Creating World Maps

[robject]

Am I the only person who likes to hand-draw world maps?

When I see those beautiful world graphics, I like to see them wrapped around a sphere.

But when I see the icosahedral map, I like line art. Is there something wrong with me?

You know, taking a pen that's just a little more generous on the ink than a ballpoint; tracing out landmasses, mountain ranges, etc; tracing outside the shoreline with the wide edge of a blue highliter... There's something so satisfying in that, and the results aren't all that bad. They're certainly not as distracting as the amazing and wonderful stuff I've seen here.

Originally posted by Grymlocke:

I just use the old 'papercrinlkle' method...
...take sheet of paper
...'crinkle' it into a ball of desired tightness
...unfold paper and with pen, start following randomly generated 'crinkles'
....outline coastlines, 'up crinkles' for mountains, 'down crinkles' for valleys, rifts and canyons
...photocopy to make clean map sheet

look at map of earth, tell the that's what it looks like? we're God's crinnkled ball of paper

That's really, really cool.

Originally posted by Jim Fetters:

I think eventually, I'll break down and get PSP or something, but that will have to wait a couple months.

Tip: Amazon often carries used old-version copies of software for cheap. For example, I got a copy of Paint Shop Pro 7 for FIVE DOLLARS.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

I like hand drawing maps of all kinds, I have several that are actually painted on masonite for one project or another. Hand drawing makes them have an "old" feel which is quite nice.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi !

Me, too

My old hand drawn maps intensily remind me of the very good old Traveller times, where heart, soul and quite a lot of work moved into these maps. (In those times I has time to do this).
Though I have to admit, that most of my old maps are perhaps geologically pretty naive and a reason for scientific stuff to mock around...

Now, e.g. with FT there is the compromise, not just to push a generate button but to manually design and detail the map, so every line and height level is actually "created".

Regards,

TE

 

[su_liam]

I love my old hand-drawn maps immensely. Even if they are amateurish as all get out and a little embarassing. But there are things that can be done with the computer maps that at least I can't do by hand. I can zoom down to ground level on my map and actually see those mountains. If you have more artistic skill than me and a bit of technical skill in visualizing maps, you could probably manage this. Not me so much.

I've gotten permission to use one of the PCs at work to do some extra-curricular stuff. I want to see if I can decently detail Tavonni. Kind of my first attempt at a mini ME-DEM, before I set about detailing my own world.

I both thank and curse the person that introduced me to that.

Tell you how it works out.

 

[Hemdian]

Am I the only person who likes to hand-draw world maps?

Depends on what atmosphere I'm trying to create. For modern/future games I want modern/future looking maps ... in other words: using computer graphics. For a fantasy game (like D&D) then it has to be hand-drawn with a calligraphy pen on parchment and then scruffed-up. (Sometimes I scan the map into the computer, laser print it, tear ragged edges, leave to soak in a coffee solution, then iron dry.)

Tip: Amazon often carries used old-version copies of software for cheap. For example, I got a copy of Paint Shop Pro 7 for FIVE DOLLARS.

I got PSP 8 from Amazon for a similar price, but I think I preferred PSP 6.

Regards PLST

 

[Merxiless]

Depends on my mood.

I hand draw with markers, pens, or pencils, or I use CC3, with all the bells and whistles, or CC2, with my Cosmographer pro plug in.

I've had good luck with gal 2 cc for sector maps. Great, great looking, authenticity.

 

[su_liam]

Mo Betta WIP

Here, after a woefully long hiatus, is my second WIP for Tavonni. As you can see I've now built in the mountains more or less as God and Hyphen intended. I've yet to do anything about climate coloring

Hopefully, you can see some improvement from my past efforts.

 

[far-trader]

Very pretty.

What hex pattern are you using? It looks like it's made to better represent a sphere. Is there somewhere to download a blank of it? Or could you upload a blank of that to the art pages here?

Have you considered shading the water too? Just wondering.

 

[su_liam]

Actually, I left the layers I was working on slightly transparent so as to see the original beneath. I was working on the flattened version that The Engineer had put together and then reprojected the result with Flexify. The curvature is the sum of several distortions. It appears that the icomap projection of Flexify isn't a perfect inverse to the flattening transformation TE had used. In terms of geometry this is the best I can do, though.

