The Campaign Builder's Guild

I've added some minor stuff about creating plains and desert background.

I usually handdraw my maps, but I've gone through a couple different programs to make them, with varying amounts of success.

1. Photoshop, not so good.
2. Campaign Cartographer 3.  I splurged the 50 bucks on it and kind of regret it, honestly.
3. MS paint.

My MS paint maps are based off of someone's who I found on the Epic Campaign Map's (Or whatever) thread on the WOTC boards.  I believe the campaign world was of Arrusaent, and I eventually developed my own way to make maps in a similar style.  They take a lot longer to do, and you need to have infinite patience with them, but I like it.

I found that using Photoshop, rendering clouds/reverse clouds, turning up the contrast to 100% to make black and white shapes and then copy and paste those black shapes onto MS paint make a really intersting shadow for your coastlinet hat you can fill in.

Example of my MS paint map:

I just use microsoft word draw function...

I made this eons back, when I started gaming in 2003.

I recently found a quite good method of creating maps.

1.) Get some fractal maps from here (preferrably islands, set "% Water" to 66 or higher, "% Ice" to 0, and play around with the other values)

2.) Save the maps.

3.) Load them in Paint.NET.

4.) Use Effect -> Outline.

5.) Use Color Picker + Recolor tools to remove all other colors, so that only the continents' silhouettes remain.

6.) Add a second layer (for demonstration purposes I'll call it "Color"). Set layer settings to "visible" and "Blending mode: multiply".

7.) On "Background" layer, use Magic Wand tool to select all land masses.

8.) Switch to "Color" layer, and use Color Bucket tool to color all marked areas.

9.) Repeat 7.) and 8.) for other features (like mountains, islands, other continents).

10.) Add a third layer ("Writings") and put the map's writings on this layer.

Results can look similar to this:



The best thing is, if you used a different original map for each continent, and saved the modified maps in different files before putting them together on a larger map, you can use them to create more detailed maps.

Regards, Ra-Tiel.

Quote from: Ra-TielI recently found a quite good method of creating maps.

<snip>

Thanks! I came up with a variant for GIMP and Inkscape, which you can also see at the linked thread...

Quote from: Jürgen HubertThanks! I came up with a variant for GIMP and Inkscape, which you can also see at the linked thread...

Well, I've tried GIMP once and just found the usabiltiy and user interface horrible. Although the program's features and abilities may be great, using it doesn't really cut it for me. :(

And "Inkscape" I have never heard of...  :?:

And I must admit that my "pretty good" method is only very basic, and - yet - only useful for creating contour maps of larger islands/continents. I'm still trying to figure out a way to make small scale maps and maps incorporating landscape features (mountains, swamps, forests, ...) without breaking the "old-school" look.

I've had alot of success with Fractal Mapper by nbos.com

I sometimes tweak it in photoshop too. :-/

O, been toying around with Paint.NET again and came up with a pretty good (imho) result.

What I've been doing is this...
[spoiler]
...for landmasses
1   Select area
2   Add Noise (100, 0)
3   Unfocus (5)
4   Sharpen (20) 3x
5   Motion blur (25Ã,°, 10)
6   Pencil sketch (20, 20)
7   Ink sketch (99, 100)

...for forrests
1   Select area
2   Paint buckeet (white)
3   Add noise (100, 0)
4   Gaussian blur (10)
5   Frosted glass (5)
6   Pencil sketch (20, 20)
7   Ink sketch (99, 100)

...for mountains
1   Select area
2   Paint bucket (white)
3   Clouds (20, 50)
4   Frosted glass (5)
5   Unfocus (5)
6   Pencil sketch (20, 20)
7   Ink sketch (99, 100)

...for the shore
1   Select land
2   Copy layer
3   Inverse selection
4   Paint bucket (blue)
5   Delete land
6   Gaussian blur as you prefer
[/spoiler]

And the result is this:

Hey, that looks pretty good.  Bravo on that.  I wish I had the patience to work on maps, but I've been spending all my time on other projects recently.

I think your hand-drawn one works pretty well, Ishy.  But if you want a Photoshop SF map, I'd be willing to give it a try.

