ProFantasy Software's Fractal Terrains Pro [1] world-building software allows you to view a world by climate type. This short tutorial explains how to apply the climate colours used in Chimera-style maps.

Creating and Applying the Palette

Fractal Terrains Pro (FT) stores climate colour data in a simple text file. This file has a ".clr" extension and contains RGB colour values for each climate type. The file may be edited with any text editor (e.g., Notepad, TextPad, EditPad, et al.)

We've included the Chimera-style climate palette file here, but if you want to see what makes it tick, follow these steps:

1. Create a new TEXT file in Windows, using your favourite text editor
2. Name the file "climate_chimera.clr"
3. Open the file and paste in the following contents:
   

   0, 227, 211, 193 ;Tundra or Alpine
   1, 72, 90, 69 ;Boreal or Alpine forest
   2, 227, 198, 140 ;Chaparral
   3, 247, 217, 98 ;Desert
   4, 176, 211, 157 ;Temperate Forest
   5, 233, 237, 187 ;Temperate Grassland
   6, 118, 200, 79 ;Tropical Evergreen Forest
   7, 131, 193, 85 ;Tropical Deciduous Forest
   8, 158, 224, 86 ;Tropical Shrublands
   9, 205,235,37 ;Savannah
   10, 255, 255, 255 ;Ice
   11, 129, 157, 169 ;Ocean
   12, 129, 157, 169 ;Shallow Ocean (alternate: 215, 239, 251)
   13, 164, 143, 80 ;Mountain
   14, 191, 183, 104 ;Hills
   15, 124, 119, 85 ;Bare Rock
   16, 0, 0, 0 ;Oceanic Trench
   

4. Save the file and close it (suggested path: "/FT/Coloring/climate_chimera.clr").
5. Open FT
6. Select Map -> Lighting and Colour
7. Select the Climate tab
8. Click the Load button
9. Browse to "climate_chimera.clr" (step #4) and click Open
10. Click Apply and close the Lighting and Colour dialogue
11. Select Map -> Show Climate

Note that these colours won't always map properly if you export the FT file to Campaign Cartographer 2, but you can modify CC2's palette to address this minor issue.

Results

[1]The image shown at right is a thumbnail of The World of Ammonkis, represented as an FT climate map (click on the image to open a larger view in a new window). For the curious, the map projection is Miller Cylindrical, and gridlines are shown at 30° from the equator, shown at the midpoint of the map's horizontal axis.