Hopefully, I can get some more improvements in soon. I think deserts will just be a matter of painting in some color effects. Forest and jungle may involve some subtle texturing if I can make that work.

I did do a little bit of cloud shading on the water, but it was too subtle to show up at the slightly reduced opacity, I guess. My wife suggests a little bit of 'beach shading as well, because the coloring looks a little weak at the coastlines. I'll be working on that, too.

Ultimately, I'd like to add rivers and such that didn't exist on the original. Given that I have no real height information with this method, those can be quite free, but rather conjectural.

I'm having fun and learning my tools. Hopefully the results could be of use to others as well. As I get further along, depending on interest, I may put up a short tut. Folks may find the Fantasy Cartography with Adobe Photoshop videoblogs on zombienirvana.com a whole lot more useful.

 

[Merxiless]

And Here I thought i was the Grand Survey King of all time.

I've been humbled.

Robject Wrote:
"Am I the only person who likes to hand-draw world maps?"

No. I do both. I've got my old Maps that I hand drew, when Grand Survey came out... they all look a lot like Tavoni, and I felt right at home seeing that colored pencil drawing.

My more recent ones use Lunarcell, FT, Wilbur, Etc, etc.

A few steps more coarse than Mickazoid's.

Good luck to all. I am rarely humbled.

 

[su_liam]

I wish my hand-drawn maps looked that good. I wouldn't have had to mess around with the computer so much.

I'm currently working on adapting the Regina map in the MT WBH. I have successfully created a uvmap for wrapping icomaps onto a sphere, but I've yet to convert an icomap into a plate carée as TheEngineer did. When I work that out, I can start kicking butt with Flexify.

Join the club, Merxiless, between some of the folks on this site and the Cartographer's Guild, I'm often humbled. So far my enormous ego remains undamaged, but who knows...

 

[su_liam]

Is The Engineer still here? If so, could you help explain the actions you went through to convert Tavonni to a plate carée? I have successfully transformed the central part to fill the equatorial regions, but I'm lost as to how to stretch the north and south polar triangles to fill the upper and lower spaces. None of the transforms can stretch the points east west enough to fill the space, even with massive undesirable north-south stretch.

 

[Hyphen]

Dear Folks -

...I'm lost as to how to stretch the north and south polar triangles to fill the upper and lower spaces.

I always cheated and said it was covered by the polar ice-caps, so who cared what was underneath... ;-)

BTW, fantastic job from everyone on Tavonni. Thanks a heap for showing us, especially me, what is possible with modern mapping tools.

Finally, my original sketch of Tavonni was done following DGP's mapping guidelines in Grand Survey/Grand Census. I began with the tectonic plates, counted up the required number of land hexes, shaded them in more-or-less randomly, then just... er... crinkled the shorelines a bit.

Just in case you were wondering. ;-)

 

[Laryssa]

I'm working on a polygon map myself, it is of the Earth, in my Mir Project. (See the Jigsaw Planet Mir)
I have labeled the faces on the polygon projection, calling them regions I through XX in roman numerals, or 1 through 20 in arabic numerals. Region I is the Western most Northern triangle on the map, it is cut in half by the edge of the map and the other half appears on the Eastern Most Northern triangle on the other side of the map. Directly south of this is an inverted triangle called Region II, on the right edge of this triangle is the upright triangle I labeled Region II, and on the southern edge of that is an inverted triangle stretching to the South pole I called region IV. I repeat this pattern with regions V through VIII going North-west to South East and again from regions IX to XII and again from XIII to XVI, and again from XVI to XX.

Of particular interest to me is Region V, which contains the majority of North America according to this projection, this is the second upright North hemisphere triangle from the left on the map. According to this projection, five of these northmost triangles meet at the North pole when you enclose this into a sphere, that means a 360 degree circle divided by 5 which means the edges of these triangles meet at 72 degrees at their vertexes, not only at the north pole but also at every vertex of every triangular region on this map. You can cut out this map and fold it into a 20-sided die, but when stretched into a sphere, equalateral triangles which normally have their edged meet at 60 degree angles instead meet at 72 degrees because of the spherical distortion.