I hand draw my maps; generally I don't do any touch up, because I like the way they look.  Finally got a scanner to put one up.

[img:width=500]http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ams/threadsmapcompressed.png[/img]

Quote from: Phoenix KnightI think your hand-drawn one works pretty well, Ishy.  But if you want a Photoshop SF map, I'd be willing to give it a try.

I may just take you up on that ;)

Quote from: Ra-TielWell, I've tried GIMP once and just found the usabiltiy and user interface horrible. Although the program's features and abilities may be great, using it doesn't really cut it for me. :(

And "Inkscape" I have never heard of...  :?:

And I must admit that my "pretty good" method is only very basic, and - yet - only useful for creating contour maps of larger islands/continents. I'm still trying to figure out a way to make small scale maps and maps incorporating landscape features (mountains, swamps, forests, ...) without breaking the "old-school" look.

have to[/i] sit down and read the manual and various online tutorials, or else it will be very frustrating because it isn't the most intuitive program right off the bat.

I've run the GIMP on Windows XP, OpenSUSE (a distribution of Linux), and Fedora Core 6 (another distrobution of Linux).  I've had much more pleasant experiences with it on both Linux systems, but it wasn't unusable on Windows XP either.  Its a powerful program with a bit of a learning curve.  If you stick with it for a while, you'll be rewarded.

Inkscape is a different kind of image editing program.  The GIMP and Photoshop are what are called raster graphics editors, which are more useful for image editing.  Vector graphics editors, like Inkscape are more useful for image creation, especially things like animation or stylized things like old school fantasy maps.  However, both the GIMP and Photoshop provide certain vector tools that make them suitable for image creation as well.  Inkscape would probably be the best program for creating maps, but if you don't have a graphics tablet, attempting to fully create digital artwork in the digital realm will not bring great results.

Like the GIMP, I've run Inkscape on Windows XP, OpenSUSE, and Fedora Core 6.  Also like the GIMP and other graphics editors, Inkscape has a bit of a learning curve; as always, its a good idea to read the manual.  I personally find it harder to use, but this is most likely because I don't own a graphics tablet, and I use the GIMP much more. Even without the graphics tablet, Inkscape offers some nifty functions that I use every now and again.  Unlike the GIMP, Inkscape loads very quickly on all operating systems.

To keep the "old school" look, you're going to want to either start off with a hand-drawn map like I do, or invest in a graphics tablet and do it all digitally.  There's really no other way that I know of.

Quote from: limetomOk, I think its important to go over this since these kinds of comments come up alot. [...]

Admittedly it's been some time since I've last tried the GIMP (call me a burned child :P ), perhaps things have changed a little. I know it is OSS, but I also don't necessarily believe in the dogma that OSS is the answer to all questions. My main gripe with OSS is that it usually lacks in the department "usability" and "user interface". My prime example for tis theory is XFig. This is not what a good UI is supposed to look like! At least not in the 21st century. :-/

Contrary to the GIMP, I found Inkscape (which I have tried recently) rather intuitive. Of course, I haven't delved into the depth of its functions, but some things go quite easy. The primary benefit of a vector graphics program compared to a raster graphics program is imho that vector graphics are scalable on a lossless base, while raster graphics always "pixelate" if scaled improperly.

Quote from: limetomTo keep the "old school" look, you're going to want to either start off with a hand-drawn map like I do, or invest in a graphics tablet and do it all digitally.  There's really no other way that I know of.

The problem is: I don't have talent for hand-drawn maps. And a graphis tablet won't help me, when I'm already incapable of producing a good looking map with pen&paper. ;)

An alternative would be a purely digital workflow. Like my example from above. I first got the basic outline from a fractal random generator off the web, then proceeded to modify the continents to my needs (scaling, morphing, ...) and then colored it (all with Paint.NET).

As I mentioned in another thread, it's been awhile since I've been able to use photoshop, my main map-making utility, but since I've been using Linux lately, I've managed to figure out a few simple things in GIMP. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to get an aged look without relying on coffee stains yet, though.

A couple quick maps I made today:

Edit- Hmm. I don't know why they didn't upload...