How to create fantasy maps. Here is my take on creating maps for roleplaying games. Off course, you will be able to use the method for other purposes also, but why spend time doing anything, which isn't related to roleplaying: -)To see what a map done according to my advice might look like, here is one of the maps I did (1. B). Preparations.
Step 1. 1. Determine how you want the world to look. Draw some loose sketches.
Look in an Atlas, to find out how our world looks and copy whatever you find to be nice looking. If you want to do a World Scale map, you might consider doing maps on different sections with more details later on. This is easy to do with the help of your computer and a printer. I recommend Adobe Photoshop, but you could probably also use Paint Shop Pro and get the same results. A pencil is much easier to control than a mouseÂ…. Get a new piece of paper. Place the Atlas next to you.
Find a page with a really rugged coastline. Start doing the coastline with the pencil. Put in the rivers along with the markings of mountains (but not in any detail. Just mark where you want them to be). The rivers generally flow from the mountains towards the sea, so you have to do mountains first, keeping in mind the rivers. Does it still look good?
If not, make corrections. If it is perfect, get a felt pen with a moderately thick end and start drawing the outline of the coast again. When the ink is dry, you can remove the pencil markings with a rubber. Draw the rivers. Since mountains is the feature I have the greatest difficulty getting just right, I've made a page to describe how I do them. If you think my mountains look silly, send me a JPG or GIF showing the mountains, you think look cool. I'll then add them to the mountains page.
- Mapmaking for Fantasy Authors. Monday, December 16, 2013. Making a good map is not as simple as purchasing good design tools or the appropriate number of ink pens.
- Click2Map Mobile is a free app allowing you to access all your maps and markers whenever you need. Do you want to illustrate the content of an article with a map?
If not, now is the time to start again without wasting too much time. Keep in mind, which way you are going to present the map. Do you only want to show it on- screen? If you want to print it, what is going to be the format? Do you want to use a color printer? I generally prefer a format, which can be reduced to . I still use colors however - that is what you need the printer at work for.
Free Fantasy Map Making Software? The Cartographers’ Guild is a forum created by and for map makers and aficionados.
J. If you want to make changes, you can draw with a black painbrush tool to make corrections after erasing the faulty lines. Sorry about that. Step 3. 1. Fill in the names. Hopefully, your drawing program will have function, which allows you to keep each text bit separate. Also, it is nice if your program allows text effects.
Why map your fantasy world? A common theme for fantasy novels on shelves these days is a map of the fantasy world inside the front cover. Asmor's Combat Tracker - Fantasy, Free. Campaign Cartographer 3 is the new, powerful version of ProFantasy's map-making software for Windows. Fantasy Map Maker Fantasy Map Maker is a tool for creating maps for fantasy stories and exporting the maps to image files. Dungeon Painter is a powerful rpg map design tool. Scene Viewer is a free encounter mapping tool that you can embed into forum or blog posts.
This only works, if your coastline is . There cannot be any holes if you want this to function. Change to a strong blue color and paint the water areas.
Set the opacity of the area to 1. Go to the water layer. Select the water with the . Add additional watery areas by pressing . Use the Select/Modify/Contract function to decrease the size of your selection by 3 pixels. Save your selection (Select/Save selection).
Select/Modify/Contract again, this time by 1 pixel only. Save this selection also. Load the previous selection.
Load the 1- pixel contracted selection, but remember to . This should leave you with a 1 pixel broad selected band 3 pixels from the coastline. Go to the coastline layer. Select a blue color.
Paint all the selected areas. Set the opacity to 5. Step 4. 2 (mountains and woods)Create a new layer (mountains). Set the opacity at 8. Mouse- paint the mountains. Experiment until you get the right one. Mouse- paint the forest areas.
Do the land, excluding forests and mountains. If you make the proper selections/inverse selections in advance, it's much easier to avoid the stuff you do not want to paint on. This is where you boost the zoom to as much as possible and do the little symbols like cities, ancient sites, etc. Create a map for the PCs by turning off the layers, which holds information for GMs only. DO NOT accidentally close the program, when you have flattened all layers and hit .