# Mapping Resources > How Do I ??? >  How to import png files to CC3

## Chronist

Good morning Cartographers trying to use some of mouse free textures in DD3 brought me to the question how to import pngs to CC3/DD3 in general. 

More specific the question splits into two:
1. How to import textures to use them as *F*loor*S*tructure.
2. and how to use/import pngs to my Symbolcatalog (is it enough to make new folder and put all the pngs i fin in the web into it?)

thnx for giving me some ideas

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## Mouse

Hello Chronist  :Smile: 

Before you even start incorporating new textures into your maps that are not either part of the Profantasy set, or don't come with specific installation instructions like the CSUAC or Bogies Mapping Objects, the first thing you need to do is make a new folder called 'User' (or your name) in the right place to hold all the fills that you as a user want to install.  This new folder *has to be inside* the 'Tiles' folder, like this:

C:\ProgramData\Profantasy\CC3Plus\Bitmaps\*Tiles*\*SUE
*

The exact path to your Tiles folder may differ slightly from the example above if you didn't use the default settings when you initially installed CC3+, but once you find the Profantasy folder the rest should be the same from there.

In practice it isn't good if you have too many textures all in one folder, so I have upwards of 20 subfolders within my SUE folder.  These are called things like 'Terrain', 'Vegetation', and 'Water' and have immediately obvious contents.  Since your working methods and the type of map you want to create is probably quite different to mine, you might want to classify your fills into different groups to the way I have done it, using a different classification system.  That's totally fine, as long as you classify things right from the start and don't try to move things around later on.  

The reason all these files and folders need to stay where they are in relation to one another once you have started using the fills they contain, is that a CC3 map will 'lose' a fill that's been moved _after_ you loaded the fill into the map.

Because of this little problem with having to leave stuff exactly where it is if you want to be able to continue using your older maps, its worth spending a bit of time deciding on your classification system and naming your subfolders before you even start downloading the textures that will eventually go inside them.

Give me a shout when you've done that, and I'll write the next step  :Smile:

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## Chronist

Understood & Done :Razz: 
in my case it looks like this -H:\ProFantasy\CC3Plus\Bitmaps\Tiles\Textures ...subfolders will follow :Cool:

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## Mouse

Before we move on, please can you tell me if your "Tiles" folder already contained other PF folders such as "Dungeon", and "Overland" when you opened it?

EDIT: the reason I am asking is because I think I might have been a bit vague in my first instruction.  The only folder you should have needed to create is the one you have named "Textures".  The other folders should already exist on your system wherever you installed CC3+

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## Chronist

No "Dungeon", and "Overland" - just the CSUAC_2 Folder

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## Mark Oliva

> No "Dungeon", and "Overland" - just the CSUAC_2 Folder


If you're having trouble with any of these free CC3 Plus add-ins -  _Bogie's Mapping Objects, the CSUAC 2, the Dundjinni Archives_ and/or _the Vintyri Cartographic Collection_ - please contact our free support service at

info@vintyri.org

We can handle support requests in English or German.

Servus,

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## Mouse

I am sorry for the very long delay in responding, Chronist.  Reality intruded on my day.

The reason I am hesitating in this description is because I have never installed my home made textures in any other place than directly inside the existing CC3+ installation on my C drive, where this folder hierarchy already exists as part of the installation.

If you are somehow using an external drive to store your private collection of additional or third party bitmap textures, I am afraid that my experience does not extend to being able to give sound or reliable advice on how to fetch remotely stored bitmaps into the running CC3+ app.  I simply do not have the experience you require.

Unless Mark is able to give this advice, or unless Waldronate (who is one of the Profantasy Team) steps in to advise you, you may be better off asking this same question on the Profantasy Forum where Waldronate and some of the other PF coders are more likely to spot it and offer their assistance.

My meagre handful of home made fills is a separate thing to the CSUAC.  The two are not related, and where the CSUAC may come with code of its own to make this remote storage possible, my individual fills do not, so I can't guarantee that you would be able to store and use them in the same way as you do the CSUAC.

