011 in Fractal Mapper General
I've got the world made, but now I need to separate the continents into countries. In Illustrator I'd use divide. Exclude gives me the opposite of what I want. I'm assuming I'm approaching this in completely the wrong way, but how can I get the shapes so I can color them in and not just have borders?

On the topic of borders, when I was trying to draw lines and then merge them it would not merge. Actually to get my full feelings in there you need to add some very strong words. And possibly a fist through the screen. I tried all the different snap options. Nothing worked.

I've also got a random line that I CAN. NOT. delete. I don't know why. I tried making every layer selectable and all that did was make it so I had to reposition stuff after I selected the wrong thing.

Thanks

Comments

  • silvercatssilvercat
    Managed to get rid of the random line. It looks like I'm going to brute force the countries somehow. Right now I'm grouping islands. Why does it keep adding extra things to the group? I'll select one group of islands, recolor them, group them, and then another group is part of it. So annoying.

    I really wish there was a way to export it to .svg, .eps, or .pdf.
  • MarkOlivaMarkOliva
    It sounds like you're having internal problems that won't be solved easily in a forum discussion. I'd suggest that you contact Ed Diana per E-Mail at support2@nbos.com. You probably will have to make your map available to him too.
  • Ed_NBOSEd_NBOS
    The easiest way to make political borders is to use the vector flood fill. Hide everything except landmasses and rivers, and then block off areas with temporary lines. Use the floodfill to fill in the area. Then set the area to the desired color and make it partially transparent.

    To remove an item thats hard to select, use the area select tool. If you cant find the selection node, use Ctrl-A to display all the nodes. You can then move them around, possibly expanding the item to make it easier to select.
  • silvercatssilvercat
    I should've checked this earlier... I couldn't figure out the floodfill (the help isn't the worst I've read, but it needs improvement.)

    I got the country map made in Illustrator, although the edges are all pixelly-shaped from the auto-trace tool. Figured out later I could get a vector by printing to PDF, although I need to try that some more - I think it has too many objects or something for the PDF printer to render (I got about an eight of it perfect, bits of the rest, and the labels were moved around - but I was doing the whole thing with the million and a half or so pieces from Fractal World. I think if I just do the continents without all the topo stuff it'll work, but I haven't tried it again)

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