Programs for map making

[Kaun]

What do you guys use and can you recomend any good ones!

Both Dungeons and land maps ect.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Flaming Nun]

Photoshop Elements.

It's cheaper than the Creative Suite versions - I got it, plus Premier, for $65 after a mail-in rebate - and it has an adjustable Auto-Grid feature. Plus, the layers allow you to shove huge amounts of material in there, and then make it visible or invisible based on what you want to publish/print for your PCs.

And as an added bonus, you can re-size stuff, so if you have a large, continent/kingdom map, you can zoom in, copy/paste, and recreate a smaller map for better details.

[Physics_Rook]

I've found that Adobe Flash has been invaluable to me for mapmaking.

In particular, as has been mentioned, the use of layers is incredibly useful. Multiple layers allow you to separate things like city/state borders, terrain, roads and the like.

More than that though, the fact that it's just so easy to reshape and modify terrain borders to your whim, makes the actual construction of the map itself easier as well.

The end result doesn't look like a conventional map, I find that it still serves admirably as a good reference map.

Ultimately though, I'd recommend trying as many different mapmaking tools as you can get your hands on, and just picking the best of them.

Here's an example of what my own limited abilities with flash have let me create (the images are somewhat largish).

An unfinished island.

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A closer look at the island, with towns/cities/settlements.

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The world map.

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Some of the major tectonic plates in the world.

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It's nothing spectacular, but it does let me have a basic and easily modifiable version of my map for whatever I might need it for. I can create and change the various aspects of the map with little to no difficulty.

In the end though, I'm likely going to run the finalized version of the map through a filter (probably using something like Filter Forge), to get some more realistic looking terrain and borders for when I show my players.

Hope this helps.

[Shademan]

pen and paper.



hehe, seriously tho' I support the use of flash!

[Reinboom]

I use Photoshop CS3, and the tutorials over at Cartographer's Guild.

The maps produced by their simple bits of advice are... stunning.
(and thank you Trog for recommending me this, if you read this statement)

I got my Photoshop from a student license. Most of the tutorials works with GIMP, however, fine.

[Swordgleam]

I use the GIMP. It's kind of like PhotoShop, but totally free. There's some tutorials for using it to make maps over at NewbieDM.com I believe.

[Kaun]

All good stuff guys i had been using photoshop myself i was just wondering if there was some awesome program i had been missing out on.

[Crow]

pen and paper.

I am a whole-hearted supporter of pen and paper. Most of the cartography programs out there I have tried end up leaving the maps a little bland.

PnP FTW!

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[Maximum Zersk]

Again for Pen and Paper. Or, at least, Tablet and Photoshop. You get the map to look like what you want then.

[Xzeno]

I am a whole-hearted supporter of pen and paper. Most of the cartography programs out there I have tried end up leaving the maps a little bland.

PnP FTW!

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That map is absolutely beautiful. I wish I could map like that. But yes, I'm in the pen and paper crowd. I find the experience much more rewarding.

[Maximum Zersk]

I am a whole-hearted supporter of pen and paper. Most of the cartography programs out there I have tried end up leaving the maps a little bland.

PnP FTW!

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Hey, uh Crow, could, by any chance, give a different link? I can't see it.

[Crow]

Hey, uh Crow, could, by any chance, give a different link? I can't see it.

It might just be taking a bit to load. I posted the direct link to imageshack.

[Draz74]

Yeah, my best map results have come from pen-and-paper, if you're thinking map-making on the world-design scale.

If you meant more "tactical" scale, I'm loving MapTool.

[Grommen]

Dunjini is pretty good, it was actually made to make maps.

http://www.dundjinni.com/

And their is a ton of free stuff on the site too. Very nice stuff.

Personally I use Corel Draw 10 to make maps. Particaly because of my 3 years of drafting in Highschool (It's a CAD program), and because I have a free copy of the program. It works, but without knowing what your doing it's a major pain in the ass.

[Kaun]

Here is one i did in photo shop as a quick draw up for my sessions.

That dunjini looks fairly good for tactical maps. Kind of reminds me of that program that came with the old 2nd ed chr generator.

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[toasty]

I am a whole-hearted supporter of pen and paper. Most of the cartography programs out there I have tried end up leaving the maps a little bland.

PnP FTW!

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That map is made of win. It alone makes me want to play DnD with you as the GM.

I have never actually made a map. I suck at that kind of stuff. For tactical battle maps when playing PbP I have used Autorealm. Which, though limited, has served my purpose.

[Ichneumon]

I use inkscape for my world maps:

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[Shademan]

I am a whole-hearted supporter of pen and paper. Most of the cartography programs out there I have tried end up leaving the maps a little bland.

PnP FTW!

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aye. pen and paper maps always bring back memprioes of maps in fantasy novels

[bosssmiley]

• Hexmapper for overland maps
• Dungeoncrafter + TSR Classic Blue tileset for DM's dungeon maps
• Kev's Lounge Dungeon Tiles for tactical maps

You can't beat free.

[Draz74]

[LIST][*]Hexmapper for overland maps

This one does deserve an honorable mention for mathematical coolness, I gotta admit.

[Szilard]

I am a whole-hearted supporter of pen and paper. Most of the cartography programs out there I have tried end up leaving the maps a little bland.

PnP FTW!

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My maps aren't quite as epic as this guy's, but I always use pen and paper. Well, more like pencils and paper. Then I throw in some color. Maps of dungeons, I just use graph paper, because it's not like I'm going to publish it or anything.

[Zeta Kai]

The use of Flash to make a map is very silly. It's a vector-based animation program, which you can clearly see from the screenshots (see the timelime at the top of the window?). That's like taking still pictures with a movie camera; sure you can do it, but it's ten times more complicated than using a still camera. Also, Flash has a notoriously difficult & unintuitive interface, although that has improved a bit since Adobe bought the program.

For vector-based drawing, I'd go with Adobe Illustrator (CS3 is what I use, although there are newer versions). Cheaper alternative? Corel Draw, I think.

For raster-based drawing (that's the stuff with pixels), you can't go wrong with Photoshop (again, CS3 is what I use, although there are newer versions). Cheaper alternatives? Photoshop Elements or GIMP. There are a million tutorials online for how to use them to achieve your specific goals, & the fine folks at the Cartographer's Guild can show you how to make gorgeous maps.

[Szilard]

A cheaper alternative to Adobe Illustrator is Inkscape, which is completely free, and once or twice I used it for maps in a play by post game. Yes, I know I'm sort of contradicting the post I made earlier.

[OverdrivePrime]

I generally use Illustrator and Photoshop since my pen-and-colored-pencils skill has waned to deplorable levels since college.

Here's an example of one of the area maps I've done using Illustrator. (click for link to 457kb pdf file) If you zoom way in to the area of "Hyphalas' Pool" you can make out quite a lot of detail, which I why I like vector-based art.

Still, I wish I had a decent scanner - the stuff I used to do by hand was pretty awesome, though not quite approaching the level of kickassery that Crow has achieved.

[Squider]

Campaign Cartographer, from the guys over at Profantasy
It's pretty much the best out there hands down. The maps I make aren't quite as gorgeous as theirs, but they still look fantastic. That's pretty amazing considering my lack of artistic skill.