I will still be reading this thread, since I am now very interested to know for myself if I could also move my textures to an external drive and free up a lot of badly needed space on my hard drive!

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## Mouse

Symbols are handled slightly differently to textures, and unless they come with their own premade catalogue file (filename.FSC) you will need to create one to use them properly in your maps.

Again, however, if you are intending to use your external drive, I do not have the necessary experience to be able to instruct you, since I have only ever created new catalogues within the existing catalogue system on the C drive - inside the existing CC3+ Symbols folder.

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## Chronist

Hey Mous no worrys  :Wink: . i´m glad that u help me out these days. I am very patient. 
My H: drive is not a external drive just a partition of one of my hard drives, it should work fine. But is it really that easy? I download the texture fom your link and copy it in H:\ProFantasy\CC3Plus\Bitmaps\Tiles\Textures for example? or do i have to do something else?

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## Mouse

Ok  :Smile: 

I will describe how this is normally done when the textures folder containing your home made fills is located within the CC3+ installation folders.  With any luck you might be able to work out anything that you need to do differently if you have them stored elsewhere.

1. Open CC3+ and the map where you want to use the fill.

2. Click "Tools/Import bitmap fill styles" from the menu bar.

3. Use the Browse button in the dialog box that opens up to locate the textures you want to import, and double click any one of the textures in that folder to tell CC3+ "These are the ones I want".

(I have chosen one of the folders in my "Sue" folder, so that you can see how CC3+ automatically constructs the path syntax in the box at the top of the dialog)



(In the case of storing the textures separately to the original CC3+ installation path as you appear to be doing, I am unsure which of the three path options you should be using, but the default is the top option - "relative to CC3 path", which is the one that I use every time)

4. If this is the first time you have imported this set of fills into a CC3+ map you will need to tick the "Create other resolutions" tick box, and decide whether the fills you are importing are High resolution, or Very High resolution.  Most people leave it set on Very High.  The fills in the album you linked to in your first post are _extremely_ high resolution (some would say unnecessarily high) by CC3+ standards, where the size of a Very High resolution fill is normally around 1000 - 1500 pi square.

5. It is up to you if you want to set a scale for the fills as you import them, or set the scale individually through the Fill Style Properties dialog after importing them.  Whichever way you choose to set the scale of the fills it is an adjustable variable that can be altered at any time by the user.

6. When you click ok and the dialog box disappears there will be a short wait while CC3+ creates the other resolutions for each fill, and imports them into the map  (a shorter wait if this step can be skipped if this is not the first time you have imported this set of fills).  When this is done CC3 will let you know how many fills have just been imported, which is the signal that it is ok for you to continue mapping - using the fills you have just imported.

And that's all there is to it.

I hope that you are able to use this basic description.  I think the only issue you may have a bit of trouble with (where I won't necessarily be able to help you) is at point 3, where the path to the fills is decided.

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## Mouse

I have re-read this entire thread, and can now see that I have omitted several useful and important pieces of information.

Firstly, CC3+ can only 'see' textures that are .png files.  If you have downloaded textures meant for general use between different apps from one of my folders and they are .jpg files, then you will need to convert them to png files before you can use them in CC3+.  Some of the larger textures I have uploaded to my free textures albums are in fact .jpg files to make them small enough in terms of MBs to upload here at the Guild.

Secondly - yes, you just have to save the acquired or home made fills as .png files in the folder you have created as described above to be able to import them by the method described in the comment immediately above this one  :Smile:

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## Chronist

and again thnk you soooo much. your descripton is super  :Smile: 
it worked perfect.

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## Mouse

That's great - thanks for letting me know  :Smile: 

I hope you have fun using them.

In addition to the information I have already given you, I should probably point out that you will need to import the fills into each map where you want to use them.  You just won't need to create other resolutions each time after you've already done it the first time.