Looking at region V for my example the two edges starting from the North Pole follow the lined of logitude precisesly at 144 degrees west and 72 degrees west, and they stop at the 30 degrees north Latitude line. To close this triangle you need a horizontal line, but this line does not follow 30 degrees latitude precisely, it only intersects this line at the two vertexes of the triangle, the line otherwise follows this formula:

Latitude = 37.08203933 * Sin( (degrees longitude) - 18 degrees)

37.08203933 degrees is the northern most of this line, this line defines the shortest distance between the lower endpoints of region V along Earth's curved surface. If you projected a plane between the endpoints (144 degrees west, 30 degrees North) and (72 degrees west, and 30 degrees north) and the center of the Earth, you would get a line defined by the above formula for the bottom edge of region V.

 

[su_liam]

Hi !

Very pretty Alik !
Now perhaps some ice caps or generally climate impacts for the "real" map.
Or will you leave it as topographical world map ?

regards,

TE

Well, I'm back on the horse with this. This one shows some climate effects. In plate carée, of course, for editing.

 

[Rockdoc2010]

Mauna Loa is actually larger than Olympus Mons..however geological proccess have eroded the peak and heavy sea pressure at depth held her back. And she is not even considered to be removed from the "hot spot". The issue is that Mars is geologically dead and hawaii is still a glowing boiling vent!

Geology is a really cool degree to have!

 

[Rockdoc2010]

Yes they do vary by 9.99 percent Statistacally speaking. Praise megatraveller or at least DGP Grand Survey. My question is how do you account for this in any typical programming adventure? If you have a hex that is part coastline.. what is the part of coastline that must be subtracted from the ocean .. this is important to determine the graphics that are actually going to be presented in the hax that is drawn onto the map.

 

[Rockdoc2010]

wow this thread fell off

I realize that the work that I see is both cost prohibitive and Cover art worthy.
I am working on a program that will place Dozens of icons onto a blank background. I am working on a point click solution that uses "stock" (although my icons are not stock) icons. At the moment it is only 256K and 16x16 icons but a little dither conversion and we have smooth cool images that will blend well at 32x32 icons(1 hex). Which will double the image for todays resolution needs!
I am working in Win XXXXXXXXXX. Vb6 programming is the idea

The point I am trying to make is that a collection of Icons, (point click at first, computergen afterwords) will be massively usuable in programming possibility as they will be considered stock and easily manipulated into programming environments, Thus removing the need for OVER Graphical images (yet not undergraphical) maps.

Imagin if you will a "Civilization IV" map. Derived from a lot of icons! As civ 4 uses a Rhombus nature I have been working on the generation of Hexagonal Icons. Yes I am making a lot of extra Icons.. But I am almost finished with the most. Coastlines are a bitch

I am working mostly on how the base and mask work together. I am working the graphics so that it will work in VB. I can draw PLENTY maps in a paint programs but the idea is to build a program where you can point click the icons and after that gets worked out.. I can apply the graphics to an H&E style program to make maps.


Notice my waterwolrd map (post) for a start.

 

[Akeel]

dunno if anyone's seen this - but i've found it quite handy at times - quite useful, along wi' Photoshop and Bryce

http://donjon.bin.sh/world/

 

[su_liam]

Yeah. That's based on the planet app by Torben Ægidius Mogensen. Really nice noise-based planets without unsightly polar pinching.

It is subject to all of the disabilities of any purely noise-based mapping. Mountains tend to be centered on continents, and land masses tend to be too homogeneously distributed. This one produces some really pretty images, though. Also, whatever the disabilities, I still use this and the FWMG by John Olsson(The app is broken now. It just downloads the php) to at least generate land mass shapes. I usually take those into Wilbur and build up heightfields, mountains and climatological/biogeographic attributes by hand.

Back when I had time for programming work, I considered adding a 16-bit png output to this thing. Since I hardly use the elevations from these kinds of things anymore, it's unlikely to be worth the bother.