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View Full Version : Good mapmaking programmes?



Azerian Kelimon
2008-04-26, 12:49 PM
As the title says, I'm looking for a program that will let me make D&D maps and shape them any way I like. So far, I've found nothing. Anybody knows of useful ones?

FlyMolo
2008-04-26, 12:52 PM
Inkscape! Draw them yourself. The best way, I find.

Azerian Kelimon
2008-04-26, 12:57 PM
Yeah, but I suck at drawing. Seriously. I probably couldn't draw a straight line with a ruler and stabilizing systems.

shadow_archmagi
2008-04-26, 01:04 PM
Yeah, but I suck at drawing. Seriously. I probably couldn't draw a straight line with a ruler and stabilizing systems.

Paint, then.

Allis
2008-04-26, 01:19 PM
I use paint shop pro, mostly due to the lack of any other program.

As you, I'm not that good at drawing things, so I use an existing map as a background and roughly follow the outlines. I then fool around with fillings, textures etc untill it looks like a map, add dots for places and turn the whole thing the colour of old pictures. (sepia, is that english?). I end up with something like this (http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk131/Allis_maps/kaart3.jpg?t=1209234178).

for dungeon maps, I use cellophane (that's not correct, I guess) paper to cover my table. The table is oak wood and happens to have a top covered in squars about the size of a d&d square. I then draw the map on the see-through paper with whiteboard markers. Badly.

AlterForm
2008-04-26, 01:20 PM
MapTool (http://rptools.net/doku.php). Not sure how well it works for printing, but its an excellent, free VTT with a great mapmaking system. You "draw" with textures (which you can lock onto an adjustable grid) then place "stamps" (most of which you can/should/will import yourself) to make a map. You can also place tokens with stats for reminders.

The hard part would be editing it outside of MapTool; your best bet would be to take screen captures then import them into an image editing program.

FlyMolo
2008-04-26, 01:26 PM
Yeah, but I suck at drawing. Seriously. I probably couldn't draw a straight line with a ruler and stabilizing systems.

Vector graphics, my friend! Go into the node structure, poke around in your nodes for a bit, and hey presto! Instant straight lines. Coupled with inifinte zoom, anyone can be Monet with enough time.

Quietus
2008-04-26, 01:41 PM
Depends on what you're looking for - if you're looking to do world maps, I've found that photoshop + fractal map generators tends to produce nice results. For example, I used THIS (http://www.bin.sh/gaming/tools/world.cgi) fractal generator to come up with a world roughly the right shape as what I was looking for, then photoshopped it around a bit.


Original map from the Demonweb Fractal Generator (http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8346/basemaplo8.gif)

After playing around with it (http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/4012/worldmapcopylo6.jpg)


It's not necessarily perfect, but it's certainly helpful - as long as you have a basic understanding of Photoshop, anyhow. I imagine most image-editing programs could do this, but I like Photoshop because it allows me to use different layers that I can change the visibility on and off in, so that one file holds my geographical map, political, as well as other information such as region names, cities, and disputed areas.

Allis
2008-04-26, 01:52 PM
I tried that MapMaker thingie, but I can't find any objects/textures to mimic trees and such. I must be doing something wrong...

crimson77
2008-04-26, 04:36 PM
I have liked Hexmapper. Here is the link (http://home.paonline.com/zaikoski/ak/AK_SOFT/Aks_hmap.zip)to download the program.