Also, it is best to keep your fills in many small subfolders rather than one very large one, since the more fills you have loaded into each map, the slower the app will perform.  If your fills are in small subfolders you can be more precise about which fills you import into your map to maintain CC3+ performance at an optimum.

...

Moving on to how to properly import and use home made or acquired .png symbols...

Although this video is now pretty old, the technique hasn't changed very much, if at all. So instead of me faffing around writing a whole set of comparatively amateur instructions and taking ages to create all the screen shots you might need, I would strongly recommend watching Joe Sweeney's "Creating custom symbols from imported pngs"


For further watching I would also recommend browsing through all his video tutorials.

There are also a lot of other CC3+ tutorials available on YouTube, and many links from the sticky thread at the top of the Profantasy Forum.

Enjoy your mapping, Chronist  :Smile:

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## Chronist

I will ;-) can´t thank you enough for your time :Very Happy:

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## Mouse

You're very welcome.

I'm just glad that it worked for you without any hitches  :Very Happy:

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## Mark Oliva

> in my case it looks like this -H:\ProFantasy\CC3Plus\Bitmaps\Tiles\Textures ...subfolders will follow


I'm not sure what you want to do in combination with what you already have done.  When you install CC3+, you create two new folders (directories, Deutsch _Ordner_):

_C:\Programs (x86)\Profantasy\CC3Plus\_  - The program itself is there.

_(Chosen Location)\Profantasy\CC3Plus\_ - The data, including symbols and fills are here.

In most cases, _Chosen Location_ = _C:\ProgramData\_

If you install CC3+ as recommended by the installation program, your data folder will be:

_C:\ProgramData\Profantasy\CC3Plus\_, but the CC3+ installation program does give you the opportunity to pick a different location.  

Based upon your comment (above), I assume - perhaps incorrectly - that you chose your own location, specifically:

_H:\ProFantasy\CC3Plus\_

That's fine.  It's no problem.

You cannot set up CC3+ so that you have two different data folders.  However, you can do as *Mouse* appears to want to do and _change_ that location.  If I understand *Mouse* correctly, she would like to move her data folders to an external drive to free space on Drive C.  That's no problem:

1.  Close CC3+ if it's open.

2.  Move your data folders to the new location.



3.  Go into _C:\Programs (x86)\Profantasy\CC3Plus\_ and use the Windows Notepad (in the German version, _Windows Editor_) to open the file _@.ini_.



4.  Change the entry in this file to the new location and save the changed file.  In the sample above, the new location is:

_F:\Programme\Profantasy\CC3Plus_.

It appears to me that *Mouse* has answered the remaining questions, but if not, let us know what you still need.

Servus,

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## Chronist

Thnx Mark thats sounds extrem helpful also if u work on two computers and if u want to tell CC3 where your textures and symbols are.
That would be one of my expert questions anyway. I have two place where I want to work on the same map, in my case the data files don´t have 
the same location, say on the one Computer it´s H:\ProFantasy\CC3Plus\: and on the other it´s E:\ProFantasy\CC3Plus\ both Computer run the Programm
in C:\Programs (x86)\Profantasy\CC3Plus\ .
So what I have to do after Copy all my sampels in the right place, i have to tell CC3 where to find them by "3. Go into C:\Programs (x86)\Profantasy\CC3Plus\ 
and use the Windows Notepad (in the German version, Windows Editor) to open the file @.ini." 
same if i use a portable hard drive.
did I understood it right?

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## Mark Oliva

Right.  You have two computers.

The _@.ini_ file of Computer No. 1 needs to identify the location of the files on Computer No. 1.  That would be _H:\ProFantasy\CC3Plus\_.

The _@.ini_ file of Computer No. 2 needs to identify the location of the files on Computer No. 2.  That would be _E:\ProFantasy\CC3Plus\_.

Servus, und schönen Sonntag!

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## Mouse

Thank you, Mark  :Smile: 

That was most helpful.

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